JC, you're right in that dealerships fronting all the major automotive manufacturers are better now than they were when most of them were still mom and pops operations. Though sometimes the farm kid who grew up wrenching in the little dealership is the best thing you're going to find.
Part of the difference may be the most dealerships anymore are bigger both physically and financially. And they've got real competition that usually isn't too much distance away. They also have less autonomy from their manufacturer than they use to.
All those things may be why the support given us by the Harley dealerships can be so spotty and so varied. They often don't have any close local competition for their products and a lot of their owners don't always understand that their services could be acquired elsewhere or even done at home. Harley has also never completely gotten away from the AMF days when it was begging for dealerships, selling dealer rights for a song, and granting little fiefdoms in the process. It's no longer begging for dealers nor selling dealer rights for a song, but the dealers maintain their little fiefdoms to a surprising extent. So the service departments know their corporate oversight and monitoring is minimal except for circumstances of marketing or pretty extreme error. Some shops are good. Too many (one would be too many) arent' though. And way too many make you feel like a target rather than a client or a friend.
If Harley really wanted to do something to define the owner experience in a more pleasurable, stable and favorable light it would lay out some hard core definitions and set a high bar for minimal operating requirements for service departments in the dealerships. I'm not talking about specific staffing questions here. That's tough to mandate from above and too easily leads to draconian mandates. But, instead, things like removing latitude on warranty questions where there really shouldn't be any, telling everyone that the corporation stands behind the rider as well as the dealership, and letting the dealership know that when standards for minimal respect to the rider weren't met they'd be sanctioned in later product allocations.
I know, these kinds of things are already in place on paper. But they're rarely executed and they're almost never taken seriously by the local dealerships and service departments. That's one thing that could change for the better.
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Topic: What is the one change that you'd ask HD for? (Read 11772 times)