Complaint to Harley- Davidson
regarding Jones Harley-Davidson
by Bob Bindon
October 3, 1999
Harley-Davidson Motor Co.
Dealer Complaints
Marketing Department
3700 W. Juneau Ave.
Milwaukee 53208
Dear Sir/Madam;
I am writing this letter to you to advise you of what I consider to be a serious problem we encountered with one of your dealers while travelling in Arkansas.
I recently traveled from our home in Houston, Tx. with three friends to tour the hills of Arkansas for the weekend. Unfortunately on the first day of our ride we had an accident involving two of the riders and some oncoming traffic. Both were injured and hospitalized, one seriously enough to need a life flight helicopter. Needless to say we spent the rest of the day tending to the needs of our riding friends, talking to relatives, arranging travel to Arkansas for them, and keeping a vigil at the hospital. The next morning the two of us who were left decided to stop in at the Harley dealer in Hot Springs (Jones HD, which is also the HD dealer in Little Rock Arkansas) to both buy momento's of our trip and to see if they could offer any advice on where to look to arrange transport of our two friends motorcycles back to Houston. First we bought the t shirts and then we asked advice about transporting the vehicles. The response we got shocked, stunned and angered us. First we asked for advice about who to call locally or in the area to discuss transport of the bikes. We were told by the manager, a lady named Brooke, that she had no idea who to call. She could not (or would not, as we later found out) even provide the name of a local towing service that could refer us. This obviously surprised us a bit as I am sure we were not the first motorcycles needing transport either to or from either of their shops in central Arkansas.
Since she could not provide any advice we decided to call a Houston based motorcycle rescue service to see if they would be available to come up and pick up the bikes. Both of our cell phones were dead due to the heavy use the day before regarding the accident, so we asked her if we could use one of their telephones to make a credit card or collect call to talk to the transporter in Houston. Her response was "the company doesn't allow it" . When my friend asked if she was the manager she said yes but she would not approve it. I should point out that at the time there was only one other customer in the store so she was obviously not too preoccupied with others to understand what we were asking. I should also point out that my friend is President of a computer networking company and I am a retired oil executive and we do not present ourselves as outlaws or others who might be untrustworthy or trying to use their telephone for a free call. Plus we had already made purchases at the store so she knew we had credit cards.
This was simply her making a conscious decision not to help even though helping would have cost her or the company nothing. Incidentally, the other customer in the store(a local rider) overheard our conversation with her and politely told her that he though her attitude toward travelers was a disgrace and also reminded her that she had the calling card for a motorcycle transport company right in front of her on the counter. She then pretended she had never seen it before---remember this IS the manager of the store.
The customer then generously invited us to use his cell phone which was on his bike in the parking lot to call Houston and arrange transport. We accepted his offer and arranged transport of the motorcycles from his cell phone in the parking lot of a restaurant across the street from the dealer. We tried to pay him for use of the phone but he wouldn't take it due to his embarrassment at the way the dealer had handled our problem.
We later found out, from other local riders, that ours was the latest of a long list of unhappy encounters with this dealer both in Hot Springs and Little Rock. In fact the Harley riders of Arkansas have formed an informal network of available people who are willing to help riders with needs since the dealership simply does not respond.
I find this whole situation regarding the dealer's attitude, particularly concerning the inability to use their telephone to make a credit card call, to be a complete embarrassment to me as a Harley rider and shareholder. Surely you must also feel embarrassed that the HD FAMILY espoused on your website has a missing or broken link in Arkansas.
It is particularly a shame since Arkansas has some of the best riding in the country and a good dealer here could be a gold mine for new and used sales and accessory sales. As it stands, we understand there is already one competitive facility under construction, being built by two disgruntled former customers of this dealer.
Fortunately, my riding friend also maintains a web site for Harley riders in Texas which is highly subscribed. One of the features of the site is to advise riders of good or bad incidents along the road. We fully intend to describe this ugly situation on the site to allow many others to be aware of the disgusting attitude of this dealer.
We are, and will remain Harley riders but we will never again stop at this dealership and will strongly recommend the same to any riders we encounter.
I wrote this letter because I strongly believe in HD as a company and felt you needed to know what the hell was going on out here. I also wanted to confirm that when the manager of the dealership said to us that " the company doesn't allow it" she was referring to the dealership and not The Motor Company. Please consider this letter a formal complaint against this dealer.
Thanks for listening, sorry its so long. We're still mad. A response would be appreciated.
Bob Bindon
Houston, Texas
281-242-5960
Harley Davidson Calls Bob
Mr. Weber (with Harley Davidson) told me that he had read the letter and was calling to let me know that he was dismayed and concerned about our treatment and that he wanted to personnaly apologize on behalf of the Motor Company. He sounded sincere and said that he would be forwarding the letter to the regional dealer development manager for that part of the U.S. for direct discussion with the dealer. He assured me that this dealers actions were inconsistent with HD philosophy regarding dealings with customers, and were certainly inconsistent with HD philosophy of 'family' among the HD owners around the world.
He did say that their approach to dealer training with regards to dealing with the public includes a lot of counselling and mentoring and that is how they would be approaching the problems we encountered with this dealer.
I told him that it seemed to be a personnel and systemic problem with this dealership based on our experience, our discussion with local HD riders after the incident and your unsatisfactory subsequent phone call to the owner at the Little Rock HQ.
We talked for about 20 minutes but that was the kernel of the conversation.