Report that motorcycle dealer

Motorcycle trader | Rip-off merchant | Bike crook | Bad service | Parts & services

Had a problem with a motorcycle dealer? We have. Lots of times. But you have to make the clear distinction between the everyday stately grumpy gits of the bike world who we all know and love to hate, and the traders who simply have a bad day, or who fail to operate at their usual high standards for a limited spell, or who screw up a given transaction.

And anyone can do that. We certainly have our moments when we get a T-shirt order wrong or put the wrong book or metal sign in the post. Naturally we strive for 100 percent customer satisfaction, and where we fail to deliver the goods, we immediately put it right—and note that we're constantly putting things right where the customer clearly got it wrong.

It goes with the territory.

But what we're interested in right now aren't good dealers giving occasional bad service, or when you've got into a dispute over a particular bike part or service. Usually these kinds of disputes can eventually be resolved with a bit of yelling and maybe a few threats. And after that you can take your custom elsewhere, or forgive and forget the incident and move on.

No, we're interested in dealers who are persistently giving terrible service, or maintaining sharp practices, or failing to get the basics right and/or ripping off their customers. Meaning all of us.

If you have direct experience of such motorcycle dealers or traders, please send us an email telling us (briefly) what went wrong and whether that dealer eventually put the matter right.

Remember, we don't need to hear about general day to day disputes. There are way too many of those for us to process. It's only the outright, time-served crooks, habitual rogues and "rip-off merchants".

But what will we do when you contact us? Well not necessarily very much. As you'll appreciate, these are tricky areas, litigation-wise, and we don't have the budget to take up every cause and fight every corner.

However, we have good connections in the bike industry, and we think we have some influence over what goes on in the motorcycle trade. In short, we'll do what we reasonably can to stop these bike dealers doing whatever it is they ought not to be doing.

We also run dealer ads in Sump on our Classic Bike Parts & Services page (which, take note, also lists general motorcycle businesses), and we run dealer ads elsewhere on Sump. At the very least, we'll remove any errant dealer from our listings if we're convinced that he or she is constantly "up to no good".

We won't reveal your name or details. You can either trust us on that statement, or not. But if you're especially concerned, open a temporary email address under an assumed name, and contact us that way. And we won't contact you either if you'd rather we didn't. We just want to help support honest and decent bikers wherever possible, and we like to include ourselves among them. And if we get it wrong at Sump, make sure you tell us so that we can fix the problem poste haste.

Finally, if we get sufficient information that warrants a dealer story on Sump's news pages, and if we can back it with evidence, we'll openly run that story.

Good enough?

Check Sump's Classic Bikes For Sale page.

Check Sump's Classic Bike Guides page.

feedback@sump-publishing.co.uk