Possible victory?
A rather-embarassingly-long time ago, the steering on my big bike just decided to sieze up one day. It was a pretty scary experience, because I was attempting to turn right (which is to say, across oncoming cars), and the bike decided that what it actually wanted to do was go straight. Forever.
Well, I used what (little) play there was left in the steering to get the bike kind of turned, and then immediately pulled off by the side of the road. Working under the theory that somehow something had gotten into the steering somehow and was jamming things up, I sort of worked the handlebars back and forth a bit until I could at least get the bike to steer again. It was still kind of off, though, so I resolved to have the bike shop look at it when I took it in for its next service, which was due soon anyway.
That did happen; I needed a new front tyre in addition to the usual oil and stuff, and the bike shop said, “Oh, stiff steering? We’ll try sticking some more lubricant into the handlebar bearing and we’ll see if that helps.”
As you might expect, sticking some more lubricant into the handlebar bearing did not help-it turned out that the handlebar bearing was in fact falling to pieces and the bike was officially not safe to ride lest the front half of it just fall off. So they called me with the bad news, and told me that they ordered a replacement handlebar bearing (ouch) and that it might take a while to get to them, but when it did they’d call me right away so I could get back on the road.
That was about five weeks ago.
In the meantime, I’ve put a really awesome number of kilometers onto the little zooming buzzmachine, inasmuch as it’s turned into my daily commuter. Shame that if I do want to go onto the expressway I can’t, and if I want to take Chie somewhere with me I can’t, and a whole variety of other shames. Maybe I should just trade it in and get a Suzuki Vanvan (which is an adorable little bike that actually can go onto the expressway and take passengers, although neither of those activities are particularly recommended for a 120kg bike with a 200cc engine).
So on Tuesday, I gave the bike shop a call and said, “Hey, I belong to that Scarabeo 400ie you guys have sitting in the back of the shop and I was wondering if you’d heard any news about the parts you’d ordered for me to make it safe to ride again.”
The guy said, “You know what, it has been an awfully long time since we ordered that handlebar bearing for you, hasn’t it?” I was impressed he remembered which bit it was I wanted. “Tell you what,” he continued, “I’m going to call up Aprilia directly and ask them what happened to it. I’ll get right back to you.”
He didn’t get right back to me. He got back to me today.
He sounded kind of tired, but in a happy sort of way. “Okay, here’s what happened,” he said. “They sent off the order for the part, but they don’t seem to have any system for telling why they ordered a part, or who gets it when it finally arrives at their warehouse. So what happened was, your part finally showed up a couple of weeks ago, but since they didn’t remember what or whom they’d ordered it for, they put it into their inventory, tossed it onto a shelf, and forgot entirely about it. And lost our order.”
He went on. “So now they’re going to be getting the part to us as fast as they can manage. It should be here either tomorrow or Monday,”-neither are days that they normally receive shipments of parts-“and we’ll call you the moment your bike’s been put back together.”
I got the impression that the conversation he’d had with Aprilia had involved more than a small amount of shouting, but that he’d eventually emerged victorious. Quite possibly he’d had to go all the way to the top in his effort to get my bike where it belonged-under my arse, driving around Tokyo and environs.
Which is why Connecting Rod is my favorite motorcycle shop in Tokyo. They care about the merchandise they sell, and they work hard to do things right by the customer.
But the new president of Piaggio Group Japan? I’m…not so impressed at his performance.