Why I won't use the dealer for servicing!

I dont see the point in even using main dealers.
Iv always been taken to one man who has a messy tatty shop, and youd be lucky to find you helmet if you put it down, who does nothing but build and use to race ducati's and other v twins so i know i can trust him as he loves my bike, even asked if he could go thrash it up the M3 before he serviced it, and he always goes the extra mile checking things that dont need looking at and a very cheap price.

On the other hand what took him 5days and cost £500 suzuki quoted me a month and over 1k so i know where im never going back.

[fizzwheel]

Originally Posted by BBadger

I dont see the point in even using main dealers.

I think that depends on the dealer, the Ducati Main dealer Liz's Ducati goes to has a well deserved excellent reputation and really looked after us, and saved us money by striping bits and pieces off the bike and cleaning them up rather than replacing.

Originally Posted by BBadger

Iv always been taken to one man who has a messy tatty shop, and youd be lucky to find you helmet if you put it down

Indeed if you can find a back street garage like that, they are often just as good or better than a big shiney main dealers, garage, but again its that thing of building up a rapport and trust with the mechanics doing the work, theres a little place near us thats started getting our business and they're a similar setup, but really good.

I dont think its fair to tar all the dealers as "rubbish" in my experience there are good places out there.

Originally Posted by fizzwheel

As for you home servicing advocates, its fine to do it IMHO but you need to remember a few things

Very true points, but the other aspect of that is that I notice more about the bike by home servicing it than I would do if I just rode it & dropped it at a garage when the book told me to.

Again, it comes down to intelligence.

Originally Posted by fizzwheel

I dont think its fair to tar all the dealers as "rubbish" in my experience there are good places out there.

Its not fair i know that, but ive only had dealings with suzuki, and most of the time i get treated like im not even in the shop which doesnt help when your actually trying to buy somthing.
So until i meet a nice careing suzuki man who listens to me im not changing my mind.

Originally Posted by BBadger

Its not fair i know that, but ive only had dealings with suzuki, and most of the time i get treated like im not even in the shop which doesnt help when your actually trying to buy somthing.
So until i meet a nice careing suzuki man who listens to me im not changing my mind.

My advice is to shop elsewhere. The shop I bought the gloves from today, the second I walked in the door someone working there said hi to me. The second I got upstairs the girl on the desk said hello & asked if I wanted any help. Then when I was buying the gloves, we were happily chatting about the weather, the fact that her other half has had to commute on his bike in the snow, and that I used to have the opportunity to work from home but not any more.

Then I walked downstairs & some git almost sold me a bike!

[yorkie_chris]

Hmmm, a local dealer to me:

Front desk man, seemed utterly shocked that I would dare wield a spanner on my own bike. None too impressed with the general service and attitude!
Dyno/workshop man, infinitely helpful and generous with advice.
Clothing girl, hot.
Workshop apprentice/dogsbody/whatever; nearly got punched on the nose for putting my bike on dyno and going straight to a full power run without warming it up first. I was not even a bit impressed.
Prices; well I won't even go there!

So 2/5, anything I can't do myself, the local small businesses rate FAR higher.

Originally Posted by Baph

Then I walked downstairs & some git almost sold me a bike!

The cheek of some people!

But thats the sorta place we all need.

What you got to remember with dealerships as well is they're part of a corparate framework who don't care give you the cheapest, nasty stuff as possible which includes ripping off staff, crap work conditions to make the most money.

Mr local shop onces he's got you there will impress you to come back. He can afford to make your time worth while as he hasn't got to squeeze in 20 oil + filter services a day as there's generally 2 in a garage with regular customers.

I've got 2 services left at thunderoad motorcycles and it will cost me more in time and fuel to get there than it's worth. I'm tempted to not bother with the 11k service as it's going to take me 1h round trip plus and 3hours while they do the service (take forever and are hopeless) but use the 14.5k service as valve clearances are tricky.

[Dave20046]

The only dealerish places I've been known to frequent are HG (hot lasses and decent selection of clothes), and the local bmw dealership where my instructor was based where I still visit now and then to warm my hands and sup free tea...it's probably people like me pushing up their rates lol!

Originally Posted by maviczap

But remember that dealers buy their oil in bloomin great drums, not the piddlin little 5litre stuff we buy at. They're payin trade prices, we're payin RRP prices which includes a big mark up, so £8 for a dealers price of oil ain't far off I think

You've obviously never sold oil wholesale, have you?

Dealers don't all get massive discounts on their oil for buying huge drums, it all boils down to litreage and whether or not they've been enticed by someone like me to have their workshops kitted out with all new equipment in exchange for an exclusive oil deal. Workshop equipment like tyre changers, balancers, benches, oil stations and ramps don't come cheap, and the oil company wants its money back somehow, so the oil company signs them up on long deals that depend on how many litres of oil a month/quarter/year they shift through the workshop and retail side of their business. Some of those guys are tied into contracts that can make £9 a litre of Rock Oil seem like a bargain. If they don't hit their litreage figures they pay through the nose per litre for the next however long it takes to get back on target.

Believe me, it's no cakewalk being a bike dealership trying to make ends meet in today's climate. I once kitted out a dealer's workshop from floor to ceiling with flooring, tiled walls, all the workshop equipment, benches, ramps, tyre machines, oil stations, extraction system, the whole shooting match. That dealer was tied into a deal that meant he was stuck using our brand of oil for 10 years, and having to shift huge quantities of it to meet the litreage figures or he'd be paying almost retail prices per barrel and almost double the going rate for his workshop fitting-out. They went bust within 2 years, but that was mainly down to bad management in other areas of the business - their workshop was actually about the only profitable side of the whole dealership. Naturally I went in there to pull all the equipment out, and we moved it into another dealership on a similar deal.