Cool Bill no probs here! I find myself very very fortunate to have found a great dealer! And yeah, I do tend to be polite and soft spoken. I learned this in the endless doctor's offices. You want to get good service make friends with the office staff. Bringing them candy and being able wait just a few extra moment have worked very well to my advantage! Usually, I can walk into the office and if I tell them I'm really not feeling well 9 times out of 10 they will see me right then. Sometimes, I do have to wait a bit that day until they can squeeze me in but it beats waiting three weeks for an appointment!

This worked at the dealership too! The other day when he was waay over whelmed I told him to take care of the other people who were in a "hurry". I could see the look of relief in his face and when he got a little less busy i walked back over and he threw in a couple of little things!

My Mantra is : "It is better to get bees with hunny than with vinegar"

Mary

the thing is that I dropped almost $1,000 there in gear because I wanted stuff to fit correctly when I could've bought everything online for about $500.  I've given them a crap ton of money in profit and I still get treated like that.  It's really ridiculous and I'm jealous of you guys that have found little shops that help you out and don't rape you.

thanks for listening guys, I think mostly this rant has just been because I'm pissed because that dealership likes to completely overcharge and then offer crap service to me as well.  those 2 don't mix if you ask me.

Finding a good shop is often hard to do. The last one I had is now 200 miles away and likely under new management if it even still is in business, so who knows...? You simply need to find *every* shop in your area (especially the "hole in the wall" type), and visit them all, and pay attention to your vibe-o-meter - if one seems OK, then start in with whatever business you need to transact, and pay attention to how that goes.

Fortunately my local Suzuki dealer is OK for getting parts at - cost less for a new sprocket than online+shipping, and had it in 4 hours rather than a week...but I'm not all warm and fuzzy about having them do any work - something just rubs me the wrong way about the shop, and has since before I had the GS (they are also the local Yamaha dealer). The floor product runs to stupid bikes, as per the usual standard these days - certainly fails to tempt me, though I've never bought and never expect to buy a new bike, or car/truck for that matter. I was tempted by a Honda PC800 back in the day, but the tiny fuel tank (extremely short range) put me off, and they seem to have died on the vine, as I never see them used. Nice trunk, though.

Thought I had found an OK place in the more or less independent line, but after they took 9 months to do a job I had farmed out (rebuilding the master and calipers on the Yamaha) I guess they are not so good, after all. So I'm still looking. At least bikes are much more manageable to wrench on than cars/trucks - once you learn to pull the tank and wiggle out the airbox, no part is all that hard to get to, and most can be picked up without hydraulics. And don't get me started on the joy of wrenching backhoes (which starts with - if you want someone else to work on it, you have to pay about $200 to get it hauled to their shop, and $200 to get it hauled back - so do you "reeeaally" want to farm that out???)

you don't find PC800's used because people will not sell them they love them
honda  remade the bike several yrs later and it was the exact same bike

it's like a MB TD wagon   buy new or 20 yrs old   difficult to find low mileage near new