Adam Gillrie

Review of SPORT CYCLE CENTER

A little background. I live in Tampa my but my par...

A little background. I live in Tampa my but my parents live in Orlando. I have 2 dual sport bikes, 3 dirt bikes, 3 four wheelers, and a UTV. I help my parents take care of their 2 cruisers in Orlando. Working with performance sports shops is a weekly thing for me and my stable of toys. I have only had two experiences with Cycle Sports Center in Orlando, both of which left me sour. The first one, I ordered two jet kits for my mother's V-Star. I chose to order them from Cycle Sports Center because usually I can get parts from a dealer quicker than I can get it from Motosports or RockyMountainatv. Since I don't live in town and I was just visiting, it seemed like the smarter move. I ordered the parts and they told me it would take a week to get them.... "ohhh kay...?" I went ahead and ordered them and asked them to ship them to my house in tampa. I would just bring the carburetor home with me and rebuild it there. THREE WEEKS LATER... the parts arrived. It was ridiculous. I called them and they told me that the post office had accidentally shipped them to Louisiana first. Uh, ok. Fine. Crap happens. This is my first experience with these guys, it was probably USPS's fault because it's the holiday season and they must be crazy right now.

Second experience. I needed another part for mom's bike. Ok, I'll try these guys again. They tell me it will be there wednesday and they even PRICE MATCH rockymountainatv on it! AWESOME. This is going to be good, right? WRONG. I strategically stayed in Orlando so I would be there when the parts arrived. They didn't get here until Friday. Two days later doesn't seem like a big deal, but it is when you don't live in town and you are on a time crunch. AFTER ordering them, they tell me "it takes 3-5 days", but WHEN I ordered it was "wednesday". I would have just done it online if I had known. So I stayed in town and picked them up. It was the diaphragms for the carburetor. Luckily/unluckily for me, my old diaphragms went back to their normal shape after sitting out of the carburetor for so long. AWESOME! Who knew?! If they had had the parts when I needed them, I totally would have used the new ones. But they didn't. So I brought them back to return them.

So I went to the store in person for the first time to return the diaphragms (dad picked them up for me). The store is awesome. Cool stuff EVERYWHERE. I am in the market for a new dirt bike for my son. I walked around for about 15 min eyeing some used KTM's because they didn't have the klx 125 I was looking for. Usually salesmen come out at other stores but no one came out to help me. I figured I would get back to that after I took care of the parts. I returned the parts but they charged a 25% restocking fee plus $7 shipping. I ordered these parts over the phone. I wasn't aware of their return policy. I had to eat $26 to return those parts that were LATE. They need to do a better job over the phone: "It takes 3-5 days and there is a 25% restocking fee if you need to return them". I didn't get that, so I had to eat it. I was so bitter that I didn't even want to consider buying a bike from them anymore. I will not be back. I will do the rest of my shopping from RockyMountainatv, Motosport, or from my dealers in Tampa.

Oh, I also brought in a little plug that goes on the vacuum port on the carburetor. Mine was cracked. I needed a new one and hoped that they would have one in stock from at least another bike that would work. It's just the end of a rubber hose that is closed off. I would assume that it's pretty common. I asked the guy in parts if he could check to see if any different bikes had one that I could buy. He said that would be too complicated because he would have to guess the bike... Maybe so. But someone with a little more experience probably could have helped me out on that one.

As a side note, the girl at the front gets 5 stars. She's great. I gave these guys two stars instead of one because they price matched and they had a good selection of accessories. In summary, parts? Sucked. Sales? Sucked. Girl at the front? Stellar.