Fowlers Motorcycles
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Incorrect oil in service
In the past year I have bought a brand new bike, had the bike serviced, bought serviceables for other bikes and had breakfast at fowlers giving me enough experience to write a fair review and to be honest I'm a bit disappointed. The staff are brilliant, very friendly and helpful, they don't just stare at you like other places. I felt very welcome walking around and chatting to the people that work there. The breakfast was also very good, the eating areas and toilets etc were clean and kept up together. At the time of having my bike serviced there were a lot of covid measures in place and they handled them well. Now the bad bits, first of all very bad. So I had fowlers do the first service on my bike and they used a semi synthetic Silkolene oil. My main concern was that in the bikes manual it clearly states fully synthetic only. I didn't realise this until I got home and I raised it with them over email, my main point being I didn't pay for a Yamaha dealer to service my bike and not have Yamalube put in the bike. Maybe I was wrong to assume this? I then mentioned the fact that only fully synthetic is supposed to be in the bike as stated in the manual and they told me it was fine and that semi synthetic is better suited to our climate which is a load of rubbish. I even emailed Yamaha who replied saying only fully synthetic should have been used. Fair one to fowlers though they offered to change the oil however that would have involved another 140 mile round trip so I countered and said just sell me some Yamalube cheap and have it posted to me which they said no to, that annoyed me a lot as I had to pay an extra £60 for the correct oil. I mentioned this to a mate who also bought a brand new bike from them and before he signed the deal he spoke to the salesman about my story and asked if the right oil would be put in his bike, the salesman replied with something along the lines of "I've tried talking to them in the workshop but they just do what they want." Now my second gripe, I recently went to order parts online from fowlers and the prices were extortionate compared to what I previously payed when I bought parts from them earlier in the year. I emailed the parts department to ask why this was and if it was cheaper to ring them and order parts. One week later, no reply, it was a good £400+ parts order as well. So to sum up, Fowlers is good for a trip out on the bike, have breakfast and a chat. Anything else, go to a professional dealership like Crescent.