| Author | Message | ||
     Dfbutler |
September 5, 2005 Jeffrey L. Bleustein Chairman and Chief Operating Officer Harley-Davidson, Inc. 3700 W. Juneau Avenue Milwaukee, WI 53208 Dear Mr. Bleustein: I am both a customer and a stockholder of Harley-Davidson, Inc. The reason for this letter is to address the first part of my association with Harley-Davidson, Inc., what it is like to own one of the company’s products and what it is like to be a customer. My first observation is your philosophy, “We ride with you,” which is a laudable goal, but I think I can safely assume that you never experience what the average owner encounters in their efforts to repair and maintain their Harley-Davidson products. Once you own a Harley-Davidson product you are at the mercy of the Harley-Davidson dealer, an entity one of the Harley-Davidson customer service representatives told me were independent business people over whom the Company has no control. I might suggest that the next time you’re planning on riding with “us”, you first take a bike needing some minor things done or a scheduled maintenance to a Harley-Davidson dealer anonymously and discover the real world joy of owning a Harley-Davidson product. If I may be so bold as to suggest the scenario you will encounter with your visit based on my observations of several dealers’ treatment of my needs, you might gain an insight of the frustrations many (most?) customers experience. The first thing you’ll need is an appointment, which can vary from one day to a week or more in the future. If you are not able to just deliver the bike to the dealership and need to wait, they’ll even give you a time. When you arrive you’ll find that an appointment is something they give you to get you to the dealership and holds no relation to actually having work performed on your bike. This is especially true when you leave your bike. The next thing you will encounter has to do with repair parts. Every dealer has a vast stockpile of accessories and add-ons, but as often as not, not the repair part you need to actually fix your bike. That they’ll need to order and it takes a week. The fact that you made an appointment to get something fixed has nothing to do with it; no parts get ordered until they have your bike apart, so your bike sits. When was that ride you were going to take with us? On the other hand, you may just need a regularly scheduled maintenance. For that you need to allocate at least three days to the dealer typically. If you happen to stop by at the end of day one, the odds are your bike sits were you dropped it off, untouched. When eventually you get your bike back and a substantial bill, don’t be counting your chickens before they hatch. If you look at your owners manual you’ll find a large part of the service you just paid a sizable labor charge for is to “inspect and adjust” various critical parts related to proper operation and safety. Are you in a position to tell if any or all of these operations that the factory deemed important enough to include the scheduled maintenance routine were actually done? I’m not which is why I have to rely on the dealer. Do you think an organization that does not honor an appointment exercises enough quality control to verify that a mechanic that is compensated based on the volume of hours billed is diligently performing the operations specified? Still want to take that ride with us? Finally, when not only repairs are not done properly and it places you in a dangerous, potentially life-threatening situation; you’ll turn to your place of last resort, Harley-Davidson Customer Service. If you were like me, you’d call on a Tuesday or Wednesday and talk to a customer service representative, who will request you to find a way to get them supporting documents, which you will take the time and effort to do so by that Friday. You call Monday, sorry that person is off today. You call back Tuesday, the person is back, but the supervisor is not available. On Wednesday you get a call that someone will be in touch no later than tomorrow (Thursday). You call back late in the day Thursday and, surprise, the customer service person can not be located, but someone will leave the person a message to call. Friday comes and goes with the same quality customer service you’ve now come to expect, no call. What this all reminds me of are the American car companies’ attitude of the late Sixties through early Eighties. They all thought that they owned the American customer and how they treated them did not matter since they were the only game in town. They weren’t as they found much to their dismay. Have you noticed the growing presence of the metric cruisers? Do their dealers treat their customers like a Harley-Davidson dealer treats theirs? One of the points made on the day the stock dropped a third of its value on the announcement of lowered production was the intention of Harley-Davidson to always maintain supply slight below demand to insure that the retail price of a bike is never discounted. Your own demographics show that 27% of new purchases are new riders, who, based on the prices of Harley-Davidson products, enjoy a fairly high discretionary income and who will expect to be treated like a valued customer, like when they take their BMW or Lexus in for service. How much are you prepared to lower those production figures to keep supply below demand? In closing, I’ve finally resolved myself to join the majority of Harley-Davidson owners in not expecting being treated like a customer at my local dealers and will now try to find an independent third party to perform service, where at least I would be a customer whose business was valued. Remember, the next time “You ride with us,” it’s because you do not rely on the local dealer to be able to ride. Sent 9/5/05 - no response, which says it all when it comes to service. | ||
| Djkaplan |
You should have sent your letter to Jim Zeimer, the new CEO - Bleustein retired last April 30. | ||
| Outrider |
Nice letter, but I thought JB retired a while back. | ||
| Steve_mackay |
Well, I can say for certain that John Flickinger, CEO of Buell does "ride with us". He did the battletrax with us at the Homecoming this year, and has asked me to keep him on Brew City Brag's ride list. He's purchased, AND has his CityX maintained at Hals HD(I was helping out the Buell factory demo rides when he was checking on the Bike's status after pruchasing it the week earlier). | ||
| Fullpower |
"argue your limitations and they are yours" | ||
| Matty |
Any suggestions on fixing some of the issues you've pointed out? | ||
| Dfbutler |
Hire JD Powers to sample satisfaction and institute a program to fix any problems identified. | ||
| Cataract2 |
Df, seems they already did that. I got a letter from JD to do a survey on my purchase. Already filled it out and am putting it in the mail today. | ||
| Aldaytona |
Ever wonder why there are lots of independent motorcycle shops that specialize in HD repairs and service. They rely on bad customer service from the authorized dealerships. But beware, some of these are totally incompetent and when things go wrong as they sometimes do, you've got no one to call.......some are extremely good, choose wisely. | ||
| Court |
>>>Any suggestions on fixing some of the issues you've pointed out? Absolutely. Start by reading Patricia Seybold's "Customers.com" and then "Organizing Genius". The "doing" is easy, the "deciding" to make the commitment is tough. | ||
| Matty |
Thanks Court! I'll have to look into that. Having been on both sides of the counter as a customer and as dealer staff, I'm keen on finding solutions and suggestions. | ||
| Dfbutler |
The only way attitude of dealers will change is when (or if) corporate decides that service is important and if you want to sell HD products you need to respect the customer when it comes to service. "Customer Service" can't tell someone that dealers are independent business people that there is no control; over, which is crap. Who does warranty claims? | ||
| Steveo |
Want to screw the dealer, save a pile of money, and have the piece of mind knowing that everything on the scheduled maintenance is done? Buy a service manual and learn to do it yourself. These bikes are extremely easy to work on once you learn the basics. Do it in your extra time. Do it a little bit at a time over a few days, whatever. The money you save you can use to buy quality tools you'll have for a lifetime. You'll know your bike better and that will increase the quality of your ride, etc. etc. win. win. p.s. 99% of real Harley/Buell riders don't own BMW's or Lexus'. |
