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Shiny Bike Shops and The One That Got Away

Blog Date - 11 September 2011

Philip Youles of Blackburn has a lot to answer for.  Listed on the biketrader website for a couple of weeks they've had a DL 650 VStrom for sale.  It all seems good.  Replacement screen, the original screens on the VStroms are crap, heated grips, 2007, 9,000 miles and crash bars, just the sort of things a guy like me looks for.  I finally pulled my finger out yesterday and went to have a look at it.

The bike was parked outside the shop, looking very clean and smart in blue.  I spent a long while looking over every square inch of it and could not find anything untoward at all.  In fact it was so clean I did wonder if it was a little too perfect.  It did not look like it had ever seen a wet road let alone a winters day or a dusty trail.  No, it certainly looked like a genuine bike that had been lavished with goodies and carefully maintained.  After a while a salesman, busy with other customers, passed by and I asked if I could sit on it.

"It's sold, sorry"

Gutted.  I was close, so very close to actually dipping into my pocket and spending some money.  Sometimes you see a bike and know it's right, and this one felt right and at the right price.  Now I've had it snatched away from me and I'm gutted.  I console myself that at least my savings would stay intact for another day and I'm sure that some time in the future there would be another one.  Still...gutted.   The salesman did, between charming  a couple looking at a Triumph custom of some description, suggest I talk to one of the other salesmen, there may be more.  Having scoured the biketrader website as well as Youles' own website I was fairly certain there was nothing else of interest in stock, but still while I'm here I thought I'd have a look around.

I remember when Youle's was a small bike shop down some dirty street in some dirty town.  It had come as something of a surprise when I'd looked at the website and noticed they'd moved to a shiny modern shop, and had also opened another shiny shop in Manchester too.  At the shop it was all I'd expected yet not particularly hoped for, all shine, all polish, all sharp and all trendy.  Eeeeeh, when I were a lad bike shops were large units on industrial estates with the bikes all lined up on concrete floors and the office was a wooden shed in the corner, or they were converted mid-terraced houses with 3 bikes parked in the front room and lots of spares hanging from nails on oil covered walls.   Now they're nearly all modern glass fronted buildings looking every bit as smart as a Porsche or Bentley dealers.

I like to think of myself as a modern man, I try to realise that times move on and things change.  Motorcycles are playthings for those people with £10,000 spare, who like to wear matching leathers and helmets that look like their favorite racing hero's.  Gone are the days of the dirty backstreet bikeshop, the black leather jacket and the long greasy hair.  So I must accept that the bike shop has now changed, moved on, perhaps even improved.  What does bother me though is who's paying for all this bling?  It's understandable with BMW's and Aston Martin's, but not bikes as a cheap mode of transport.

I got my answer in the shop.  A chap, probably about the same age as me, asked "Can I help?"  He's smart casual in a Youle's polo shirt and slacks, clean shaven and short haired.  Looking at him he's definitely a salesman.   The ensuing conversation involved me telling him the bike I was after was sold, what bike I had been looking for and that I knew they did not have any more listed on the website.  He insisted he check the stock list as they have some bikes they've just not had the chance to list, odd really as I'm sure that would be a priority in these digital days.  He proudly and vainly tells me that each of the 4 salesmen shifts 25 to 30 bikes a month and that they're just too busy to get it all online.  

By now I'm slightly miffed at losing the VStrom, that's not his fault though.  What I don't need is some smart salesman telling me just how many bikes he sells and that he's busy.  Bite lip and listen, give him a chance.  He's got a 40,000 mile, yes 40k miles VStrom 650 on an '04 plate, but I wouldn't be interested in that.  No, I'm not really, but hey, I'm here now, tell me about it.  40,000 miles, that's a fair whack but it could be a cheap and cheerful way to get my hands on a VStrom.  £2,300.  I laugh, out loud.  My Fazer's only got 27,000 miles on it and that's a £1,400 bike on a good day after a real good clean, I only paid £2,100 for it with 7,000 miles on the clock for gods sake.

I walk away, shaking my head and laughing, he's way way off the mark at that price.  He looks disgruntled but he's a go-getting salesman, money is everything and he's not letting me go without at least getting SOMETHING from me.  He suggests that I give him my contact details so if anything comes in he can let me know.  I'm not sure about this, do I really want a call every time he's got some pup in they can't shift?  I give him my hotmail email address, I use that account for anything that may lead to spam or is unimportant.  Now here's the rub.  He insists that he needs my home address and my landline number as his software won't save my details if he does not enter them.

Just read that again.  His software, presumably some kind of address book or contact list, will not save an email address and a contact name only, it needs to have a home address and a landline number.  Rubbish.  I'm so livid I think I say this in my head but no, I speak it out loud.  Actually I said something else but I'm not writing that.  I work in the IT business and I can't imagine anyone would be so stupid to write a address book, contact list or customer relationship management program that actually NEEDS a home address to save some details.  If they did write such a program, who the hell would be stupid enough to buy it?

I leave him with my name and email address.  I leave him shaking my head in disbelief.  It's only when I walk outside past that blooming lovely VStrom I realise what he was after.  This is an assumption, I have no evidence to back this up, but I assume he wanted all my details for some kind of database they will be building.  Hopefully this database is nothing more serious than a mailing list for Youles' promotions.  Maybe once, twice or three times a year I would have received a brochure with the latest offers and news of "great deals".  I could live with that, but I would like to agree to that rather than have my details collected by spurious means.  More worryingly is the idea they are collecting addresses to sell.  Motorcyclists will fall into some kind of marketing group.  If places like Youles can collect enough names, addresses and phone numbers from the marketing group "motorcyclists" then this can be sold to people who wish to sell to the group "motorcyclists".  

Like I said, I've no evidence of this, but it is my suspicion. 

What happened to the days where the guy who did your MOT was also the guy who sold you the bike?  Where's the salesman who can tell you how often to change the oil in your bike as well as strike a deal?  Where's the workshop where you can stand next to your bike smoking a fag whilst the mechanic does his thing under your "concerned parent" gaze?   There are a handful of places like this, but they're few and far between now, big business is the thing.  It's not better or worse, just different.  As for Youles, I think, I guess, I admit I reckon I was just being a bit awkward myself, I don't think my first experience will stop me from going back, but first impressions last and I'll be more careful next time. 

Reader's Comments

Frankel said :-
The over enthusiastic young salesman thing. I work in sales n my boss warns me not to try too hard. But you cant really wanna buy a bike of the mechanic or stand there when ur bike is serviced?
01/01/2000 00:00:00 UTC
Ren - The Ed said :-
Hi Frankel. When I started riding motorcycles in 1989 there were a few smaller bike shops that were "one man bands". The man (I never met any ladies running their own shop) would fix the bikes he bought in to sell, sell them to you and fix them again if there were any problems.

The advantage was that you were talking to the man who'd test ridden the bike, seen under the tank or inside the engine and was usually passionate about motorcycles. He wasn't working to targets, aiming for promotion or collecting sales data.

As for watching my bike being serviced, I would very much like to see that. That way I can be sure of what has been done and what mistakes the mechanic made. We are all human, we all cock up at times!

Shops like this still exist but they are very few and far between.
01/01/2000 00:00:00 UTC

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