Long story short, i'm getting my G5 in Minnesota now as opposed to back in New Jersey. so, in order to get my ducks in a row before next month, when i actually buy the thing, i gave Twin City Indian a call, the current brand store for Royal Enfield. You can imagine my shock when they said they weren't going to have any until next year. well, not quite, the C5 was the one out of stock until next year. i asked if it was because they sold them out, and they said "no, we just aren't getting any" when i know that there's a new shipment coming in very soon. now those could be sold out too, i have no idea, but he would have said so if that were the case. instead he went on about how rare the bike is in the US. i cocked an eyebrow, but didn't pursue it. i wanted to know about the G5.
now, i want something funny for my bike, i want a deluxe with the chrome fenders swapped out for standard blacks. i have several reasons for this, ones i would type out if i weren't so lazy. i'll tell if you ask, but i digress. i was hoping to instead of just buying a set of blacks, that i could trade them for my chromes, they could sell them as an accessory, and all would be totally radical. i was going to do something like that back in Jersey and while i would pay a small convenience fee, it would be better than buying the fenders outright and then having a set of chromes that i don't need. so after being transfered to the "special Royal Enfield guy" i went and told him what i wanted. he said he might be able to get all that, but in order for him to even put down the order, which would take a few weeks to get everything moving along. i wouldn't have the means to put any money down on it, but it was fine, just a minor inconvenience was all.
BUT, i would have to pay up full price for the fenders. the RE guy suggested Craigslist or Ebay to get a price back for the fenders. i nodded my head and said to him yes, i guess that's alright, but in my head i said "no way in HELL am i doing that." so after giving him an email and a phone number for the quote, i immediately hung up and called another option. Go Moto was the one. it was closer to where i am too (though still in the Twin Cities area), so more convenient for me. i called up and talked to Marty, who was immaculate to talk to. very nice, very straightforward (the guys at Twin Cities had this condescending tone that said "oh, this is really a bother for me" the whole time. not very helpful sounding), and he had the base bike on the floor and was more than willing to accommodate my wants, for cheaper than even the Jersey guys managed by quite a bit. needless to say i was blown away.
now this sort of situation brings up three possibilities, you guys at CMW haven't been your Brand Store enough, or the brand store isn't supporting Royal Enfields enough. of course there's the other possibility that there really is a huge shortage of these bikes, to which i question since there doesn't seem to be any huge surge in popularity of the RE brand. over all, i think i'm going to give the benefit of the doubt to CMW here though. when i was perusing Twin City Indian's website the other day, i noticed that they were selling the AVL bikes for as much as $500 above price, and those were for the stock bikes. i suppose they've become pretty focused on selling their $30 thousand Indians.
tl;dr: if there aren't any supply problems, Twin City Indian seems to be a terrible brand store. find a dealer who can focus most of their attention on the Bullet, if not totally devote themselves to it.
Topic: UCE Availability -or- You guys might want to get a new brand store (Read 4451 times)