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Originally Posted by Fresco8ss
Hopefully i wont have to sell my duc and Daniel at D.N.A will help me out. I was having some idle problems with her. the first time she spend 1month and a week in the shop the second time she spend two weeks. Finding out the dealership has a bad reputation for their customer service.
I have had other issues that haven't been resolve. The bike has been in the shop for the past week and 1/2. Now is making some grinding noises.I'm thinking is the pistons. As bad of service I've been getting from the dealership and it seems that they cannot keep a good tech in their shop, has resulted of me thinking that when the 600 mile service was done, was not done properly and they messed up my bike. When i took it in for the first time when i was having idling problems, i was told by their tech that the tech that service the bike when it hit 600 miles miss something. By him looking in the computer hea was able to tell me that much. For the past 6 months i have not been able to enjoy my bike... I'm very frustrated, hopefully D.N.A comes thru and to make me believe in Ducati again.....
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This is my FWIW post [FWIW = for what it's worth].
I have just sold my 998 [nothing wrong with it, but why wait?].
I am keeping the 900 SS SP as a "vintage" bike, which I will not expect much from and won't need to go to the shop considering I ride it about 500 miles a year.
I will
not be getting a 999, as I was thinking about doing.
Reasons for all of the above: Ducati has lousy service and does not stand behind their products.
Recall that previously I opined that all the rants about lousy dealership service and DNA not giving a rip will contribute to Ducati failing in the next few years. [or at least continuing to lose money]. See below.
What's kind of comical is that someday when Ducati bosses are scratching their heads and asking "what happened," that the answer was right here in the Duc-MS threads, which they are too incompetent to read or that they just don't care about because they have better things to do, like wondering if they will get laid tonight.
Analysis of Ducati 2005 Earnings Results
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Very informative post, but not surprising. About 10 months ago I posted on the old Duc-MS that Ducati had secured about a 100 million Euro syndicated loan for operating capital. I noted that the $ came from a number of banks, not just one. Indicated to me, at least, that Ducati's future was risky, so much so that one bank did not want to fund the entire loan.
IMHO from the consumer side there are a number of reasons why Ducati is tanking [yes boys, take the pain, Ducati is tanking]:
1) Some bad designs. People in here can say what they want in defense of their particular favorite, but considering how many bikes are sold in the U.S. market, one has to ask "Why aren't Ducati's selling?"
IMHO design is part of the problem. For example, the 999 looks nice and it has grown on Duc fans, but many have gone on to other brands because the 999 looks kind of like the Japanese bikes. As to the biggest market for the 999, the regular Joe, that shopper is not going to appreciate the cachet and history of a Duc, they will simply say "Gee, the R1, Honda, or Suzuki look kinda the same as the 999, might as well go with the Japanese bike for $8000 less."
2) Which brings the next reason sales are down. I went looking at the 2006 R1's [I have an 02]. I am always SHOCKED at the prices, having been so used to Duc prices.
A new 2006 R1 for $10.5k out the door. What's a 999, $19-20k out the door? Assuming the biggest market for superbikes is the casual rider, meaning "non-track day" types, IMHO they will not see any reason to shell out 80 to 100 percent more for a Duc. And as to the salesmen who actually has to "sell" his brand, I can just imagine what they say when the guy looking at a Honda asks the Honda sales guy "I am thinking about this Honda or the Ducati 999, what do you think of the Ducati?"
3) Ducs also have a horrible reputation for good customer service. Ducati does not stand behind the product. The Net is overflowing with horror stories of former Duc owners who have told thousands on the Net that their Ducs broke down, and when they did, the dealers looked for ways to get out of having to honor the warranty, and when they could not, repairs took weeks to months for the buyer to get the bike back. And worse, if owners complained to Ducati North America, DNA would do nothing to help.
Those kinds of stories have circulated for so long, IMHO such have destroyed Ducati's image. Basically, Ducati's image is that 1) Ducs break down; 2) they are expensive to repair; and 3) if they do break down, dealer service is horrible. Even on Duc-MS these types of stories are commonplace.
And compounding the problem, Ducati has completely failed to do anything to improve it's image. It's almost as if they have their heads in the sand and refuse to believe their is a problem.
Consider this: Duc-MS has about 5000 members. That's a lot considering how few Ducati owners there are. You would think DNA would have one of its employees become a liaison and Duc-MS member. That person could field questions and address people's concerns. Could even do some
PR. But there are no DNA reps on this site. If there are, they do not publicize it. To me, that shows their lack of vision and business sense.
4) Lastly, Ducs have a poor reputation on upkeep. The average Joe knows two things about $, a Duc will cost a lot to buy and will cost a lot to maintain. Any other bike can run 30,000 miles with only oil changes. But not a Ducati.
Label all this gossip, rumor or unfounded assumptions, it does not matter, for this is what the majority of bike purchasers know when shopping on a Saturday for that mid-life crisis superbike or the fastest/coolest bike on the road. [albeit, as far as I know, guys in their twenties are not buying $20 thousand bikes just to be cool, they cannot afford them].
So that is how I see it. I said before that Ducati was in financial trouble because of the way its syndicated loan was structured. Your post validates what I said 10 months ago.
I hope I am wrong when saying that in a few years, Ducati may not even be around. Sounds ridiculous, but as company size goes, it is not that big a business. I think before I said it was just barely above mom & pop size corporations. So it going under is not like imagining Ford or GM tanking [and heck, even GM may bust based on recent events].
With car manufacturers and airlines tanking every six months or so, it should not be that difficult to picture Ducati going the way of Pan Am or American Motors, especially with such piss poor numbers [that you posted].
They need someone to go in there and redo the company from the janitor up to the President. They need to do what Harley Davidson did back in the late 80's and 90's
Harley knew that their bikes sucked and that people were not buying them because they were crap. Sales were way down and the bike was going to go the way of the Indian. HD completely redesigned the engine [Evolution engine] and engineered the product so that things would last.
They then marketed the bikes with an admission their old bikes sucked, but to "try out our new bikes." They even had ads that said "no more leaks" because their old designs had loads of oil leaks.
They then trained their dealers to provide excellent customer service. I had a friend who had one of the 1994 then-new Harleys. He took it in to get fixed, they were quick to respond and he got his bike back each time in about 2 days.
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