The reason I made the booking so swiftly was that I did not want to deal with horrendous waiting periods if I decided to purchase this motorcycle.
BHPian govind_kaniyat recently shared this with other enthusiasts.
This post is not regarding the X440 motorcycle as a product, but regarding the superb mess up Harley Davidson India made of my booking.
Back story:
My 2012 Royal Enfield Classic 500 was aging and I was looking for a replacement.
As soon as I got a notification saying Harley Davidson prices are starting at 2.33L, I made up my mind to book the motorcycle. And since booking amount was refundable there was no second thoughts.
The online bookings were supposed to start at 4:40pm July 4th. But due to some reason it only started at around 5:45pm.
At the exact instant the bookings started, I immediately booked the motorcycle.
The reason I made the booking so swiftly was that I did not want to deal with horrendous waiting periods if I decided to purchase this motorcycle as deliveries would be based on booking ID priority.
On the booking page, “Calicut” city was shown and 1 hero dealer (Ace Motors) was present in it. I obviously selected the only choice that was available.
It was later that I realized much further down the city list, there was “Kozhikode” and inside it was another hero dealer (Koyenco Motors) in my city.
For those who don’t know, Calicut and Kozhikode are the same city. Like Mumbai and Bombay..or Chennai and Madras.
This was a glitch that Harley obviously didn’t know at that time. Since both dealers were nearby, I didn’t see this as an issue.
Little did I know at that time that this small glitch would entirely ruin my peace of mind in the coming months.
I visited the dealership which I chose for my booking the next day. They also that my booking was among the first few bookings in this city if not the first booking.
The next day when Triumph had launched their 400 series I had booked the scrambler 400x too. Like Harley, triumph booking was also refundable.
I thought I would make up my mind in the coming months and then cancel one of the bookings.
When the testdrive started and slots opened the nearest testdrive centre to me was the Harley Davidson dealership at Cochin.
I booked a slot for a late later in that week when I had to go to Ernakulam for work related purposes.
I was thoroughly impressed by the testdrive experience, that would be written as an altogether different post.
I decided to proceed with Harley X440.
And thus the long wait for delivery started.
Harley did a good job engaging with customers in whatsapp in form of greetings and updates.
The last message I got was from Harley that delivery will start on October 15th. And this is when everything began to go south.
Both of the dealers were very cooperative with me and wanted my bike to be delivered without any hiccups. Kudos for your support. This is purely a problem of Harley Davidson India Brand.
Things go south:
I called up the dealership which got my booking.
They told that they haven’t received the permit from Harley to start a Harley dealership in my city and it would take atleast 3 to 4 months.
When I checked with the other dealer they were on track and their new showroom work was in full space.
So how this works is that select Hero dealers would open an altogether new showroom under Harley Davidson brand to cater for X440.
This is apart from few old Harley Dealerships which are still operational.
At the time of bookings many dealers were selected for this Hero/harley program.
But when delivery dates were approaching many of those dealers were dropped by the brand or delayed.
Unfortunately, the dealer which got my booking was dropped/delayed.
So the obvious measure here would be to convert the bookings this dealer (Ace) received to the dealer (Koyenco) in the same city and deliver motorcycle on booking number priority basis right?
That’s when the earlier glitch of Kozhikode and Calicut being listed as two cities enter into picture.
Harley/Hero folks who is handling this didn’t know that both were the same city.
So they sent the list of bookings that dealer 2 received to them and informed to make preparations for the delivery.
They completely ignored the people who had same or higher booking number priority but had booked with Dealer 1.
Both the dealers understood my situation and they tried their best to get my delivery within the first lot, but unfortunately there was nothing they could do as Harley themselves gives the booking IDs and directs them to contact these customers and inform regarding delivery.
First my doubt was whom should I contact: hero or Harley Davidson customercare.
The entire supply chain and business operations were handled by hero.
The X440 website both Hero and Harley showed Harley Davidson India’s customer care number.
I contacted them and told regarding this issue in detail.
They told me they’d get back to me, but I didn’t hear anything from them later.
Then on October 4th I called them up again and spent almost 20 minutes on the phone explaining this issue again. They told me to send an email to them regarding this so that they can take a look into this. Soon after that call concluded I sent an elaborate mail to the email id which they gave me.
Didn’t hear back this time also.
The reason for this gap was, almost everything regarding the X440 is managed by Hero team. But customer care is still handled by Harley. So when an issue is raised, it needs to be transferred to Hero from Harley, then the response needs to be communicated to harley and then to customer. Obviously this is not a good procedure as it will create a huge communication gap.
On October 9th when I called them again, they sent a reply email saying they’ll look into this shortly.
After one hour I got a call from Harley Davidson and the person on the phone behaved like he didn’t even read my email fully.
He was asking me are you calling from Kozhikode or Calicut!?
Do you want to change the dealer?
When I AGAIN explained everything to him and I told “I want first lot delivery itself as I’m one of the first person to book this motorcycle in my city, and it’s Harley’s fault of naming the same city twice and removing a dealer.”.
He replied he will discuss it with his team and get back to me.
The Dealer 2 told me that they already got the list of 9 customers for whom the bikes have been dispatched and key handover would be done on october 15th itself. Unfortunately my name is not in this.
The Harley connect app shows my booking with that previous dealer itself.
But when we go to the test drive booking page, the 1st is not there, the other one is:
This is how spectacularly Harley Davidson ruined my “before delivery experience”.
Even now I’m trying my best to not let this bother my opinion to get the motorcycle, but it’s getting difficult day by day.
If someone from Harley Davidson is reading, this is to you:
- You’re one of the most reputed motorcycle manufacturers in the world, stop behaving like a new age EV startup.
- You should’ve sorted this dealership thing before you started accepting bookings.
- The city name repetition shouldn’t have happened.
- Delivering bikes on booking ID priority is a bare minimum.
Due to your fault, I who made one of the first bookings in Kozhikode is left hanging.
At least now you have the opportunity to fix things. Deliver the motorcycle based on booking ID priority in the same city regardless of what dealer got the booking.
If this messup isn’t solved I’ll have to cancel my booking for Harley Davidson and consider the Triumph scrambler 400X.
Keyword: Harley Davidson messes up my x440 booking: Nightmare of an experience