shame on you north bay cycle.

[meddle1999]

I'm not one to try and hurt anyones business but i had an experience that id like to share with all of you....This weekend myself and four friends made our annual trip to northern Ontario to take in the beautiful scenery and the awesome riding.. Making the 500km trip from Tillsonburg we headed up to Sundridge Ontario to stay a a small lake called eagle lake. We had a wonderful time logged many km's (just over 2000km in 4 days) . Unfortunately one guy in our group had some battery trouble with his 600f4i so we call north bay cycle and ask if they have a bettery for his bike and they say oh for shure come on up. So we ride another 100 or so kilometers to north bay and arrive at North Bay Cycle. Upon asking the service manager for a meter to confirm the batteries condition we were promptly met with. "Well i dont let anyone touch my tools and if you want me to do it thats fine but it will be two days because im just too busy" I looked at him in disgust . I said "your telling me that you cant take one second and put your friggin multimeter an this battery (that was already out of the bike by the way) and just say yeah its dead. even though were some 650 kilometers from home?". "yes thats what im saying" he replied. Well i must say ive never been so disgusted im my life. luckily a nice kid at a shell station up the road gladly let us use his multimeter to confirm our suspicions that the battery was indeed dead. And the we returned to North Bay Honda only to get HOSED 170.00 for a new one. SHAME ON YOU NORTH BAY HONDA!!!!!! what happened to helping out your fellow motorcyclist? my goodness what a disgrace. Well aside from this our trip was great and the VFR preformed awesome....

[5891Jonathan]

That stinks. Businessmen need to learn that the internet is a powerful tool for advertising bad service as well as good service.

[VaRollOn]

From having run a shop for 5 years, mechanics are often egotistical, difficult assholes who don't really want to help anyone. Unfortunately, the shop GM or owner allows that jerkoff to operate in that fashion. He was seeing you as someone whom couldn't hurt him. At least you got what you needed to keep your trip going great, he was just jealous for having to wrench.

[reg71]

that sux. maybe you should contact their website if they have one and make a formal complaint with the manager. I'd also mention your negative write up here on VFR world. I have used the internet many times for things like this. you might also want to write them up on epinions.com or something.

[meddle1999]

I have already been in contact with Honda Canada and also sent emails to 3 separate people that work at this shop. I got a response from the sales manager on "another" vfr forum basically calling me a nut.. there is a pretty lengthy thread on this topic in "another" vfr forum in the canadian specific sub forum.I posted hear also just to spread the word about these guys.

[Timbercat]

Thats brutal, I worked as Parts Manager at a powersports dealer for 4 years and anyone in our shop would have gladly helped out...c'mon it's just a multimeter! A monkey can run one & helping out can go a long way to getting more customers.
I can understand when dealers pay big bucks for special tools in order to do service and aren't willing to lend them out.
I am up that way occasionally and will make sure to avoid them.

[speed]

Hey thats not right ! and you told him that you were on a road trip ? well then lets boycot north bay cycle . we have the power among us to show aholes like this whats up,
so wheres the hot pictures from your trip ? we wanta to see

[cobra919]

Huh, that's too bad. I never like hearing about a fellow rider getting hosed like that.

On the good side, you guys shoulda rode out this way. My "Hypertek" guys Jim and Les woulda looked after ya real well.

[Northern VFR]

That's the kind of story no rider wants to hear about. Too bad. IMO, the service industry in general (which I consider all bike shops to be in) is really deteriorating. With business so good across most of the bike industry it's too bad poor dealers are making money off people.

[Longerfellow]

I worked in dealerships in the late 80's and through the 90's and I have to agree with you on the ego topic. In my own defense though a lot of times it's the shop owner that won't let you do "parking lot" fixes like battery checks or rotor removal and the like. I wish you better luck in the future. No one in any business deserves crappy treatment like that. I'd load test a battery anywhere, then get in trouble for it too!

[SCraig]

There are still many companies around who don't understand the information age. They still think "Word of mouth" is a local thing limited to a few people. Guess what guys, one bad report like this can ruin your day while a good one can make it. These days hundreds of people see reports like this, good or bad. It's time for some of these companies to wake up and realize how far and how fast word can spread.