Beware of dealing with Ron Ayers

I've been following the issues people have been having with customer service from Top Saddlery. Because of their problems, I won't be ordering a seat from them, even though they have the one I want.

In the same vein, I am having problems with Ron Ayers. I ordered parts over a week ago assuming they would be here within a week. Other parts I've ordered came in about 3 days. It wasn't until they didn't show up that found out they usually require 7-10 days. If I knew that up front, I wouldn't have wasted my time and money. Since I live in NC ( less than 2 hours from them), I had to pay extra (sales tax).

I have tried repeatedly for the past two business days to get in touch with Ron Ayers. They don't answer the phone and the system is set up to force you to interact to stay connected. They don't return phone calls, nor do they repond to emails.

I can understand that it may take more time than I anticipated, but I cannot tolerate the fact that a company, that I spent what I consider to be a large amount of money with, can't deign themselves to give me a little common courtesy. Let alone the minimum amount of customer service.

And while a may understand why it takes longer, why wasn't it stated when I ordered the parts. And why can't they send you an email verifying your purchase? The collect your email for some reason.

Some of the FZ1 Forum members have good things to say about this shop: PartShark.com --- Motorcycle Parts, Accessories, Apparel, & Merchandise.

And this shop: SAVE 30% ON ALL YAMAHA PARTS !!! !!! [WE SHIP USPS- UPS ONLY}!!!

I've also used this shop too: Yamaha Parts, Kymco Parts, Discount Yamaha OEM Motorcycle Parts Online

On a side note I ordered a new FZ1 hugger from them last month and it took about two weeks to arrive. As Krid said, I think shops order Yamaha parts the same way. Granted the como could be better.

Getaway said:

I've been following the issues people have been having with customer service from Top Saddlery. Because of their problems, I won't be ordering a seat from them, even though they have the one I want.

In the same vein, I am having problems with Ron Ayers. I ordered parts over a week ago assuming they would be here within a week. Other parts I've ordered came in about 3 days. It wasn't until they didn't show up that found out they usually require 7-10 days. If I knew that up front, I wouldn't have wasted my time and money. Since I live in NC ( less than 2 hours from them), I had to pay extra (sales tax).

I have tried repeatedly for the past two business days to get in touch with Ron Ayers. They don't answer the phone and the system is set up to force you to interact to stay connected. They don't return phone calls, nor do they repond to emails.

I can understand that it may take more time than I anticipated, but I cannot tolerate the fact that a company, that I spent what I consider to be a large amount of money with, can't deign themselves to give me a little common courtesy. Let alone the minimum amount of customer service.

And while a may understand why it takes longer, why wasn't it stated when I ordered the parts. And why can't they send you an email verifying your purchase? The collect your email for some reason.

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Ron Ayers is a dealership that sells discount parts. They do not stock every part for every bike and as such, has to order them from the manufacturer (yamaha usa). So in order to supply your parts, they must first be shipped from one of the three US warehouses for Yamaha parts to Ron Ayers and then re-shipped to you.

7-10 days sounds about right for that process.

krid80 said:

Ron Ayers is a dealership that sells discount parts. They do not stock every part for every bike and as such, has to order them from the manufacturer (yamaha usa). So in order to supply your parts, they must first be shipped from one of the three US warehouses for Yamaha parts to Ron Ayers and then re-shipped to you.

7-10 days sounds about right for that process.

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I wouldn't have had a problem with that if they had let me know up front. Though I probably would have cancelled the order and went to a local dealership. The price wasn't as important as getting my parts ASAP.

But most imortantly, no one had bothered to contact me after I left messages and sent emails. That is the bothersome part. It makes it worse that they're a dealership, cause now I know they were open on Saturday and that's adds another day where they ignored me.

Not-so-surprisingly, a couple of hours after I posted here, some one with Ron Ayers finally got interested enough to contact me.

Hey, if you're in NC, get from MRCycles.com, they are in Asheville, and are amazing if you are looking for stock parts and are usually cheaper than Ron Ayers and Bikebandit. I live in TN and my dad dropped his Connie, ordered whole new fairing, headlight, turn signal, and mirror from MR and came to me in just a handfull of days. Love them.

