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Originally Posted by Nove-R
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What is your point?
Let's recap: In your first post, you said a local dealer told you the new service schedule was a "creation of the marketing department." Now you come up with this story that claims information from an internal Ducati website saying,
"Ducati Motor Holding has extended by 25% the maintenance service intervals giving us an opportunity to change the customer perception that our product is “high maintenance”." That is not the same thing. Of course that is going to be the benefit of the new service schedule, but there is a hell of a difference between acknowledging that obvious benefit and what you were told about it being a creation of the marketing department and not being based on any advances in Ducati's engineering, supplier quality, or production tolerances. That claim is as unfounded today as it was the day you were told, or that it was posted here.
And since there seems to have been some confusion, in my first post I was calling bullshit on what you were told, not on you. I thought that was pretty obvious since everything I wrote was about what the dealer was claiming, but I apologize if you were confused.
Finally, look at that article again. Ducati NA cooperated with the authors of that article in exposing nine of thirteen dealers who were trying to sell service that the factory says you don't need. And look at what they were selling. An hour to check fasteners. Extra time to adjust the chain because their mechanic couldn't do an oil change, inspect the clutch and brake fluid level, and do a short road test in an hour. (I have personally had to fire mechanics because they couldn't beat the clock on jobs exactly like that, and these dealers are charging extra for it.) Or turning an hour service into 3.5 hours just because the dealer says so.
The only dealer that came close to justifying extra service was the guy in Monterrey who said the 1098's he's seen have loose belts before 7500 miles. If this is happening, fixing it with an adjustment is actually the last thing a knowledgeable mechanic would do.
If Ducati specs the belt to go 7500 miles before needing adjustment and it stretches out of spec before that - the belt is defective and it needs to be replaced, which would make it a warranty repair. I used to work with a Tier-1 supplier to the auto industry and I've been a service manager in a large Ford dealership. The engineering behind serpentine belts is actually kinda cool. When the buyer tells someone like Gates or whomever is making the belt the torque load, pitch of the belt, the temperature of the operating environment and if it is going to be exposed to sunlight, the supplier can predict the wear rate to within 1% over the life of the belt. If a belt like this stretches more than it should, before it should, that is the only warning you're going to get of a mistake either in the formulation of the rubber or the construction of the belt. What's worse, if it stretches early it will keep stretching until it is out of tolerance or until it fails. Snugging it up with an adjustment will actually accelerate the failure because you're putting more tension on a weakened belt.
If this were happening on a repeatable scale any decent service manager would be on the horn with their manufacturer and the factory wouldn't wait long to issue a service bulletin to inspect the belt and replace if necessary as a warranty repair because it is a hell of a lot less expensive for the factory to replace a belt than an entire top end. That would be in the dealers benefit, too, because they'll make more money replacing warrantied belts and doing the rudimentary inspections if they are ordered.
So I gotta ask: If the dealer in Monterrey is seeing this consistently on the 1098, why aren't they treating it like a potentially large-scale warranty issue? Maybe because Ducati NA would want to see those faulty belts and it would take only a simple test jig and a couple of minutes to prove that a belt was or wasn't defective, and factories typically do not screw around with dealers who submit fraudulent warranty claims.
I hope these nine dealers are not representative of most shops. But such a high percentage in this sample should make buyers look into how the dealer runs its maintenance department before they buy. (A good dealer will have no problem giving you service references and showing up-front pricing for scheduled service.) If the dealer gives you an idea he or she will jack you around on service after the sale, go somewhere else and if there are no other Ducati dealers in your area - let DNA know that's why you won't be buying one of their bikes.
Ducati deserves a lot of credit for trying to take on this problem. Dealers are a hugely powerful constituency and this will take money out of their pocket in the short term, but it is Ducati's best chance for real growth in the US market. Dealers like the four in the survey who are embracing the new maintenance program deserve praise and support, but any shop that isn't needs to be held to account.
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Originally Posted by JDuc
When we took my husbands bike in for it's 12k mile service, they charged him a half hour ($42.50) to cut 2 zip ties to get the seat off.
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Who is the guilty shop?
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