Local BMW Dealer not working on bikes older than 10 years

[PoorUB]

This is a lazy dealer that is only looking at the bottom line. It comes down to the goals, vision, and leadership of management.

Did you read my post a few back?

Nothing about being lazy, he is picking his battles. If the shop is full and busy working on new bikes, why work on older models.

Your second statement is correct.

 

[ramble]

What is the BMW authorized tech required knowledge? Do they have to attend a prescribed course and maintain a certain level of continuing education? I would hope the tech doing the critical 600 mile service is not the new kid in the shop. Are there different levels of knowledge and expertise ?

 

[PoorUB]

The new kid is probably the tech doing the 600 mile service. The experienced tech is digging into the hard stuff, engine, transmission and electrical repair..

 

[pauls1150]

Ramblin Man - Yes there is a school for a service technician to become "BMW Certified", with different levels of training and additional specialty add-ons, depending on how far the student wants to go. I don't know about "today", but previously, the potential technician had to be sponsored by an authorized BMW dealer.

 

[Ponch1]

I understand some of the dealer’s issues as you describe but does not remove him from the obligation of servicing older models. He/she should make adjustments and accommodations in order to do the work. I ran a bicycle shop for a few years and similar issues although on a much smaller and far less technical scale. There are bike shops who refuse to work on old bikes and tandems which is their choice. We made adjustments to our paperwork flow, ordering, and the storing of the bikes in order for us to efficiently work on them.

This is a lazy dealer that is only looking at the bottom line. It comes down to the goals, vision, and leadership of management.

When a dealer or business turns away work, they are being foolish. All money is green and if a customer needs service, give them service. In this case since they are a BMW dealer, it's not like they don't have the capability and capacity. I think in order to be a dealer, they have to have BMW certified mechanics and maybe over time master mechanics. this dealer has a BMW master technician. If the mindset is that it will force people to buy a new(er) bike, then they are people you don't want to do business with. There's probably more money in service than than sales anyway. Maybe the underlying problem is that they have too much inventory and this is the solution, but that's the wrong way to look at it. There's something broken in their sales and marketing side then. Let service do it's thing. It's amazing when I see certain dealers that sell out their inventory quickly and some have too much and it's because of the culture in the place. Usually word gets out with unethical dealers and then the dealer looks for a scapegoat instead of looking in the mirror.

 

[rangemaster]

UPDATE 2/9/2021

I received a call from the GM of the dealership today...
It appears after reading the posts on the forum he decided to reach out to me...and we discussed the conversation I had with his service department. He included the service manager on the call.

Wow...a dealership GM that reads the BMW forums.

He stated that they absolutely would perform work on older BMWs provided they have the tools (which they do) and a qualified BMW tech (again which they do). He apologized for the misunderstanding.

They scheduled appointments for both of the R1200RTs in my garage that have the fuel pump recall before the end of the call.


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[pglaves]

UPDATE 2/9/2021

I received a call from the GM of the dealership today...
It appears after reading the posts on the forum he decided to reach out to me...and we discussed the conversation I had with his service department. He included the service manager on the call.

Wow...a dealership GM that reads the BMW forums.

He stated that they absolutely would perform work on older BMWs provided they have the tools (which they do) and a qualified BMW tech (again which they do). He apologized for the misunderstanding.

They scheduled appointments for both of the R1200RTs in my garage that have the fuel pump recall before the end of the call.


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This is excellent news. While there are some reasons why a dealership may not take on work an arbitrary age limit ie: 10 years, is not one of them. If we were talking about a /2 I would absolutely understand. An R1200 not so much.

 

[Ponch1]

UPDATE 2/9/2021

I received a call from the GM of the dealership today...
It appears after reading the posts on the forum he decided to reach out to me...and we discussed the conversation I had with his service department. He included the service manager on the call.

Wow...a dealership GM that reads the BMW forums.

He stated that they absolutely would perform work on older BMWs provided they have the tools (which they do) and a qualified BMW tech (again which they do). He apologized for the misunderstanding.

They scheduled appointments for both of the R1200RTs in my garage that have the fuel pump recall before the end of the call.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Cool. I am glad it worked out. Shawn does great work too.

 

[akbeemer]

I think this is good and decent behavior by the dealer.

 

[cycleman2]

A recall shouldn't be treated the way it was in this topic. Glad to hear it eventually got resolved.

Having worked at a Bike Dealership, not a BMW one, I can tell you there are situations with older bikes that parts aren't obtainable, be they plastic pieces that have to be removed or some other parts that are no longer available from the manufacture. Most dealers will service their own brand, as they know what parts they can get and what they can't get, have the tools etc. With a brand they don't sell, parts and experience can be in short supply.

We are fortunate with our BMW's, even the old Airheads and K bikes, in that we can still get most of the parts we need and in some cases even the plastics. Some things are no longer available and then you have to do a work around with non BMW parts.

The dealership in question sounds like one to stay away from. Not great customer service.

 

[bigjohnsd]

Good for you and them!
Do you suppose that if you had brought this matter directly to the GM a week ago you would have had the same result?

 

[motodan]

This is good to hear. Glad the GM involved himself...hope it was because it was right thing to do, and not just fear of lost business do to a bad repute for this one episode.

 

[52184]

Good for you and them!
Do you suppose that if you had brought this matter directly to the GM a week ago you would have had the same result?

That’s a possibility, but it’s also possible that after being contacted by the OP BMWNA reached out to the dealer and...encouraged them to do the job. Anything is possible, just glad to see the dealer stepping up and the OP getting his bike fixed.

