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[Twolanerider]

Don, don't hold it in man........let it out and tell us what you really think!!!    



Wonder if anyone 'in the know' is going to the shareholders meeting 4/26? If it weren't so close to Sedona, I mean damn  aren't they supposed to coordinate these things with us first ?  

 

It's all harmless Joe.  It's like the old Dean Martin Roasts.  You can't insult them when they don't really care.  So you might as well occasionally have a little fun at their expense along with realistically explaining why the frustrations are what they are.

I'm probably more frustrated with their approach today then most days though.  A good friend called this morning asking "does this sound right?"  He went on to explain a problem he'd had with his 07 touring bike. 

He lost a cylinder.  Dead.  Took the bike to the dealership for warranty service.  The closest he comes to doing his own service is putting air in the tires and fuel in the tank.  Beyond that the entire machine is not within his background nor experience.  He has to trust what people tell him because he just doesn't know on his own.

So it was missing.  They said he dropped a valve.  He'd been told it was due to his change of exhaust.  He didn't think it sounded right.  But he wasn't sure.  So he complained.  A few days passed and a company service rep (or at least someone who purported to be one) saw him at the dealership.  The rep told him this could "definitely potentially" be the cause but in any case he couldn't override the dealership's decision.

And for this we tattoo their name on our skin.....

[skreminegul07]

Here's the part that you must all agree with:

By denying there's a problem and not sending anything out to the dealers, an uninformed leaker owner is dropping off his 110 for the leak today.  The uninformed dealer is replacing just the gasket with the latest official version and not checking for liner movement.  The only recent way to get what maybe a good gasket is to open a customer service case and have the unofficial part sent.  This would not be known to the customer and the dealer.  Even if the dealer saw it before, would rather do the work twice to keep his guys busy.  The dealer can then sit back and blame the MOCO for the reoccurring leak.
my .02
phil

[NukeIT]

Everytime I have spoken to someone about the 110 issue they remind me of a political spin officer, however not a very good one. They may be just following orders but when does moral and ethics come into play. I understand they may be working under a nondiscloser claws but under ethical business practices you may not knowing give false information. That is what it seems they are doing. I have to agree with 2lane if they were just straight with you and said I cant answer that...hell use the military phrase "I can neither confirm nor deny that" or "that is above my paygrade" At least I would still respect him.

For the ethics stand point, because I wouldn't want to claim that anyone is unethical without proof. benefit of the doubt is given it would be that these people are so ignorant that they can not see a trend of these machines in the service departments, nor a trend for a demand of replacement parts.... therefore the term "knowing false information" does not apply to them.

[FNGw/08SERK]

Here's the part that you must all agree with:

By denying there's a problem and not sending anything out to the dealers, an uninformed leaker owner is dropping off his 110 for the leak today.  The uninformed dealer is replacing just the gasket with the latest official version and not checking for liner movement.  The only recent way to get what maybe a good gasket is to open a customer service case and have the unofficial part sent.   This would not be known to the customer and the dealer.  Even if the dealer saw it before, would rather do the work twice to keep his guys busy.  The dealer can then sit back and blame the MOCO for the reoccurring leak.
my .02
phil

I was at my dealer yesterday talking with the owner about the repair to be done to my leaker. The 07B gasket had "just arrived". According to parts person it is now available in the system - no longer requiring the top secret conversation with the MOCO. This owner also voiced his "suspicion" in regards to the engineers pushing questionable limits with the 110 platform. FWIW 

Howie

[skreminegul07]

One thing I forgot to mention is the availability of parts.  When you do go in for the leak even with the gaskets pre ordered, if they find you need cylinders, you wait up to several weeks with no bike during riding season.  This just makes a bad situation much worse.  My dealer said if I pre order parts, i cannot return them.  So what do you call it when you have parts on the shelf?  "a Parts Department".

[FNGw/08SERK]

One thing I forgot to mention is the availability of parts.  When you do go in for the leak even with the gaskets pre ordered, if they find you need cylinders, you wait up to several weeks with no bike during riding season.   This just makes a bad situation much worse.  My dealer said if I pre order parts, i cannot return them.  So what do you call it when you have parts on the shelf?  "a Parts Department".

Your right Phil, therein lies my fear. I will find out on the 28th

Howie

[Fired00d]

...

Corporations aren't alive.  The culture and the choices are nothing more then the choices made by the people.  If the people aren't held responsible and taken to task the company can never change.  Because it is nothing more then its people.  And it is its people that give us the song and dance.

In a perfect world this would work, unfortunately I see it getting worse. With the downsizing, layoffs, what have you the top of the food chain in company's are going to be keeping the people that are more company loyal. This I think will mean those service reps that may at times given in to the customers legitimate complaints/request will be far and few between. More and more the reps will be giving the "company" answers, and denying more and more claims just to save their jobs. It's a dog eat dog world and only going to get worse.

 
Ride Safe,
Fired00d
 

[TN]

dang.....there's a problem with the 110's, hmmmmmmmmmmmmm

i know nuthing......nuthing!



 


TN

[porthole]

So it was missing.  They said he dropped a valve.  He'd been told it was due to his change of exhaust.  He didn't think it sounded right.  But he wasn't sure.  So he complained.  A few days passed and a company service rep (or at least someone who purported to be one) saw him at the dealership.  The rep told him this could "definitely potentially" be the cause but in any case he couldn't override the dealership's decision.

H'mmmm this sounds familiar. Different outcome though. Is your friends bike finished? I didn't save the message, but I still have the completed warranty RO.

[Ghost Rider]

In a perfect world this would work, unfortunately I see it getting worse. With the downsizing, layoffs, what have you the top of the food chain in company's are going to be keeping the people that are more company loyal. This I think will mean those service reps that may at times given in to the customers legitimate complaints/request will be far and few between. More and more the reps will be giving the "company" answers, and denying more and more claims just to save their jobs. It's a dog eat dog world and only going to get worse.

