I was dumb, and I crashed my bike back in October. It was entirely my fault, a moment of insufficient attention involving no-one else and suddenly I found myself not able to make a corner. All things considered, I came away fairly well as I was able to ride home behind someone else instead of in an ambulance.
I didn't make arrangements to fix my bike while I was healing from my injuries. I knew I just needed to get my bike fixed by the end of January so I could ride down to the Burt which had been in planning for a year. I wasn't exactly sure how I was going to fix it...I'm not a mechanic, but it was easy to put that off for a while - I just figured I'd putter away at it myself and replace the important bits, and worry about cosmetics later. Eventually I realised I wasn't making any real progress and there was only 7 weeks to go, so I decided to call a dealer to collect it and fix it for me. More expensive than I wanted, but at least my bike would be ready for my trip.
My bike has now been at the dealer for 3 weeks. They lost track of it, someone evidently did an initial investigation but that never made it over to get written up or priced until a week later when I next called. Shut for holidays, part systems down, call after call with my prompting and asking for updates telling them I needed it operational end of January, them promising to send me the list of parts required, broken down into what was essential and what was just cosmetic (yes the bike wasn't insured so it's coming out of my pocket). I still haven't been sent the list of parts or prices they've assembled so far, but today I got a call (first time they've ever called me) advising they still didn't know everything that is wrong but that they also now probably couldn't get parts from Japan in time for my trip.
At this point they're going to bill me to bring the bike to their shop and some time looking at the bike and putting together a quote that I've not seen. I can't even start making arrangements to source used parts (have located a parts bike) because they haven't sent me a list of what they have found. At this point I basically have to accept I won't have my bike fixed and I won't be riding to the Burt. I'm going to have to go pick up my bike with no repairs completed and potentially little information of value gleaned, and then reach out to the biker community for some assistance.
If I'd started this right away I'd have figured out the dealership had no interest in fixing an uninsured bike and there would have been time to deal with it. I guess I'd hoped bike dealers were staffed by my biker bros I wave at when we ride past each other, but it seems I was wrong.
Thanks for listening to my moan.
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