I have given my Yamaha Gladiator to servicing in Bangalore Wheels (Dr Rajkumar Road, RajajiNagar) for about 5-6 times, and my experience is not at all satisfactory. First of all you are expected to be at the service center early in the morning (7-8 am) and get a token from the security guard. They can only service 20-25 bikes in a day. But the service center opens only after 9. So you have to wait for 1.5-2 hours minimum.
Service is average. My bike was brand new at that time, so I did not have much complaints other than reduced pick up, low mileage, down shift issues in gear box. All of which fell on deaf ears. They seemed to change oil and washed the bike properly. Delivery was also on time.
Once after a service I realized that my odometer and speedometer is not working. The odometer was perfectly fine before the service as I was regularly checking my mileage. I had already travelled 10 km from service center when I realized this and I did not have much time to go back. So I thought of getting it fixed next service, as I thought there might be a loose connection in a wire or something.
But when I visited Bangalore Wheels next time the service representative could not accept that the odometer stopped after previous servicing. I argued with him to check my odometer reading in my previous service records after which it has not moved. But he said what is the guarantee that the odometer was working even before previous service. But still I convinced him to look into the matter, but asked him not to replace anything as a new odometer cable cost 700 Rs. I was hoping that there would be some loose contact, but that afternoon the same service representative called and said they could not fix the problem and had to replace it.
Another issue I had encountered was that after servicing they used to polish the bike’s engine and some other body parts with some kind of oil to make it looks shiny and new. For some reasons this was done even on the disk brakes also. The problem with this is that, when you drive out from service center the disk brakes don’t work properly.
Once I hit a cab from behind when he stopped suddenly (believe it or not this is quite normal in Bangalore) and had an altercation with the cab driver. Even worst I was about to hit a police jeep just outside the service center. People who use gladiator will know how effective Gladiator’s disk brake is. You will get used to this and always break comfortably taking time. When I complained to the service representative, he smiled at me as if I was a kid just learning to ride a bike. This might be a small issue but just exposes their knowledge about the bike repair.
Another issue was when I opted for the so called "Teflon coating". This was to cost about 400-500 Rs, and there would be a total of 3 coatings (each one for 3 services). The first coating looked good for a couple of days and it waded off after that. Only the I realised that it was just some cheap wax polish. When I went for next service I reminded him that I had two more coatings and he wrote that down in the job sheet, but when I went to collect my bike in the evening it was not polished.
The mechanic at first said that it was teflon coated this time, but when I insisted he went inside to ask someone and came back saying it was not done and called a guy to do the same. At this time I saw the wax polish being applied and not the teflon coating. I did not bother checking the third coating the when I went for the next service.
Overall I spent around 12-15k in over 6 services. And I feel all of it was wasted. There are no yamaha service centers in and around Vijayanagar, Nagarbhavi, Mysore road area other that Bangalore Wheels, so I had used to go there.
After getting fed up with Bangalore Wheels I tried Orion Motors (Opp Forum Mall Koramangala) because it was near my office. But Orion Motors turned out to be even worst than Bangalore Wheels. Currently I am visiting MSP Moto World in Banashankari which is actually very good in servicing, but endless waiting in service center is still a problem here as well.
I don’t think Yamaha is any serious about giving good quality service to customers. I am not going to buy another Yamaha bike in my lifetime, no matter how good it may be. On the other hand the I am really impressed with the bike. I have enjoyed riding every bit of it.