Warning! Why not to rent bikes from Stonehead Bikes - Delhi!

[WorldlyMaret]

We are a couple that's been travelling together for a year, we are both bikers at home and we were missing riding and decided that we wanted to travel North India by motorcycle. The obvious choice of machine was the Royal Enfield! We found Stonehead Bikes in Delhi by searching online. They wanted 15,000 INR per bike per month. We figured we could easily lose this amount by buying and selling motorcycles, which would also be a lot of extra hassle and paperwork, so we decided to go ahead with the rental. Our contactperson at Stonehead Bikes was "Harry", or Khomendra Singh according to his personal e-mailaddress. They responded to all of our queries via e-mail very quickly, they were friendly and spoke good English so we felt confident in dealing with them. The only thing that we felt slightly uneasy about was the policy of the company that any breakdowns had to be paid for out of our own pocket. Obviously we could understand that any damage we had caused ourselves or normal wear that had occured whilst we were using the bikes (brake pads etc.) should be our responsibility, but what about pre-existing problems? What if something was about to wear out before we recieved the bikes? We asked Stonehead Bikes many questions about the bikes via e-mail including how old they were. We were assured that the oldest bike in the fleet would be a 2007 model. We knew that any bike this new would also have the left-foot gear system and would be a more modern machine and hence less prone to breakdowns.

We were obviously not impressed when we had checked out of our hotel, made the 50 minute rickshaw ride across Delhi and showed up with all of our luggage to Stoneheead Bikes to find that one of the bikes was a 2004 model with gears on the right-hand side. Alarm bells ringing slightly louder now. We should have refused the bikes and asked for our deposits back, but wanting to get on with our trip as planned we took the bikes. Like a fool, I let the Stonehead guy bullshit me into it, "oh my friend, it only takes half an hour to get used to this system...". Having ridden bikes with a left-hand side (LHS) gear system for 17 years it was really horrible to try and get used to them on the RHS. The gear system was also upside down (one up, two, three and four down). Take it from me, two weeks later I was still changing up gears instead of changing down and vice versa and trying to find the rear brake only to end up changing gears also. It was a nightmare.

When we arrived in Agra from Delhi there were already some issues with the bikes. The 2004 model was leaking oil profusely from two places, the speedometer was not working, and the horn was not working properly (horns are very necessary in India!). Obviously these were pre-existing problems so we requested that Stonehead Bikes (SHB) pay for the repairs. Strangely enough, SHB were less responsive than they had been when we were prospective customers. The first email we sent was ignored entirely. Sound alarm bells. After a second, less friendly e-mail we got a reply. They tried to tell us that we had caused the oil leaks because we had ridden the bikes non-stop over a long distance! (we rode 200km in three days). The horn issue, just tighten a screw they said (this didn't work by the way, because the wiring had been bodged together and needed replacing). They clearly couldn't think of a way to worm out of the speedo issue so they conceeded to cover the costs, but made a big hassle over it.

Two weeks into our two months, disaster happened. I was knocked off my bike by a oncoming jeep which was overtaking a truck. A trip to the hospital later and I came out with a broken arm and lots of cuts and bruises. Our motorbike trip was over. We got the bike to a mechanic and paid for all of the repairs. We contacted SHB and explained the situation. We had paid up front 60,000 INR ($1200,-) for 60 days of rental. We had only had the bikes for 12 days so we reasoned that if we returned the bikes 48 days early then we might qualify for a small refund. We had hardly covered any miles and hence no further servicing of the bikes would be required by SHB. We stressed that we were only looking for a token amount, we understood that they would not be able to re-rent both bikes for the remaining 48 days at such short notice. We finally managed to get a 'maybe' from them so rushed the bikes back to Delhi on the train (on our expense of course) in the hope of a gesture of goodwill. No such luck, we received not a Rupee. Even worse, after not responding to e-mails "Harry" was apparently not in Delhi, thus sending two of his underlings to pick up the bikes. They didn't speak English, so there was no way to have any dialogue as we handed in the bikes. "Harry" didn't show his face again. We tried communicating many times, only after complaining of "terrible customerservice" did we provoke an agressive response. We wish we'd have kept the bikes until the end of the rental contract, we could easily have sublet them to re-coup some of our costs had we have known we were getting nothing back... Our advice, avoid this company like the plague, a terrible experience.