Complain to Harley Davidson

[Darhawk]

Originally Posted by planb

Hey Dar,

I'll bet that clutch was corroded with salt from driving it from France to London...same thing happened when I drove from San Francisco to Honolulu in '94! Luckily, a friend brought me over a spare clutch when he came on the train!

Other than the clutch, the biggest problem was getting the fish outta the air filter.........

[CuL8R]

Originally Posted by Darhawk

Crap happens...........
In 1993, I drove my 1992 Renault Safrane Quatro from France to London...

Did you have to install widshield wipers on your helmet (goggles)?

[Broncodog]

Efrén first off welcome to the forum. Your letter was well written and to the point therefore you'll get little response from customer service

[74FeHeadXLH]

Yes 1st off welcome to XLF...secondly no one company on the planet is phisically able to "completely"satisfy every one of its customers 100% of the time...hence the phrase....DOO-DOO OCCURS....real sorry to hear of your bad experience w/ H D in Spain, but remember there's alot of logistics and individual "humans" between you in Spain and the moco in USA...I'm confident the moco will remedy the unfortunate situation that you find yourself stuck in...but please don't let one set of bad circumstances ruin your dream!!!!!!....I'm sure you can hear many similar stories from Harley owners (myself incl) who still ride Harley's and would buy a new one....this aint a perfect world, they are not a perfect company, and they are not perfect motorcycles......but I personally would'nt ride anything else.....Mike 74xlh

[mikeLI_77]

hey Efrén. sometime in the next 6 months or so which will probably be the minimum you'll be waiting for a response they actually get back to you and tell you what and if they will do. let us know i am curious on what they will try to do for you if anything other than a sorry to hear about your problem but we can't do anything about it.

[baddog32]

Originally Posted by CuL8R

Too late! Evry time you ride down the road you will be recomending to others that they too should be a part of the the dream.

As for the rest of your complaint, I have never heard of anyone in the world ever having a good experiance with any dealership when it comes to warenty maintenence! Maybe it's diffrent in Europe, I don't know!

But, my point is, what did you expect, doughnuts and coffie (tea and crumpets) while you wait in the lobby?

No, I don't think the man was interested in having coffee in the lobby. I bet he expected to get his bike back in a reasonable amount of time. They could have rebuilt the bike in less than half that time. This is yet another example of piss poor quality service that pervades all levels of industry in our world. Alot of dealers don't provide good service because they know they don't have to. There is always somebody in line waiting for their poor treatment. Unfortunately, when your new bike goes down and its on warranty, you have little choice but to ride it out. My bike is 10 years old so I don't have to go to the dealer to get raped. I'll do the work myself or take it to a reputable Indy.

[CuL8R]

Originally Posted by baddog32

No, I don't think the man was interested in having coffee in the lobby.

I know that, and I totaly agree with you, too! My point was did he expect anything diffrent. The way stealers treat people is nothing new. I'm 26 years old and have a profound understanding of how bad it sucks to have to go to the stealer for anything - much less warentee maintenence. I don't know. Maybe he didn't know what to expect. Maybe this is the first time he has ever had to take a vehicle to the dealer, but at least now he knows what to expect.

Besides, I respect the guy for dooing what we all should, which is write a letter to the company. If we all did that all the time and "made" them change it maybe we all could expect doughnuts and coffie (tea and crumpets) while we wait in the lobby!

[txsporty]

Efrén

Sorry to hear about your Problem, Hopefully the MoCo will do something about it!!

I think that if more of us would take a bit of time and right a letter such as Efrén's maybe just maybe the MoCo will open their eyes!!!!

[estoerp]

Hello again,

First of all: I’ve already received a quick, but also quite strange and disappointing, answer from the after sales service of HD Spain. They tell me something I already knew and that I’ve already written in my letter: that the main problem had been a 3 weeks delivery time of the ignition module and a mistake on the delivery of the pistons. OK, but I already knew that, the dealer had told me. What I want to know is why and if they’ll do anything but apologize. HD Spain told me they’ll ask the different departments and they’ll tell me. I keep on waiting.

It’s nice to know that the version of HD Spain is the same that the dealer’s one. That makes me think, that at least this time, the dealer is not to blame for what has happened. It seems not a dealer issue. Anyway, I’m not 100% happy about the dealer work, but I guess no one is.

What broke down? It’s a long story. First there was no spark, so the first diagnostic was a problem with the ignition module. This piece took 3 weeks to come to Spain from the US, as it was not available in Belgium, where HD has a warehouse. Sadly, the problem was not there. After checking the whole electronics, they found no solution, so they went into the engine. There was a lot of some sort of carbon dust in the chambers, so compression was very low and the valves didn’t close properly. It seemed that mixing was misworking. They asked for 2 pistons and, at first, only arrived 1. The final diagnostic was a problem with distribution, a pinion before pushing rods had moved. Hope that answers your question and that you all have now details enough.

I know I’ve been unlucky and I know these things don’t happen very often on a new HD bike, or at least not more than with any other bikes, cars or washing machines…But I also think that for what I have paid, I deserve more that what I’ve received, that’s it, a more efficient and quick solution.

3 weeks time for an overseas delivery is not normal at all. I’m a mining engineer for a multinational group (Solvay) and I’ve bought much expensive, much bigger and much heavier spare parts for our P&H Shovel and once the order was done, delivery has been much less than 3 weeks…..So I sincerely think I have a lot to complain about. Besides, HD has a European central warehouse in Belgium, quite close to Spain, but there was no ignition module there.

I never meant to change anybody’s mind, not even mine. I’ll never ride anything but a Harley. But I insist, for what we pay, we deserve more than what we receive. Maybe the beginning of the problem is that the MoCo knows we’ll never ride another bike….

The bike seems to work fine now. Its being a hard winter here, so I’ve only ridden 100 km, without problems. We’ve agreed to re-check at 500 km, looking at plugs colour to see if mixing is OK.

Thanks to all of you who supported, understood me and helped me.

Happy rides,
Efrén

[Gone]

it happens all the time here in the States also. I wrote a letter to H-D "Customer Care" (should be Customer Could-Care-Less) regarding my recent experience with an SE Ignition Control Module (posted elsewhere here on the Forum).

Just two days ago I received a wonderful response that, for the most part, critiqued my letter by pointing out that I had not included my VIN, the model and part number of the ICM nor the name and address of the Stealer who sold me the part. So much for "Thank you for your letter and for bringing this matter to our attention, we are sorry you had a bad experience...." which is all I really wanted, the acknowledgement and validation of my complaint. In my letter, I pointed out that the installation instructions that come with the ICM are wrong when they direct you to the owners manual for the password learning procedure (they meant shop manual).

I once heard someone say that the best that a company can hope to do in customer satisfaction is 99.9%. It seems tha H-D has set their sights far lower....