Spyder Scorecard ?????

[bushrat]

For me, this SpyderLovers site has always been most helpful in terms of advice, the experiences of others, and warnings of what to avoid. It is also a place where many discuss issues of concern and relate stories of poor dealer/customer relations. These reports get scattered throughout the threads - one such story is currently running: http://www.spyderlovers.com/forums/s...st-lost-all-my... Sometimes, this gets passed along or shared privately by word of mouth.

This got me to wondering whether it might be useful to have an overall 'scorecard' where we, as a group, could tabulate our combined individiual experiences in a 'ballpark' ratings fashion, so it would be useful as a quick, overall guide to someone looking to purchase or needing service. We all shop from time to time; we all travel, and may need assistance while on the road. I'm thinking that a quick reference guide, tabulated in bulk form, might indicate where to look, based on the broad experience of other members. It could reward those who foster good dealer-client relations.

We could do this by a simple '5-star' system: 1 - poor; 2 - fair; 3 - average; 4 - good; 5 - excellent. No need to go into elaborate details. Individual responses to be averaged out and published as a group experience.

It could serve several purposes: over time, it will certainly tell dealerships what we think of them, and perhaps encourage them to 'up' their game. It will let BRP know what we think of their dealer network, and perhaps persuade them to 'encourage' improvements, where desired. And, it could be a handy 'one-stop' guide for us all, rather than having to look through pages and pages or shop blindly. It could be revised annually or semi-annually, based on a poll of members.

Here's a possible example (using my own local dealer who happens to have a solid reputation):

STATE/PROV. ...... CITY/AREA ...... DEALER NAME/ADDRESS ...... SALES ....... SERVICE

Ontario ...............Lindsay............ H B Cycle............................ ***** ........ *****
Alaska
Alabama
etc.
etc.

Admittedly, I am not the most literate computer guy around (quite poor in fact) and others may well have a better way to do this. Please comment and offer suggestions.

Is it worthwhile trying to do? Would it be helpful?

[Chupaca]

I believe BRP has dealer lists and ratings according to the personel training. Spydercodes has a list as well but the thing is you need to have constant updates and tech's are fickle and move around pretty quick weather on thier own or pulled away by other dealers. I worked for way too many years in the industry and saw mechanics come and go and return on a regular basis. With BRP dealers it depends on if it is a multi dealership where they can keep the techs busy or a single with seasonal work. I would be little help as I do all my own work but for sure it you listed all known dealers and asked ryders to rate them you would get some useful information... pros and cons

[robhowen]

I think your idea is good and there is value in having something like this. However, I suggest the greater challenge will be in actually creating something like this that is useful. If you look at sites like yelp, tripadvisor, amazon, google, etc. you'll see that they have applications designed to accomplish this. They allow you to post ratings and comments and then provide ongoing tabulated results and the ability to search and review the "reviews". It would be wonderful if the spyderlovers website provided this kind of review and feedback functionality.

Good luck,
Rob

This got me to wondering whether it might be useful to have an overall 'scorecard' where we, as a group, could tabulate our combined individiual experiences in a 'ballpark' ratings fashion

[UtahPete]

I like this concept. Just not sure how to do it on the forum.

[Little Blue]

I believe you might have something of REAL VALUE. Bring it on!!!

[bushrat]

I think your idea is good and there is value in having something like this. However, I suggest the greater challenge will be in actually creating something like this that is useful. If you look at sites like yelp, tripadvisor, amazon, google, etc. you'll see that they have applications designed to accomplish this. They allow you to post ratings and comments and then provide ongoing tabulated results and the ability to search and review the "reviews". It would be wonderful if the spyderlovers website provided this kind of review and feedback functionality.

Good luck,
Rob

Rob:
Yes. That would work - a 'review' type system. I'm not familiar enough with the mechanics of programming to know 'how' to go about it. Just thought that an end product providing some guidance would be great to have. And if Lamont agrees.... SUPER!!!

[R FUN]

I think it would be great. It might smarten up some of the lower rated dealers to try harder to get a good report and if BRP took notice it might help
them to see what the customers felt about a dealership and not just by how many units a dealer sells. It would also help if a person was touring and needed service to have an idea were to stop and which ones to avoid if possible.
Roger

[asp125]

Yelp already has such a system for reviewing all sorts of businesses. You don't even have to be a member to look at the reviews although you have to log in to make a review.

Our local BRP dealer has been reviewed there already.
https://www.yelp.com/biz/rpm-motor-s...NY0sneGCv2dFow

[JayBros]

The OP's idea is, IMO, as others have said, a good idea but probably difficult to keep up to date on a forum like SL.

