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Racy Rentals - BEWARE!

revnort

revnort

Tasty Pants
Joined
May 28, 2008
Location
The Sunny Mission, SF
Moto(s)
F800GS, Dr. Zoidberg
Name
Dan
BARF perks
AMA#: 1108597
A friend of mine just had a very bad experience with Racy Rentals. After speaking with his credit card company to contest charges, they noted they have had lots of complaints about RACY recently and something was amiss with this business. I just wanted to let everyone know the details in case you were planning on renting from them.

He contacted them over a month before our planned labor day trip and worked out all the details faxed paperwork etc. He also paid a deposit. As the date approaches he was not able to contact via any known phone number and emails went unanswered. Both him and I were trying to contact them with no success. All phone numbers eventually go to fax machine and the one cell number we got was not being answered. So he finally gets a contact the night before he is supposed to leave that the guy he had been dealing with was ill and he couldn't rent the bike. Less than a days notice to find another rental, AND no refund of the deposit was issued. As I said, his credit card company said he wasn't the first to not get his deposit back or have a similar situation happen to them.

I truly hope whatever is wrong gets fixed and that the business or owner can work out whatever the issue may be, but for now STAY AWAY. They are not handling their situation very professionally and you will gain a bunch of hassle.
 
no deposit back when THEY cancel it? sorry, that's 100% bullshit. I agree with his contesting the charge.
 
Yep, luckily he worked miracles and got another rental in time to leave (although a little later than he would have liked.)

Again just a heads up, very very bad form on their part. Last I heard he got his money back from the credit card company but they had not received a refund from Racy.
 
Googled it; not local, (Santa Monica), but a good heads up.
 
They claim to rent here in SF too (or at least they had an SF location as of a month ago). His troubles were in LA though.
 
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Damn, that sucks. There's no reason to rent through a shady business when there are several good, reputable rental companies here in SF. I had a fantastic experience with US Motorcycle Rentals (aka Thunder Road Motorsports), and I know others have been treated very well by Dubbelju.
 
Good info. Racy Rentals had a very appealing fleet but I found their dubious info (conflicting on various sites about whether they had an SF location or not) to be a warning flag.
 
Maybe it's a good thing he *didn't* get the bike?

While I was on vacation to the Los Angeles/Santa Monica area, one of the things I was absolutely DYING to do was rent a motorcycle and ride the PCH down to San Diego, past Huntington Beach, Laguna Beach, watch the sunset... the whole nine yards. Since I wanted to have a little fun while doing it, I began looking up places that I could rent sport bikes from. Racy Rentals looked like the place, located near my hotel, that could supply me with a Ducati Monster 696. Well, or so I thought. The 696 was booked, but the owner offered to provide me a great price on the Ducati Monster 1100 for the weekend. I jumped at the chance, signed the forms, and sped off to enjoy the weekend!
Except that, about 20 miles or so down the freeway, the Check Engine light illuminated. Sidelined, I called the owner back who mentioned we could swap the bike out for a Ducati GT1000 since that was the only bike they had in stock. What else could I do? I carefully whiled the bike back up from Redondo Beach to Santa Monica and took the keys to the GT1000. The ridiculous drop in fun-factor was apparent, but what the hell - I'm riding a Ducati in California, so it can't be all bad, can it?
Well, it tends to get to the side of "bad" when the oil cooler on the GT1000 starts leaking oil all over the exhaust header and crank case. Wonderful. I call the owner back who says that it would be a long while before he was able to get a truck to pick the bike up. If I could limp it back to the shop, he'd see what he could do about getting me another option. Since the oil hadn't spilled on the rear wheel, I plugged up and cleaned off what I could, and nursed it north from Irvine to Santa Monica. Again.
What awaited me were the keys to a Ducati Hypermotard 1100S. A ridiculously gorgeous bike by anybody's standards, but definitely NOT the bike I was looking to ride. But, what the hell, it's still a sporty bike, so I took the keys. I made my way to Beverly Hills whereupon the bike's engine just decided to cut out while pulling up to a red light in 1st gear. Okay, great. Maybe it's a low-idling problem, so I ignore it; the last thing I wanted to do was take the bike BACK to Santa Monica, after the shop had closed, and return it. So far, I wasn't enjoying the rental experience, but it gets far worse.
Up in the Palisades above Malibu, I'm in a decreasing radius up-hill turn, one of the first in Los Floras canyon. Leaned over, even throttle delivery, when all of a sudden the throttle starts chopping. The bike is bucking wildly; a 1098 engine without smoothness on a Hypermotard felt like riding an out-of-control bronco. Which was exasperated by the fact that I was in the middle of a turn and has a canyon wall fast approaching. As the bike bucked, it stood up more, taking the turn wide. I kept leaning since I didn't have enough room to stop, almost cleared the turn when my front wheel hit the fodder in the shoulder and down the bike goes, me included. People, seriously - ATGATT. Otherwise it could've ended a lot worse; pavement's not kind to skulls. Anyway.
I bring the bike back to Racy Rentals whereupon I learn from one of their staff, Bobby, that the bike had been having those engine stalling and surging problems for a while and they, "Didn't know what was wrong with it." Like that was the end of the conversation or something. I didn't hear about that, nor the broken flutter valve on the 1100S, nor the recently leaking oil cooler on the GT1000 until AFTER I experienced it myself while riding on them.
I'm glad the trip didn't end worse for me, but it honestly and seriously could have. Be very wary about renting from these guys. If it were just one bike, I'd say it was coincidence. With three, that's just faulty maintenance. And fault maintenance on a motorcycle can get people killed.
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ohio said:
I know others have been treated very well by Dubbelju.
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+2 on that. My son and I rented two R1200GS from them for 5 days, the week before last. The service they provided was friendly, helpful and very professional. We returned the bikes on the Thursday morning before Labor Day thinking we could then rent a car, only to find that most of the car rental companies either didn't have cars or had hiked their rates for Labor Day Weekend - Budget wanted $645 for a mid-sized car for 4 days...:wtf Thanks to Gwen at Dubbelju going way beyond to help us find a car rental, we got a Camry from Avis for 4 days for $284.