It's CLEARLY stated that it takes X amount of time. They even have a fancy little graph that shows the number of days you should expect it to take based on they type of shipping you select.

I never order something without understanding how long it will take....Ron Ayers makes this easy and I've never had a problem with them.

DefyInertia said:

It's CLEARLY stated that it takes X amount of time. They even have a fancy little graph that shows the number of days you should expect it to take based on they type of shipping you select.

I never order something without understanding how long it will take....Ron Ayers makes this easy and I've never had a problem with them.

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Maybe you haven't been to their newly redesigned site, cuz I didn't see any such graph during the process and I went through it again tonight just to be sure.

And again, since you've never had a problem, maybe you haven't had to contact their customer service... and not have someone respond.
Jus sayin'

Won't order from them. Done. Bastards.

if you click on "FAQ" at the top of their website, you will find this.

How long will it take to get my order?
Typically, ground service orders take 7-10 business days to get to you. We order most parts directly from the manufacturers. Stocking more parts would mean higher prices due to warehousing costs. We feel that our customers benefit from our ordering efficiency, and will wait a few days in order to save some serious cash.

Can I expedite my order?
Yes, we offer expedited shipping services. Several options are built right into the checkout process - choose the one that's right for your order.

Only one click required.

I guess the lessons are (1) when ordering online, make sure you get a statement from the seller stating how long it will take for your merchandise to arrive and (2) Ronayers customer service may be slow to respond.

Hi,

My name is Paul Hadel with RonAyers.com. I would first like to say that we apologize for any miscommunication on the wait time you have experienced here. Our orders typically do take 7-10 business days to arrive to the customer; 3-4 to get to us, and the rest of the time to get to the customer. You being in Durham would be at the shorter end of that scale. Once we received your items in 3-4 business days you should see them the next day as you are just 150 miles down the road. We answer every email the same day it is sent as well as respond to voce mail messages. Our business hours are Monday-Friday 10:30am-7:00pm and are closed every weekend. I noticed you attempted to contact us on a Saturday....that is our retail location that has a separate phone number, separate email groups and an entirely different inventory. It would be extremely hard for anyone there to give you any help on your order status. Please PM or email me your order info, and I will take a look into it to see if anything out of the ordinary has occured.

Paul Hadel
Internet Sales Manager
RonAyers.com

[email protected]
800-888-3084 EXT: 405

RonAyers.com said:

Hi,

My name is Paul Hadel with RonAyers.com. I would first like to say that we apologize for any miscommunication on the wait time you have experienced here. Our orders typically do take 7-10 business days to arrive to the customer; 3-4 to get to us, and the rest of the time to get to the customer. You being in Durham would be at the shorter end of that scale. Once we received your items in 3-4 business days you should see them the next day as you are just 150 miles down the road. We answer every email the same day it is sent as well as respond to voce mail messages. Our business hours are Monday-Friday 10:30am-7:00pm and are closed every weekend. I noticed you attempted to contact us on a Saturday....that is our retail location that has a separate phone number, separate email groups and an entirely different inventory. It would be extremely hard for anyone there to give you any help on your order status. Please PM or email me your order info, and I will take a look into it to see if anything out of the ordinary has occured.

Paul Hadel
Internet Sales Manager
RonAyers.com

[email protected]
800-888-3084 EXT: 405

Click to expand...

First, this is great, I'm glad that someone from your company could come here and address this. At this time, however the order has finally left your location.

The issue with the time, the 7 - 10 days is not what I'm angry about. Maybe that was my fault, I should have done like DefyInertia said, and clicked all these links on your site until I found the shipping times in the FAQ which meant that I had clicked away from my order in the middle of the transaction.
Should I have clicked on Expedite, probably, but I didn't have to expedite before to get an order quickly, so experience trumped diligence and failed. You redesigned your website, but wouldn't a message or graphic on the shipoping page that said, "Your order will arrive in 7-10 days. Not soon enough? Try our Expedited shipping!" be appropriate? You have my email address, would it be too much to send an email thanking me for the order and letting me know what to expect? I guess it's all in your website, if you know where to click.