One of the biggest obstacles I see with such a listing is supervising the criteria to shout out or slam a dealer. Many of us who follow SL regularly see owners who slam a dealership for some event, generally a service problem, when in fact had the complaining owner gone a bit farther, kept his/her cool and/or worked the problem up the organizational chain, including to BRBCare, things might have turned out substantially differently and, hopefully in his/her favor. If you were an independent business proprietor and you had a customer with a problem would you not prefer that the customer gave you the opportunity to deliver quality service before that customer slammed you on some Net review site. Yes, there are some poor/sloppy/obstinate or whatever dealerships out there, but isn't it better to see reviews/ratings based on "the rest of the story" as Paul Harvey used to say? Until we can skin that cat it's going to be a problem IMO creating a review database that is really worth its salt.

[2dogs]

Dealers or their employees from high jacking the form by entering random positive comments to combat the negative comments. Very good idea and I feel every dealership should be held to accountability, but don't depend on BRP to do that for you. Ebay had a good system but they've change it several times because of problems. It's still probably one of the better systems around. I never purchase from any seller under 98% no mater how many transactions they've made.

[asp125]

Dealers or their employees from high jacking the form by entering random positive comments to combat the negative comments. Very good idea and I feel every dealership should be held to accountability, but don't depend on BRP to do that for you. Ebay had a good system but they've change it several times because of problems. It's still probably one of the better systems around. I never purchase from any seller under 98% no mater how many transactions they've made.

That's why you have to take everything on the internet, including here with a grain of salt, because there could also be customers with a grudge to bear who would put in really bad reviews. Just like the overwhelming complaints on Spyderlovers are from owners with problems - the squeaky wheel effect; the ones with no problems rarely need to chime in.

So over time, the sample size would tend to weed out the peaks and valleys. You see the same on Amazon, Glassdoor and any crowd sourced review site. Products and companies with only a few reviews are suspect, but ones with a lot usually are pretty accurate.

[bushrat]

...One of the biggest obstacles I see with such a listing is supervising the criteria to shout out or slam a dealer. Many of us who follow SL regularly see owners who slam a dealership for some event, generally a service problem, when in fact had the complaining owner gone a bit farther, kept his/her cool and/or worked the problem up the organizational chain, including to BRBCare, things might have turned out substantially differently and, hopefully in his/her favor. If you were an independent business proprietor and you had a customer with a problem would you not prefer that the customer gave you the opportunity to deliver quality service before that customer slammed you on some Net review site. Yes, there are some poor/sloppy/obstinate or whatever dealerships out there, but isn't it better to see reviews/ratings based on "the rest of the story" as Paul Harvey used to say? Until we can skin that cat it's going to be a problem IMO creating a review database that is really worth its salt.

JayBros:
In my original post, before considering an individualized 'review-type' system, I was thinking of a 'bulk reporting-type' system whereby individual comments would be incorporated in a simple overall average, thus ending up with a 'consensual' evaluation, and obviating the issues surrounding one-off type complaints or individual personal disputes. I was trying to be sensitive to that type of problem. If we did do a 'review' type report, perhaps it could be designed to allow dealers responses. However, that does get us into potential squabbles, whereas a consensus-based scorecard could simply indicate the overall feelings of the broader Spyder community. We might do a survey once or twice a year to update; then publish a scorecard summary.

Thanks for your thoughts.
Roger

[bushrat]

Dealers or their employees from high jacking the form by entering random positive comments to combat the negative comments. Very good idea and I feel every dealership should be held to accountability, but don't depend on BRP to do that for you. Ebay had a good system but they've change it several times because of problems. It's still probably one of the better systems around. I never purchase from any seller under 98% no mater how many transactions they've made.

2dogs:
See my response to JayBros. Similarly, we might monitor response from members, If someone tries to 'game' the system, we could deal with this. If it were a generalised 'consensual' grading system, seems to me it would be more difficult to 'pad' the report or stack the deck.
Cheers, and Thanks.

[2dogs]

2dogs:
See my response to JayBros. Similarly, we might monitor response from members, If someone tries to 'game' the system, we could deal with this. If it were a generalised 'consensual' grading system, seems to me it would be more difficult to 'pad' the report or stack the deck.
Cheers, and Thanks.

Just a 5 star score board w/o comments? Maybe allow comments in the background somewhere where, where squabbles can be duked out if some folks are interested in that sort of thing. It doesn't take very many words to show up and indicate just who's right and who's wrong. Yep, I'm like'n your idea more and more.

[JayBros]

Roger's response to my post adds valuable elaboration. Most important, IMO, 2dogs' idea is one I think would give the most consistent information.

[asp125]

Is there an option to embed into a thread, an Excel spreadsheet listing the city/dealer name/and its 5 star rating, one that everyone can access and update? But nobody can go back and edit (so they can't upvote or downvote another users data).

[meerkat]

I think it would be great. It might smarten up some of the lower rated dealers to try harder to get a good report and if BRP took notice it might help
them to see what the customers felt about a dealership and not just by how many units a dealer sells. It would also help if a person was touring and needed service to have an idea were to stop and which ones to avoid if possible.
Roger

R FUN , Where did you get the body parts for your bike . I tried to look up "Vertica" but had no luck . Thanks Meerkat .

