Here's the short version...
Scheduled 15k major service with dealer (same dealer I bought my 2003 from). I brought it in on a Tuesday, the appointment was for the following day. Never heard from them, so finally called around 15:00 Wednesday, they said it wouldn't be ready until the following day ... fine. Thursday rolls around, still no word from them, when I called ~11:00, they said it's ready come pick it up ... cool.
Now up until this point, exceptions being the 600 mile service and tires, I've done all the service and mods to the bike. I wanted to defer to them because the bike was due for valve adjustment, so I had them change the oil and put a new metzler m3 on the front along with the 15k service ... cost ~700 bucks, but whatever.
Now here's the issue:
I picked up the bike, drove it home and decided to leave the plastic off until the morning (I removed the plastic before dropping it off for service). The next morning (friday) i noticed an oil puddle under the bike about the size of my hand. Sure enough it was leaking from the drain plug, which right away i was suspicious that they didn't replace the drain plug gasket, or worse that they stripped the drain plug/oil pan. So I called them up to let them know, they reluctantly offered to pick it up, but not until the following Monday morning. They pick my bike up Monday morning and the guy tells me they won't be able to look at it until the following day ... whatever just fix it. I call them Tuesday (the following day) around noon, and they tell me that "they've fixed the problem, taken it out a few times to heat up the oil and it appears the leak is gone but we just wanna make sure so we'll call you in a bit". Finally they call me about 4 hours later, it's the service manager, he starts out by saying that their "A Technician" suddenly remembered from last Wednesday, when it came in, that he saw threads on the drain bolt when draining the oil, "he tried to help me out by cleaning it up and thought it was fixed".
Well first of all, I do all the oil changes and I would know if i cross-threaded or stripped the bolt (I hand tighten and under torque the bolt, always). Second of all, say i did do it (impossible, but for the sake of argument), why the hell would a "A tech" not notify the customer immediately after pulling the plug and seeing threads, if nothing else to cover his ass?. So it became a my word against his. I right away felt like this guy was just doing a cya. He tries to sympathize with me by offering to pick up the labor charges, but I would have to cover the parts, which was around 150 bucks, he ensured me that I was getting a great deal.
Now I'm a pretty fair person, if they had called me up and told me that the mechanic had the Boss's kid hanging around and let him do some odd jobs, and little johnny overtightened the drain plug and stripped your oil pan, we'll get a new one, sorry about the inconvenience, blah blah blah. I'd be pissed but at the end of the day **** happens and they're doing their best to fix the problem. But instead I get some unethical bs ******** telling me that this was my fault and we're doing you a favor by paying for the labor. I told him that I'm convinced that he's running a slackass service department and that I didn't want to take it there in the first place because of other incidents in the past. (The last incident I had with them, was I took it there for a new rear tire, after the previously new rear tire had a nail in it after 50 miles. When I went to pick up the bike, i noticed in the tire pile a brand new roasted metzler m3 tire with a nail hole in it, yeah thats right, they thought it was ok to burn off my old tire before installing the new one, evidence was all over the undertail.) When i told him that story he just said "we don't do that here", so it's hard to reason with the delusional.
But anyways, due to some anger management tips and tricks that I've picked up along the way, I've decided that my only recourse is to write this rant. In the meantime I've ordered all my parts from
www.bikebandit.com which totaled ~130 bucks, and I'll enjoy knowing that it will be done properly.
P.S. I know all service depts and their technicians aren't like this, in fact I'd be willing to bet that most of them are good hard working honest people at least when it comes to their job, so this hopefully is an isolated occurrence, i just happened to be the victim.
Thanks for listening...
