SV650.org - SV650 & Gladius 650 Forum

Well I feel like I need a good rant after this so here goes...

Booked my bike in for it's MOT (K9 SV650S), the last three times I used CBS Whitton and everything was fine, however now that I work in Reading there is Blade Honda no more than 5 mins walk from where I work, so I booked it where for convenience. I booked it in three weeks in advance and was ready and waiting when they opened, left the bike with them and went off to work. My plan was to pick the bike up at lunch, but at one o'clock it wasn't ready, which wasn't the end of the world, just thought an MOT would be reasonably quick.

Anyway at half three I got a call to say the bike had failed its MOT, which I was pretty surprised at; I look after the bike and gave it a pre MOT check so I was quite worried that I had missed something, however I was amazed at what the 'failures' were.

The first failure was that the left handlebar grip 'was rotating freely' by this they meant that the third of the grip at the bar end side would move when twisted, but not the other two thirds (I had tested this and it seemed fine to me, but I didn't pull just the end of the grip, I pulled the whole thing which stayed put). I can't see how this is severe enough to fail an MOT but it still cost £32.50 for them to re-glue which was the most ridiculous price that I had ever heard, I even offered to glue it myself if they just sold me the glue, but they would not perform a same day retest if I glued it myself, had to be their technician so they knew that the work was up to standard.

The second failure was slightly more reasonable, if you pressed the rear brake lever so that the light just comes on it would flicker, if you pressed it normally it was fine (hence why i didn't notice this when I tested the light worked) but I really thought this was pretty harsh for a failure as the pads were only just engaging at this point and if you used the lever with a normal amount of force it worked just fine. The advice that I was given for this was that they could try to 'strip and clean' the sensor, however they felt this would be unsuccessful and I would be better letting them order a new sensor and fitting that when it arrived in 7 - 10 working days. With the bike being my sole transport I opted for the clean at what I thought was £16.40, which later turned out to be £60.40 when I went to pay. To rub salt into my wounds the 'strip and clean' was to spray it with a Honda brand WD40 substitute and leave it for 10 minutes, and yes they charged labour for those 10 minutes and for the spray!

So by this point I'm feeling pretty stupid as they've fleeced me, home from work without the bike is a 45 minute walk to the train, and hour long train then an hour of walking country roads from the station (repeat this order reversed to get to work in the morning), as the bike had no MOT now and I'm going away on the bike Wednesday I paid up, otherwise I would have pre booked an MOT elsewhere and just gone there, pretty sure the bike would have passed elsewhere, and if not the work would have been much cheaper!

So next year I'm not going here I'm going back to CBS Whitton, seems much more convenient now! And as I'm tied into a 5 year minimum contract I would have gone back to Blade Honda for the next 5 years at least, and they would have made more money than they did today, however I will not be going back so that's their loss.

So what do you think, am I going OTT here or have they taken me for a right ride and really pushed what they're allowed to do here?