DogboneR1
I hope Stephen doesn't mind me for useing him as the guinea pig here, but here it goes.
If some of you don't already know Stephen goes by DogboneR1 on the boards here. He is very knowledgable in all types of motorcycle tuning and repair.
******IMPORTANT, If you want to get hold of him,DO NOT, try by posting in this thread. Politely send him a pm or email. This thread is only for posting "vendor" experiences.******
On wed. the 3rd of march 2004, i took a bike over to Stephen for some work. I dropped the bike off at his place a little before 12 noon. I had talked with him prior to going over there with the bike about what it needs done to it. He said bring it over and i'll treat you fair. To say the least i was worried that once i got it over there i couldn't say much because i would have then gone through the trouble of trailering the bike from St. Pete. to Tampa.
Well being the trusting person that i am i ended up getting the bike to him a little before noon as stated before. He walks outside to survey the bike and says hmmm. I thought to myself "oh no, here we go." He mentions that he had not pictured it this bad--huh i thought. Then he says well lets get her off so i can get to it.
To make a long story short...
By just after 4:30pm i was standing in front of his house with my bike in front of me and my jaw on the ground. I had brought him a very dusty(pollen) r1 that was to have the swing arm swapped, a new wire harness, and new rims swapped out; and standing before me was something completely different. I saw in front of me a bike that appeared to have been cleaned front to back with a tooth brush! He had taken the liberty to do maitenance on the chain, flushed the brake system, adjusted the suspention for my build, and the list goes on and on. He took the bike around the block one last time while i was there to make sure everything was perfect and to my satisfaction.
Here's the best part. I priced the labor for the things i took the bike for him to do. Which was swap the rims, install new harness, and swap swing arm. The total 'book' hours to complete these jobs came to 9-10.5! They, meaning Barney's and Savage, said they were giving me a deal and would have to have the bike for 2 days. Just incase you don't know their labor rates are 80 and 79 dollars and hour, so you figure that out. While i won't tell you exactly what Stephen charged me(because he says it all depends on the kinda of job) i will tell you that it come out around 50 dollars an hour and he said he spent only 4hrs on it. To me this was a deal of a lifetime and here's why.
No dealer's service deptartment would have cared half as much about my bike as Stephen did for mine. He did the unexpected by delivering well over 100% effort and going way beyond the extra mile. I didn't even ask him to and he cleaned the whole bike and did other maintanence on the bike and didn't ask for anything extra! Hell, i can't even get a dealer to wipe off my bike before they give it back to me.
So to sum it all up, Stephen did a fantastic job charging me less than half the booked man hours to accomplish the tasks, and charged only 2/3rds what the dealers hourly labor charges are. And he did something that money can't buy--he respected and treated my bike as if it was his and the last one on earth. I'd pay twice that much to get service like that. You guys can't go wrong with this guy.
Thanks a bunch Stephen
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^^Pulled from our vendor experiences sticky.