Wanted to share an experience that started June 2018 and is still nearing completion; almost one year later in what will hopefully be resolved by the beginning of April… 2019…
I have a 2016 Indian Springfield that I purchased the week said model was released: one of the first off the line. Last June we PCS’d (military move) from Oklahoma to NW Florida. For those who don’t know, military moves have private companies pack/move/unpack your whole house. This past year also happened to be one of the worst PCS seasons for many military families across the country.
After brutal PCS season, thousands sign petition to hold moving companies accountable for loss, damage
You can see where this is going: received my crated bike on its side. It had been packed with a strap across the seat, resting on the kickstand (I know this because the numerical lack of straps in the crate and the fact that my kickstand was down, bend forward to an insane degree… almost as if someone had packed it on its kickstand and driven a thousand miles in a wooden box…).
Preface to the below timeline: Before you start to wonder “WTF why was this guy not more aggressive with the shop??”, I’m active duty and started a new position that require(s/d) a lot of training and I have had to front load a lot of travel/training this past almost year. It’s been tough to keep up, to say the least… Now with the story:
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Two dealers nearby: Pensacola (Adventure Motorsports of NWF) and Panama City. Being new to the area and just figuring larger town, larger shop, more riders all hopefully = more experience… I called Pensacola to start the repair. This is where crap really hit the fan.
At first we thought maybe bike was a total, but on closer inspection appears all parts were replaceable no problems. Cool. So, while working with the moving company via military legal, the bike sat at the shop. A few months into it I finally get the check cut: great. I called the the service manager to see what the status was of the bike. He had not.ordered.any.parts.
They had my bike as collateral as a worst case, but more sensibly - if I’m buying new 21k motorcycles, obviously I’m paying repairs. In fact: just one phone call
from the dealership to check in would have been great, but to date I've received zero calls coming from the service dept or any manager/owner.
So, we commence with the second waiting period while parts get ordered: $6k of them. At this point it's approaching Oct 2018. I check in again before the holidays, hoping for some good news. Update is: still waiting on parts, I got the schpeal that, ‘with the holidays coming up it’s been tough to get everything in’. Ok. ETA? Not sure, but ‘hoping to be done soon’. Ok. Well. I’ll wait I guess.
Holidays pass… still nothing. I check in again. Same crap.
Also at this point I should mention that, every time I called the shop they had to ‘see if we had the bike in the shop I was talking about’…(the one with $6k of damage from a mil move… apparently they get boat loads of those?).
Finally I get to a decent break in training pipeline (late Feb/early March) and call the shop.
Same deal- nobody knows about the bike & 'oh yeah- that one, parts aren’t in yet…'. So I call Indian corporate.
I have a nice conversation with a guy who wants to help. I don't want to get into the specifics since this is all still pending finalization but I’ll say he/they seem more than willing to try and make right.
Also, after they reached out to the shop he admitted there is definitely something that needs resolved with this location.
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Mostly, this is to inform the forum about this specific dealership. They still have skin in the game- we'll see what they do in the end (soon, I sure freakn hope).
I feel I’ve been (more than) reasonable with all of this- probably too patient, but we'll see how it shakes out.
rock