No, my problem is that no one answered the phone, callers have to continually press buttons to stay connected, and when I finally left a message no one called back -ever. I never said I tried to contact you on a Saturday. In response to another poster, I said that since you were a dealership, then there was another day that someone could have called me. You're not open on Saturday so obviously that's not the case. You know what? This was my bad, too. I should have called the parts desk. I bet I would have gotten right through.

But most importantly, no one responded to the emails. If email doesn't work, what recourse do I have? Do I spend my days from 10:30 to 7 in your phone queue, constantly pressing buttons, in the hopes that someone finally, mercifully picks up?

One last comment, just my two cents.
I manage my department's internal website. A lot of other departments depend on my site for accessing information. I have a great deal of experience in web design, but when I rebuilt our site I still had to hire a consultant to help me with usablilty issues. Their input was invaluable to making my site an engaging and effeceint experience for my users.

Your site - especially being e-commerce - really needs to take usability into consideration. With the fiche it understandably is not for novice web shoppers. But, with all due respect to DefyInertia, not everyone wants to go into research mode to order a few parts and very few want to leave in the middle of a transaction to do it.

I noticed something else with your shopping cart. Even though I was logged in, when I accidently closed my browser, my cart was emptied. When I logged back in, I had to start all over. If you're ordering a lot of parts that's a PITA.

Now, I'm not saying this to solicit work, I'm not qualified in usability. I'm just making a recommendation based on my experience.

I sent this to you in email a few mins ago, but I would like everyone here to know that we still DEFINITELY have some issues with our new site:

Hi xxxxxx,
I am being completely honest in saying that we didn’t receive either of those emails from you. I checked every email account that could have possibly received them and I don’t see a receipt or a response. The only email correspondence I see is when I emailed you about the Back ordered and cross shipped parts on your order(see below). Although we are busy and the phones stay ringing, we are here from 10:30am-7:00pm M-F to help you out. I’m not sure how your emails didn’t get through, but they definitely did not. The new site has some issues to be worked out for sure, and this case has brought up another VERY important point…that customers shouldn’t need to browse the FAQ’s to get an answer on, “how long does it take to receive my order”. I have spoken with the IT department on this and hopefully they will have it put in the cart or ordering process quickly. Another site problem we are aware of that made your time with us difficult is the confirmation email that is supposed to be sent when we actually process your order during business hours to let you know the parts are now on the way from the manufacturer. This is to be fixed as well.
I apologize for the communication issues you have experienced here, and I can assure you it isn’t lack of attention to emails or disrespect for the customer. Our number one goal is customer satisfaction. To hear about a bad name being created for us on an Internet forum makes us realize we still have some work to do and bugs to work out on the site before we can be most efficient.
I have credited you for the amount of shipping on your order ($28.00) for the complications we have experienced here

I would like to thank Paul Hadel from Ron Ayers for responding to my issues. I feel satisfied that Paul has captured and shared my concern with the communication issues. Based on his response I would say that his team is working to make the shopping experience better for their customers. I am wondering still why they didn’t get the emails I sent to [email protected].
We're all riders here and know how expensive it is to own and operate a motorcycle. As I told Paul, I place in high regard companies that concern themselves with providing value and customer service. That's why I was disappointed to have had issues with Ron Ayers because they have a good reputation on this forum.

The measure of a good company is how they handle things when they go bad, not when they go well. Good customer service is fine and dandy if no problems ever arise. But great customer service is invaluable when things go wrong and they need to be rectified.

To have a company respond to posts on a forum, and do their best to handle the matter, refund the shipping, implement the suggestions...very good indeed.

The way they have handled this has made me look at their site more frequently if there is something I need for my bike.

I've had experiences with companies that seemed great at first, but then dealing with customer service is a PITA. They have blatantly ignored my comments/suggestions/emails. There were huge shipping delays with no communication. Only responded after several emails and days later.

I hope everything works out for you getaway, as it seems it will.