My Ultra is just over three years old now with something like 36k miles on it. Lately I've noticed that when hitting the starter button the engine doesn't always crank over with the same gusto it once did. With a nine day out of state bike vacation coming up I figure some good preventative medicine would be to replace that battery with a fresh one. I mean this bike has an awful lot of electronic gizmos including the air compressor I've added for the air ride suspension so I'm not gonna take a chance.
Or am I? Five or six years ago, I had the same idea when I swapped out the battery on my Aprilia Futura right before a bike vacation. At work we are a dealer for a popular line of batteries and I can get a fair deal on them so why not, right? I did the swap, rode the bike locally for a week or so and then went on vacation. One day while on a ride with my buddy Bill my bike wouldn't start. The battery wouldn't take a charge and I was SOL. To us we were in the middle of nowhere but Bill and I removed the battery and he loaned me his bike so I could venture off in search of a replacement. I found a service station with a suitable replacement and left my junk battery with them as a core which is pretty standard. Besides that I had no intention of hauling a dead battery back home nine hundred miles away. I returned to the scene of the crime, swapped in the new battery and enjoyed the rest of my vacation trouble free as far as the battery is concerned. In the end that replacement battery lasted years in the bike so we know the bike wasn't the issue.
Upon return to work the following week I told the battery supplier about my problem. He had no desire to credit me for the bad battery because I couldn't produce it. I guess this is where good or bad customer service is decided. A reasonable person would understand someone not wanting to deal with hauling a dead battery around while on a motorcycle vacation. Hell if I had enough room to pack a dead battery then I might have actually packed clean underwear or deodorant. As a reasonable person myself I know companies have policies and employees don't always get to do what they think is right. I wasn't gonna get a credit for my defective battery until my boss found out about the story. Bottom line was this. He told the battery supplier to credit me or get all his shit out of his store. I got my cha ching back and we still sell a shit ton of that brand battery. In fact I ordered this battery from the same guy that sold me the first one and he even gave me a little break on the price.
So the short version of this post is to tell you that today I'm gonna swap a new battery into the Ultra.
Later.
No comments:
Post a Comment