[wyliec]

This is just an opinion from an opposite point of view. You might want to run it by Lamont before spending a lot of time developing. I've seen on here where someone bad mouths a dealer, and some other member says they have had nothing but good luck with the same dealer. Check this link out; this is where I'm coming from:

https://www.investopedia.com/article...nts-online.asp

This form or spreadsheet that you or someone else may come up with may pass the smell test from the link provided; but, remember, there will be others making comments that may not pass the smell test. It's just a thought. I don't care one way or the other.

[ARtraveler]

There are those that use the internet as a tool to get back at someone they do not like. We have seen this happen quite a few times here concerning dealers.

There was a dealer list with comments about service that has shown up from time to time.

I have to wait and see here.

[bushrat]

This is just an opinion from an opposite point of view. You might want to run it by Lamont before spending a lot of time developing. I've seen on here where someone bad mouths a dealer, and some other member says they have had nothing but good luck with the same dealer. Check this link out; this is where I'm coming from:

https://www.investopedia.com/article...nts-online.asp

This form or spreadsheet that you or someone else may come up with may pass the smell test from the link provided; but, remember, there will be others making comments that may not pass the smell test. It's just a thought. I don't care one way or the other.

wyliec, just to be clear, what I was originally proposing was a 'generalized' rating score, based on a 5-star system which would only show the consensus rating, not individual postings. For example, if members reported their personal rating of a dealer to a central info bank, and that central bank then came up with an average opinion/rating, it would balance out the good and bad, and simply show one score that reflected the average overall experience of members. That way, it avoids any personal feuds and would contain neither hurtful nor exaggerated comments made by individuals for whatever reason. It's never going to be a perfect system, but might provide some indication of the level of consumer experience most have had at a particular dealership. Perhaps there could be an additional box indicating that a dealer's 3-star rating was based on the average reports of 20 respondents, or a 5-star rating is based on hearing from only one respondent. If 100 people responded and the rating is only 1-star or 2-stars, that will give folks a fairly well-based reason to conclude that a particular dealer is not well regarded.

Anyway, just some thoughts trying to be helpful. Everyone's input is much appreciated.

[imfleck]

...Been a developer for 30 years. With variables that change all the time (mechanics) and businesses that can change their level of service at any time depending on a whim of business, I think this good idea will be impossible to maintain and will lose value in about six months. Sorry.

I agree with another user here when he/she suggested Yelp. One of the stickies ought to be how to create and manage Yelp reviews, which, BTW, also grow stale quickly.

[Bob Denman]

R FUN , Where did you get the body parts for your bike . I tried to look up "Vertica" but had no luck . Thanks Meerkat .

Try "Vertika"


I think that you're putting dealerships in a difficult position.
1. They're not in here to defend themselves
2. Sometimes folks get frustrated over what is actually a pretty fair deal for them.... and they yell about it.
3. There's no ability to fact-check anything.


There's a saying that I firmly believe in:
"If you listen to fools: the mob rules."

[bushrat]

I think that you're putting dealerships in a difficult position.
1. They're not in here to defend themselves
2. Sometimes folks get frustrated over what is actually a pretty fair deal for them.... and they yell about it.
3. There's no ability to fact-check anything.

There's a saying that I firmly believe in:
"If you listen to fools: the mob rules."

Bob:
Not to belabor the previous explanation, but:

my proposal is really nothing more than to publish a simple 'poll', in bulk format, not individualized.
It would not require dealers to defend themselves, as there are no allegations made.
It would not give any details as to 'why' people feel as they do.
No fact checking would be involved as it would not be a fact-based, 'review-type' rating.

The original idea was simply to ask folks to rate dealerships, on a 1 to 5 scale, as to their perceived performance in the area of (a)-sales, (b)-service. Individual responses would be tallied and reported only in bulk format, after averaging out. Whatever star rating a dealer received, it would be explained that this was based on 'x' number of responses. You would soon know whether the 'poll' results were broadly and soundly based, or perhaps more weakly based.

i.e., just a 'poll type' report (as originally proposed); not an issues-based 'review' (as later mentioned), which may already be available through other means (Yelp).

A poll could also serve as a benefit to dealers - at least to any who might care enough to know 'how well' (or poorly) they are regarded by the public. And while it wouldn't go into details as to 'why', it could lend itself to possibly encouraging those with a 1 or 2-star rating to perhaps do some self-examination.

There's another saying: "if you don't listen to your public, you will soon find you have none."

I'm just floating a balloon.... all punctures accepted with equanimity.

[Bob Denman]

I like your motive for this...

But with the way that conversations tend to "evolve" in here: it'll most likely turn into a "Dealership Gripe-fest"...

[R FUN]

Hi Meerkat;
It is Vertika Canada vertikatrykescanada.com 819-427-9954 If you still have a problem let me know and I will see if I can help more.
Roger