This review is a long time in coming, but I just found some paperwork today from a purchase back in 2010. As I had recently been filling out some Yelp reviews for other merchants, I am deciding to leave this as it is long overdue.
I purchased a bike back in 2010. Along with the bike, Rich's was to install for me some aftermarket parts: chrome, air filter, cobra pipes, etc. I did my best to purchase these parts through Rich's, even though their prices were higher than many places I could purchase online. Some of these items couldn't be procured by them - either they couldn't find the pieces I wanted (and thus I *had* to buy online myself) or else they told me that the time to get them was exceptionally long. The Cobra pipes were of the latter variety, so I purchased them myself through a third party vendor and had them shipped to Rich's.
When I finally went to pick up the finished bike I noticed that the pipes didn't look like they were installed correctly. They were mean to be "shotgun" style and the two exhausts should have lined up flush with each other. Instead, they were installed in a staggered fashion. I had owned a previous model year of this same bike, with the same pipes - so I know how they were supposed to look.
I was told by them that this is how the pipes were meant to be installed, and anything that was wrong with the installation was because the pipes were "defective" but that they had installed them properly. As they seemed unwilling to do anything at the time, and because I didn't have any way to prove their statements then and there, I took the bike home. I followed up with Cobra, send them pictures of the pipes and they reinforced that the pipes seemed to be installed incorrectly. Cobra wanted to make sure that all the part numbers were right and doing that required that I needed to partially dismantle the pipes.
I took it upon myself to download the installation manual and attempt to see what I could do. Sure enough, when i had taken off a few of the bolts I was able to *easily* see that there was a problem with how the billet tips were installed that caused the pipes to be staggered instead of flush. It probably took me 30 minutes to take them off, fix the issue, and reinstall. I didn't even know what I was doing at first - I'm sure something like this would have taken the guy's at Rich's 5 minutes to fix if they gave a damn about their work or the customer.
I gave Rich's ample opportunity to fix the issue even though they were located over an hour from where I was. They adamantly refused to do anything - even look at the bike again. I believe the service manager who I dealt with was a Mr. Matijevich. After I fixed the issue myself (wasting hours in the process of dealing with all this), I decided to file a claim with my credit card company to contest the labor portion of the pipe installation. The card company, after seeing all the evidence sided with me. After all, how could they not given the above facts and what Mr. Mike Venziano's of Rich's wrote to the credit company:
"Mr. [Redacted]'s complaint is strictly about the esthetics [sic] of the exhaust that he bought to us and is not a failure on our part to install them correctly. Rich's Yamaha strives for customer satisfaction, and this issue has us frustrated because we cannot take responsibility for anything we do not have control over."
So they were either blatantly lying or incompetent - since they did have complete control over how they were installed. Also, they seemed to believe that the issue was an aesthetic one and that poor installation cannot possible lead to an aesthetic problem...so it had to be a problem with the product. The whole time they tried to weasel out of the situation because I bought the pipes through a third party who could deliver them in an acceptable time-frame.
I'm giving 2 stars here because I think I got a good deal on the bike and felt I was treated fairly until I picked the bike up and they started to feed me all the BS above. It is really sad because it was such a stupid little installation problem that they could likely have fixed in 5 minutes when I mentioned it at pickup. Instead, they had to act like they were the know-it-alls and I was just some poor idiot who was inconveniencing them and couldn't possible be right.
My advice. If they have a good price on a new bike...probably go for it. But don't have them service your bike because they clearly either don't know what they are doing, or else they don't care (about the bike or the customer). read more