Best,
DeVern

 

[PoorUB]

I am surprised at the line of thought that it is wrong for the dealer to refuse work. Over the years I have run two service departments for companies in other trades. We refused to work on certain equipment for what ever reason too. You have too. As running a service department you have a limited amount of hours to spread out to your customers. If you take in every job that comes through your door sooner or later you will have a time conflict with good customers or more profitable work. You simply don't have the man power to take on work from every customer so you draw a line, won't work on ten year old equipment, won't work on other brands, won't take on work from new customers.
It happens, it has too.

The last service department I ran was with a 25 year old company. When I took it over the owner came up to me and said, "Good luck, the department has run in the red since day one, you had better turn it around!" By the end of the year I had it pulling a profit. I had found the problem, it was the owner. The service department was his dumping ground. Anything that was a loss got billed to the service department! I refused to let him do it and billed it to the proper department, but it was a losing battle. After five years of making a profit and hiring more techs I was laid off. It was interesting to watch what I built come crashing down. He went from five techs to one tech in one month, none of my guys would work for him with me gone, except the one guy and he was the worst tech I had. Not real bad, but the others were great.
The owner ended up becoming a customer of mine in my new job. One day he told me that he had screwed up when he let me go.

 

[52184]

I am surprised at the line of thought that it is wrong for the dealer to refuse work. Over the years I have run two service departments for companies in other trades. We refused to work on certain equipment for what ever reason too. You have too. As running a service department you have a limited amount of hours to spread out to your customers. If you take in every job that comes through your door sooner or later you will have a time conflict with good customers or more profitable work. You simply don't have the man power to take on work from every customer so you draw a line, won't work on ten year old equipment, won't work on other brands, won't take on work from new customers.
It happens, it has too.

The last service department I ran was with a 25 year old company. When I took it over the owner came up to me and said, "Good luck, the department has run in the red since day one, you had better turn it around!" By the end of the year I had it pulling a profit. I had found the problem, it was the owner. The service department was his dumping ground. Anything that was a loss got billed to the service department! I refused to let him do it and billed it to the proper department, but it was a losing battle. After five years of making a profit and hiring more techs I was laid off. It was interesting to watch what I built come crashing down. He went from five techs to one tech in one month, none of my guys would work for him with me gone, except the one guy and he was the worst tech I had. Not real bad, but the others were great.
The owner ended up becoming a customer of mine in my new job. One day he told me that he had screwed up when he let me go.

I think the trigger here was the arbitrary nature of the cutoff—ten years and you’re out. There are any number of BMW dealers who won’t work on airheads, and brick-k bikes are starting to fall into that category as well, but most will tell you it’s not the age of the bike but the availability of parts and finding techs with the requisite knowledge and experience to complete the job in a profitable manner and time frame. Those are valid reasons and factors that allow a number of independent shops to do well.

But in this case, the bike in question, while 10+ years old, was of the same basic design as models the dealers were selling well inside that 10-year timeline, and a basic design that today’s techs would be familiar with. And, this was not a request to dive into power train internals, but to replace a fuel pump—not a high-tech task and one that hasn’t changed much since 2005, and for which parts and service information were readily available to the dealer. Those are the things that made this instance clank on the ear...

Best,
DeVern

 

[PoorUB]

I think the trigger here was the arbitrary nature of the cutoff—ten years and you’re out.

Like I said, they need to draw the line at some point, so easy way to do it is just say ten years. It covers everything, doesn't matter, and the rule is easy to understand. Otherwise it turns into a long list of models that gets lengthy and confusing.

 

[Omega Man]

If they don't want to do the work....or can't, they should just let the customer know. As we see here, a reported arbitrary 10 year cut-off wasn't well received.
There are a lot of reasons, and the customer may not like any of the reasons, but at least they will know.
OM

 

[k1200lt00]

Bottom it all comes down to money, that's what about 90% of the dealers care about. Same with techs, I met a lot of techs that won't even work on there own stuff, what's with that. Also a lot of techs get different jobs that they do less work and get pad a lot more then being a tech. Back around 2000 I know of six or more people that went to motorcycle school all did good not one of them last more then a year in the motorcycle industry, reason money. A lot of people don't realize what the dealers had to deal with, it goes round and round.

 

[powwow]

I am surprised at the line of thought that it is wrong for the dealer to refuse work. Over the years I have run two service departments for companies in other trades. We refused to work on certain equipment for what ever reason too. You have too. As running a service department you have a limited amount of hours to spread out to your customers. If you take in every job that comes through your door sooner or later you will have a time conflict with good customers or more profitable work. You simply don't have the man power to take on work from every customer so you draw a line, won't work on ten year old equipment, won't work on other brands, won't take on work from new customers.
It happens, it has too.

The last service department I ran was with a 25 year old company. When I took it over the owner came up to me and said, "Good luck, the department has run in the red since day one, you had better turn it around!" By the end of the year I had it pulling a profit. I had found the problem, it was the owner. The service department was his dumping ground. Anything that was a loss got billed to the service department! I refused to let him do it and billed it to the proper department, but it was a losing battle. After five years of making a profit and hiring more techs I was laid off. It was interesting to watch what I built come crashing down. He went from five techs to one tech in one month, none of my guys would work for him with me gone, except the one guy and he was the worst tech I had. Not real bad, but the others were great.
The owner ended up becoming a customer of mine in my new job. One day he told me that he had screwed up when he let me go.

For me, the issue was the dealer refusing to do warranty work. If the dealer doesn't want to do customer pay work, that is their decision and I have no issue with that. However, if they are a franchised dealer and the franchise manufacturer issues a recall, they should be required by the manufacturer (or state franchising laws) to do the work.

 

[k1200lt00]

Here is another way to look at it. Would you have someone work on you bike that doesn't want to, not me even if they call back an change there mine. But as a recall there should be no problem. As far as getting parts for the older BMW's I have no problem so that's out.