Bad experience taking M to Honda stealer - Motorcycle-Journal Forums

1badbaker · 07-04-2009, 10:23 AM

On my way home from work on, oh, May 2 or so, I started getting a funny clanking noise. I thought it was just the valves acting up and I had a plane to catch 2 days later, so I called 441 Powersports here in Milledgeville to see if they could do a valve adjustment for me while I was out of town. They are a Honda dealer but they said they do service work on Suzuki, so I dropped the M on a Saturday morning, expecting to have it back on Tuesday afternoon.

Well, it turns out the valves were still in spec, so they wanted to tear the bike down to find out what the noise was. The thought it would either be clutch plates or cam chains. About a week later, they ruled out the clutch plates. I think another week after that I called them and they said the rear cam chain had stretched out pretty bad.

The guy in the parts department was trying to talk me into replacing the whole top end of the bike....I don't know why. I finally told him to replace the front and rear cam chains and put new piston rings on while they had it torn apart. This was on a Thursday, 3 weeks after I brought them my M. On Saturday afternoon the service manager calls me, first time they've ever called me so far, telling me he's getting ready to order parts and needs a deposit. Parts are going to be $900!! I told him to wait and I'd be in to talk on Tuesday morning (they're closed Sun./Mon.). I did some looking around on line and found the full list of parts I needed for $470.

I went in on Tuesday morning and brought them the parts list, asked why they wanted double that (I understand mark-ups, but double is insane) and told them I wanted to order the parts myself. Service guy double checked the parts list with me and said to go ahead and order them and bring them in when I got them. Meanwhile the parts guy has a little diatribe about parts wholesalers and how they hurt the business and everything else. I go home, get online to order the parts, the shop calls. It's the damn parts guy trying to tell me to order the parts through the shop, they'd work with me on price and labor hours and blah blah blah. So they've called me twice now, both times about money.

The parts show up about 5 days later, I bring them to the shop, they tell me they'll get the bike torn down, reassembled and I should be up and running the following weekend. Good deal. So I call the following week, the guy that works in the shop's wife had a baby, he's out for a few days. WTF?? I think they only have one actual person working in the shop.

I call again the next week, they had ordered a service manual to make sure everything was torqued down right, as soon as it got here they'd have it put back together. I have the service manual, why didn't they something about that before?

I call the next week, they didn't have the right diameter tool for removing something, I think the flywheel, as soon as it came in they'd have the bike back together.

I call the next week, they just discovered that my pistons have a lot of carbon build-up, they want to let them soak in cleaner over the weekend.

I call this week Thursday, can't get ahold of the service guy, someone takes a message, he'll call me back. Never calls back. Forget the phone calls, I went to the shop yesterday morning, my bike is sitting outside. Walk in parts guy looks at me like he doesn't know who I am, ask about bike, needs to be road tested, they're busy in the shop right now and he's the only one up front, so it'll be a few minutes, I'm welcome to hang around if I want. I told him I'd be back in an hour, so I was back, he'd just finished road test and bike was good to go. They told me I could wait a few minutes and they'd clean it up for me, I told them I'd clean it myself.

So 441 Powersports is absolutely terrible. They called me 2 maybe 3 times. Mostly about money, and once or twice returning my calls. I did get the bike back, she sounds and runs wonderfully again, so that's a relief. I will never stop foot back in that shop, next time, I'll find a trailer and take the bike somewhere else. All in all, my new cam chains cost $400+ in parts, $1000 in labor and 2 months of riding time.