Cherie at Dubbelju was also very helpful in arranging our rental from the other side of the Atlantic. Great folks and great service....:thumbup
 
Ray said:
Maybe it's a good thing he *didn't* get the bike?
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Yikes, that is an even worse story. Wish I had seen it before the trip planning.

Schtum said:
+2 on that. My son and I rented two R1200GS from them for 5 days, the week before last. The service they provided was friendly, helpful and very professional. We returned the bikes on the Thursday morning before Labor Day thinking we could then rent a car, only to find that most of the car rental companies either didn't have cars or had hiked their rates for Labor Day Weekend - Budget wanted $645 for a mid-sized car for 4 days...:wtf Thanks to Gwen at Dubbelju going way beyond to help us find a car rental, we got a Camry from Avis for 4 days for $284.

Cherie at Dubbelju was also very helpful in arranging our rental from the other side of the Atlantic. Great folks and great service....:thumbup
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Yes to Dubbelju. Another friend rented here in the bay area for the same trip through them and the experience was great. He was very impressed with teh bike and their customer service.
 
To be fair, it COULD have been the 2 Ducatis themselves rather than the rental company. Just sayin'. You can't necessarily fault a rental company for a manufacturer's failure to properly make an oil cooler, now can you?

I say this as a guy who rented a truck that the door handle fell off of and had to fight for almost 6 months to not have to pay for damage done to the truck. The door handle LITERALLY fell off.
 
Ozymandias said:
To be fair, it COULD have been the 2 Ducatis themselves rather than the rental company. Just sayin'. You can't necessarily fault a rental company for a manufacturer's failure to properly make an oil cooler, now can you?

I say this as a guy who rented a truck that the door handle fell off of and had to fight for almost 6 months to not have to pay for damage done to the truck. The door handle LITERALLY fell off.
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I am all for giving people the benefit of the doubt BUT these two instances together make for a stay far away in my book. The issues with 3 Ducatis is not only terrible business practice but dangerous. Especially since they let him go without telling him an issue they KNEW about. Now they are canceling rentals and not giving a refund?!
 
Ray said:
Yikes (and notice how bogus most of the 5 star reviews are)

http://www.yelp.com/biz/racy-rentals-santa-monica
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yelp.com is bogus. I don't know why anybody bothers to even look at their reviews.

Take some business that you know that is absolutely top notch and read the reviews on it. If they don't pay for good reviews, there will be bad ones in there. I have no respect at all for what they say.
 
ScottRNelson said:
yelp.com is bogus. I don't know why anybody bothers to even look at their reviews.

Take some business that you know that is absolutely top notch and read the reviews on it. If they don't pay for good reviews, there will be bad ones in there. I have no respect at all for what they say.
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I'm not saying you're totally wrong, but I think my business is "top notch" and though yes there are some bad reviews on yelp we still have 41/2 stars. We get bad reviews on other public review sites, but still do pretty well over all. and we don't pay any of them. /not advertising, just saying. :ride
 
to be fair sounds like the ducati rider couldn't ride for shit and went to hot in the corner and exceeded his skill level.
 
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