I recently moved from Seattle and bought a used Yamaha C3 for $700 on Craigslist. It was working great for 4 days and over 150 miles. And then it kept stalling. Finally it would not start at all. Great. My luck has been pretty terrible with scooters in the past, as it continues to be...
My first move was to check Yelp for Scooter repair here in Fort Lauderdale, but no one seemed to have more than one or two reviews. I called around and was referred to Captain Ron. I called him and left a message.
He will come to you. No towing required which was nice.
2 stars for response time and customer service. He called me back within 15 minutes and we set an appointment for Tuesday. But in the end, nothing was offered after my problem was misdiagnosed and I was sold a battery that I didn't need and charged for a repair which lasted all of 15 minutes (see the rest of the review).
3 stars for price. The hourly rate was $80 and $50 for the house call. So all in all, average rates.
1 star for job completion. He arrived on time with another guy named John. He had never worked on a Yamaha C3 but was a self-professed expert and not shy about bragging about that. He took the panels off. At first he said that it may be a bad fuel pump. But then he was checking the electrical connections and discovered that there was corrosion on the wires. He quickly fixed that, splicing new connectors onto the wires, and put a new battery in. And the scooter started right up! He had the scooter put back together and was done in 45 minutes.
I asked for an itemized receipt, which he wrote on the back of a business card:
House Call $50
Battery $50
Labor $80
Total $180
I guess tax is included, or perhaps this was done under the table.
Anyway, initially, I was glad to have a working scooter! They left and I decided to take the scooter 8 miles up to the Pompano Beach Costco. 5 miles into the trip, the scooter died and I could not restart it with the electrical start, or manually. This was basically the same problem that it had before. I rolled my scooter over to Walmart and parked it. I called Ron and he told me that he would text me the number for someone else who knew how to work on these Yamaha's. He said maybe it was the coil (whatever that is). He did offer to give me a ride home as he was close. That was nice. But then he just said "I'm sorry for your bad luck" and that was that. He texted me a number of Riva Motorsports.
So while the corroded connectors were replaced, they weren't the main problem. Neither was the battery. I basically bought a new battery that I didn't need. The problem seems to be with keeping the battery charged. I am out $180 and in worse shape than when I began, because now my scooter is stranded in a Walmart parking lot.
Thanks Ron!
6 stars for 3 categories, divided by 3 = 2 stars. I really don't give many 1 or 2 star reviews. You can click on my profile and see that.
During the attempted repair, Ron mentioned that he hated working, and tried not to work more than 4 hours a day. In retrospect, why would you say that in front of someone you are charging $80/hr to fix their scooter? I make about $15/hr. and $180 represents about 14 hours of work for me. Lost in 45 minutes.
What a terrible experience.
By the way, there is another review site that give Captain Ron gleaming reviews. But you will notice a similarity in many of the reviews. Two of the reviews from "different people" mention putting Captain Ron on "speed dial". Many of these reviews, I believe, were written by the same person (probably by the Captain himself) and are not honest reviews. read more