I bought a used Harley Sportster 1200cc Custom 2009 from a friend. The friend took particularly good care of the bike, but I expected it would need to go to the shop fairly soon just from age. Sure enough, after a few months of owning the bike, the battery mysteriously drained overnight with no previous signs of fading power. It did this to two batteries in two days. I suspected it was a short, and called Thunder Tower's service department and described the problem. It took three days of continuous calls to get my call returned. I needed to get the bike towed, as the battery was dead. It took them a couple of days, and they told me on pickup that the work may take longer than just a couple a days. Maybe over a week. I told them I understood, and they left with my bike.
They called me four days(!) after to tell me that the battery was indeed dead, and that they couldn't really look at the problem until the battery got replaced. I told them that I would buy my own brand of battery, and to hold on until I got it to them, later that day. I became busy and could not make it, so the next morning I called and said that I could not find the time to bring them a battery, and that they could go ahead and order and install a battery themselves. They called back four days later and asked when I was going to bring them the battery.
Two weeks(!!!) later I received a phone call telling me that the battery was replaced and that the bike was good to go. I asked them about the short, and if that was what was wrong. The representative over the phone sounded confused at this, and stated that they just replaced the battery, and that there was no evidence of a short. I informed them that the short was killing batteries overnight, and the representative over the phone told me that he had seen no evidence of this. I was confused, but acknowledged his opinion as the Harley expert and told him I would pick it up this evening.
Half an hour later, I received a call from the same person telling me that indeed the bike had drained the battery overnight, and that they would have to replace the battery again and fix the short. Several more days passed before I could go there, pay for the work, and leave with my bike.
Two months later, the problem has started up again. And again, I have called every day for three days straight trying to get someone to talk to me about getting my bike towed there and the reoccurring problems. I have yet to hear back from them. The only reason I was still trying is because I expect them to fix this issue for me for free since I've *already paid for it*. This whole ordeal is consuming way too much of my time. I've given up and set up an appointment with another local shop.
Long story short: Take your bike somewhere else for it to get worked on. They were very hard to reach, took ages to fix a simple issue, and didn't do the job right the first OR second time. read more
