Okay 450Crazy,

"The mechanics reply was "IF YOUR SO SMART WHY DON'T YOU FIX THE BIKE YOURSELF""

That's a pretty strong accusation and after posting something like that in this open forum you have an obligation to contact me with your name so I can follow through.  I will not tollerate our customers being treated with disrespect, even when they disrespect us.  I can't take action if I only think I know who you are and who the Tech is.  I will notify this open forum that you contacted me but won't divulge any personal information.  I will, however, present our side of the story.  Failure to contact me will remove any credibility of your complaint.

Yes, sometimes I'm busy and can't see a customer right away.  If you had wanted to wait until I was through with whatever business I was attending to, then we could have talked.

Let me explain about warranty work.  Warranties protect you from defects in materal or workmanship, they exclude abuse, neglect or normal wear.  We get paid the same to do warranty work as we do to collect from the customer.  The big problem most dealers have with warranty work is the back-end effort it requries.  We need to keep the parts for 90 days (in case the factory recalls them for inspection), that means we need to keep track of them and store them (this takes time and money).  We also need to file paperwork on each claim and follow through to make sure we did get paid.  Many dealers just don't want to go through the trouble of doing warranty and discourage warranty work in their Service Departments.  Here at Barney's we are set up to do warranties.  We have two rooms filled with parts waiting to be recalled.  We have an office person who's only job is to process the warranties, keep track of the return parts, and make sure we get compensation.  We LOVE WARRANTY WORK!  We get paid the same and the customer is much happier.  If there was any way we could have gotten your problem covered by warranty we would have.

One of our staffers you mention had already been transfered to a non-customer contact job within the company.

I will take further action once you've validated your complaint with the necessairy information.

Jack

I would like to introduce myself.  My name is Jack Lambert and I am Service Manager at Barney's St. Pete. 

I'd like to thank the person who emailed me a link to this thread, I don't know who you are but I apriciate the "heads up" about this discussion.

As I don't know any of you by your forum names I can't address these specific complaints at this time.  However, I can tell you that I am always open to comments and complaints from our customers.  I'm usually here 5 1/2 to 6 days a week.  You can call me at 727-576-1148, email to Jlambert@barneys.net or just ask to speak with me while you are here.

We are not perfect. 

Sometimes we are wrong in our diagnossis.

However, our goals are to treat our customers fair and produce quality work; we work very hard toward those goals.  There is a reason our Service Department has grown to 20 Tech's ......... that reason is thousands of satisified customers.  We wouldn't be one of the largest Service Departments of our kind in the country if we didn't to things right (at least most of the time).

I invite anyone who feels they've been treated unfairly in our Service Department to contact me with specific details.  I promiss a full review of customer complaints and an explination of my findings.

Please don't try to contact me through ATVFlorida.com but contact me directly and report the results here.

Jack Lambert
Service Manager
Barney's Motorcycle & Marine
St. Petersburg, FL