Dear Ripoff,
Last summer I ordered 2 high end (for them) 250cc "touring" scooters from scooterdemand.com, one for my father and another for a very good friend (I will call him Neil) of his. Both scooters were ordered the same day, May 24th. Someone from Scooter Demand called 3-4 days after the order was made and informed my father that the "brand" (Tank) of scooters "they" had ordered were not in stock and would take up to 6 weeks before a new shipment would arrive, but that they had another "brand" (Ricardo) that was exactly the same in every detail except the name and asked if they would be acceptable. Dad said they would alright as long everything was the same and to go ahead and ship the Ricardo scooters. They both arrived about 7-10 days later via enclosed lift gate truck. My father had been called prior to delivery by the trucking company to verify the address and that someone would be home to accept the delivery.
Everything up to this point had gone without a hint of trouble... Now it starts, First Neil's scooter. We put this scooter together first. Assembly was fairly straight forward and took about 1/2-1 hour. The most obvious defect was the odometer read 90 thousand miles on it before it was even started. This will only be a major problem to the scooter later on when trying to sell it. Now my father's scoot. First thing we noticed while uncrating was that the scooter was the wrong color, the wind shield was broken and there was damage to the plastic body toward the bottom of the scooter near the floor board on the left side and a few minor cosmetic scratches, the radio, alarm, and remote start fobs were all missing from both scooters, but that is where the minor problems end.
At this point I should add that I spent nearly my entire adult life on and around motorcycles including 18 years as a motorcycle/snowmobile mechanic and 3 1/2 seasons drag racing motorcycles for a privately owned team in southern Calif. Enough horn blowing...
While checking the scooter's fluid levels, nuts, bolts and wiring. I noticed a couple of bolts on the engine that were no more than finger tight. Two of which were head bolts. There were hoses leading to the carburetor that were just left hanging and wiring that was disconnected. All of these things I considered minor as long as they were caught early. We contacted Scooter demand about the windshield, radio, alarm, remotes, and to ask about the scooter being the wrong color when told that the right one was in stock... Whoever my father talked to told him that the radio's alarms and remotes were taken out due to a problem of them draining the battery's and that he should go to "Wal-Mart and buy one (radio) there." As for the broken windshield, he was told to send the broken one back to the ware house and a replacement would be shipped out right away. Done and did.
Now the nightmare begins. Upon test riding these machines for both I found that once they got up to operating temp for a while the belts started slipping, slipping bad. This is more than a little dangerous at stop lights and intersections. Once the machines cooled off they didn't slip nearly as bad. I called Scooter demand myself this time and talked to "Nick or Mick" he said he had never heard of such a thing and that it was probably just a bad belt and that he would send out 2 new one's right away. Two weeks later no belts so I called again. This time I talked to "Chris" he told me the belts had been back ordered and that he would send two out today as they had just come in Convienient? When the belts arrived they were the wrong size, so again I'm on the phone, with "Nick" again. He sharply stated that that's why they want the customer to send back the original defective part so that they send out the right one. This time I read the numbers off the belt to him (they are standard numbers) and again gave him the model of the scooters. I told him that there was no reason for me to go through the expense of sending the originals back that all he had to do was match the numbers I gave him and that I didn't think this was the problem anyway. When the new belts arrived I installed the one on Neil's scooter first. No change, as soon as the machine got up to temp. The slipping started again. This time before I called I pulled the belt cover off and found grease all over the inside of the cover, the clutch, variator, and the belt. I took a series of pictures and e-mailed them to scooter demand with a letter explaining the problem. The next day "Shawn" from scooter demand called me telling me they were looking into the problem and they wanted to "make this right." That was the last time I was contacted "from" scooter demand. I proceeded to clean the grease out of the case, belt and clutches. Test drove the scooter and the same thing happened.
During this time I had been calling scooter demand asking them what was being done about this situation. Each time the person I talked to got more and more rude almost hostile. One of the last times I contacted them by phone the person I talked to (wouldn't state his name) told me to call a different scooter sales company and tell them I bought the scooter from them to see if they had any ideas of how to fix the problem because they "have never heard of any thing like this" The more I thought about their suggestion the angrier I became. No one would answer the phone any more when I tried to call customer service and mo one would even answer my e-mails. I wound up going through the cleaning process a total of four times now but had to put the scooter up for the winter with out any thing being resolved with scooter demand. Now I see they are out of business, or maybe they are truly restructuring the company.
I have read other nightmarish stories about this company here and if anyone is filing a class action suit against this company, I would surely like to know about it, and possiably be included. I feel like I am more fortunate than some because I have some knowledge of these machine's being a former motorcycle mechanic, but for those who aren't this must be a real nightmare. A couple thousand bucks may not seem like a great deal to some people, to me its huge. I would truly like to see this company and its representatives get their just dues for scamming all these people... I'm sure there are more than just these few out there that have been effected by this company. There must be something that can be done.
Thanks for listening... Kj
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