 
Ride Safe,
Fired00d
 

I'll just add my .02 on Don and Gary's discussion here.

Let me start by saying that I don't believe for a second that most every H-D executive is not aware of the issues with the 110.  But I will also say that communication is a two way street.  I firmly believe that not only are we getting bad information from H-D employees (dealer or corporate), but they are also being given bad information and they are basically relating to us what they have been told is fact or told to say.  But also keep in mind bad information flows uphill as well.  I agree with Gary, we are in bad economic times and self-preservation is on everyone's mind.  Part of that "self-preservation" is never giving the "big guy" bad news.  I have the displeasure of working for a fairly large corporation.  I spend the majority of my day on the phone with some lackey from our corporate office who has been directed to call me by his/her boss.  They ask me the list of questions they have been ordered to get answered and I give them truthful repsones.  To which they ALWAYS reply, "I can't tell Mr. ________ (insert executives name here) that."  "Why not?" I'll say.  "Because thats not what he wants hear."  And so, said executive is not told the "truth" he is told what this person believes he wants to hear.  It happens everyday here, and I sure it happens everday in H-D's corporate environment as well.

I'm certainly not trying to make excuses for anyone here.  Harley has a bad product out there and they need to own up to that and get it fixed.  But it is also reasonable to believe that everytime we are being told by someone in the H-D family that 100 issues are "isolated," or the result of using non-oem parts, or you can't believe anything you read on the internet.  That same message is being sent up the ladder as well.

No one in corporate America wants to be Chicken Little.  No one wants to be the messenger of bad news.  Because you know what they do to the messager don't you...

[Twolanerider]

Everytime I have spoken to someone about the 110 issue they remind me of a political spin officer, however not a very good one.

Nuke, this is really what troubles me most about the process.  It's a different way of saying it.  But it is the question in a nutshell.  It addresses directly the discussion Gary and I have been having.

Though short sightedly a company, any company, may not see that it is simply good business to do right by its consumer base it actually is good business to do so.  Those with a returning consumer base have to advertise less.  Their cost to bring money back in is less if they have consumers that come to them without being reminded.

Harley, however, has treated failures, issues and problems very much politically.  As a kind of individually determined policy issue rather then a service issue.  With the goal of that policy all too obviously sometimes being "how little can we get away with and how much can we avoid this time."

In a very narrow term that keeps money in your pocket.  In the longer term it will kill.  Harley is unlike almost any other company, except perhaps the street corner narcotics dealer, in that it has an almost addicted consumer base.  And it knows that.  It knows that we'll just keep coming back.  And it takes advantage as a result.  It can move service responsibilities to policy questions of +/- in the short term and get away with it.

The longer term, however, will bite them.  Hard. They may be beginning to barely comprehend the lack of a perpetual yellow brick road now.  But the next buying generation will not be as easy as we've been.  Harley will have to actually compete in the market place.  Both at the sales floor and in the service arena.  It's been a long time since they've had to do that.  So far they're not learning to do it very well or very quickly.

[Twolanerider]

but they are also being given bad information and they are basically relating to us what they have been told is fact or told to say.  But also keep in mind bad information flows uphill as well.  I agree with Gary, we are in bad economic times and self-preservation is on everyone's mind. 

Agreed Travis.  And, again, it's not the kid service writer at the dealership or the tech behind the wall I fault.  They're low on the food chain and only know what they're told.  The company reps are a different story though.  Or the surprisingly demeaning and laborious process too many have to go through themselves to get even a response out of the company that should be easy.

Troubling economic times, one would think, would make an otherwise financially healthy company seek to maintain its base rather than alienate them.  It's just too easy to see only the short term and not exercise either the intellectual effort or even baseline of courage necessary to raise your head over the screen and look ahead farther than your front wheel.  We all know what happens to riders that only look down at their front wheel though. They crash.

[Twolanerider]

H'mmmm this sounds familiar. Different outcome though. Is your friends bike finished? I didn't save the message, but I still have the completed warranty RO.

Duane, I truly don't know.  I'm not even convinced he's got anything that significant going on.  He said "it didn't make much different noise than normal."

Granted, Drake wouldn't know road kill if he heard it.  But he's a bright guy.  And he's not deaf.  If a motor grenaded he'd have heard something noticably different.

So I don't know if he just completely misunderstood what was happening beneath him in the suddenness of the moment.  Or if a shop is trying to ratchet up a small job to a big one.  I only know that the excuse he was given for lack of warranty is bogus and the support he got from a company rep was nonexistent.

[Texas 103]

I took a tour of the Capitol Drive plant where they build a lot of the engines (not the 110") last month while in Milwaukee and they let us know that the plant where they do build them had stopped giving tours a while back and would not be giving tours in the immediate future. 

Do you suppose they have been getting blasted on quality or they are working on a liquid cooled motor???

Jim 

Liquid Cooled is right...... . The POS drove them to drink and now WTF do we do>>>

[DESERTBEAR54]

This issue reminds me so much of Learjets and how they dominated the aircraft corporate arena back in the 60's,70's with there awesome jets. They kept things the same never updated or believed they had to because they had a loyal customer base and so they never changed. then Cessna came out with a corporate jet that flew as fast as a Lear,as plush as a Lear and got much better gas milage at 1/2 the cost and there customer service was so much better!! The moral of the story is that Gates Learjet went out of business!!!

I think what everone is saying in a nutshell is that Harley needs to focus on Customer Service!! They have just saturated the market with motorcycles and made money up front but working with the customer and supporting there Engineering Blunders they are lacking!! I wonder why sales are down?? My 2 cents!!