I’m not going to recap my nightmare experience with motorcycle safety equipment manufacturer Motoport, but over two months ago the Wayne Boyer offered to take my jacket back for a full refund. I was hopeful that the issue would be resolved quickly, and I would get my money back.

Long story short: Wayne never gave me the refund, and I had to dispute the affair with Discover. Discover ruled in my favor, and I finally got my money back on December 7th.

Here’s the full time line:
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One of the nice things about working in a group office environment again is that there is a lot of banter. A LOT of banter. I am the unofficial DJ for our development room, and between the tunes and the shit-talking there is plenty of commentary to go around. Someone dredges up a long-lost track they liked as a youth, and it’s up to me to find it.

I also listen to a lot of music that doesn’t get heavy rotation. I am particularly fond of cultural mash-ups, like traditional Middle Eastern or Latin American music set to electronica. As you can expect, it’s hard to find these types of albums at big box stores like Best Buy or Wal*Mart. Even when I find them at local record shops, the import prices put a ten-track CD into the $20+ range.

So, what do you do when someone mentions “Ladies First” by Queen Latifah, or if you want to buy Cafe D’Afrique Volume 3 without spending $20? Try used CD e-tailer Second Spin.
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I love Firefly, the short-lived science fiction show about an eclectic band of ex-revolutionaries, mercenaries, runaways and a preacher. One of the main characters was Jayne Cobb, played by Adam Baldwin. Jayne is portrayed throughout the entire series as an emotionless killer for hire. Until he receives a mysterious package that looks a little like this one ….
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Almost four months ago, I was killing time in a coffee shop in California. I was visiting family and had a PT Cruiser rental car instead of my motorcycles, and I was missing my two-wheeled friends badly. I made up for it by reading motorcycle gear reviews, and found read Web Bike World’s review of the Rev’It Cayenne Pro textile jacket and pants. I wanted it.

At the same time, my friend Fish Sprout was researching Motoport’s kevlar textile gear, mostly because her friend owned a set. The Cayenne Pro, despite ingenious venting options, was still a three-season jacket. Motoport owners reported wearing the jacket in temperatures from the 30s to 120s. The lure of a strong, four-season textile suit that wouldn’t melt to your skin like most mesh led me to order jacket and pants from Motoport in late June.

It was a huge mistake. For a product promising a “custom” fit, my Motoport jacket was put together for someone who weighed an extra twenty or thirty pounds. I sent it back twice for alterations, and am still in the process of getting my money back.

Cold temperatures were fast approaching, and I hadn’t solved the problem of a weather-resilient jacket that would hold up well in a crash. My Tourmaster Transition 2 jacket fit well and had nice features, but claims of the jacket disintegrating in crashes as slow as 25MPH made me nervous.

I bit the bullet, and bought the jacket from Beach Moto, run by a member of the ADVrider.com community. Dennis, the owner, was everything Motoport wasn’t, and should have been — responsive, personable, professional, and efficient. Did I mention that dealing with Beach Moto was easy and didn’t make me feel like an idiot? Motoport, take notice.

However, I’m getting ahead of myself. On to the jacket.
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With all of the riding and motorcycling mishaps last week, I neglected to post that Wayne Boyer of Motoport has broken his usual policy and offered to take my jacket back for a refund. You can read the whole saga if you haven’t been following along. The short story: I sent my jacket back for alterations twice, was dissatisfied, called for a refund, was told that because the jacket was now custom a refund was impossible, I posted about it on the Internet, Wayne emailed me in rebuttal (which was also posted), and now we’re here.

My jacket was sent back last week and should arrive on Monday. I am not sure how long it will take Motoport to process my return. Once I have my money back and this whole event is closed I’m going to update my Internet posts with how the situation was resolved.

I am thankful that Wayne decided to take the jacket back. It’s against Cycleport’s usual policy, but hopefully I will get my cash back in short order. I feel better, but keep your fingers crossed. We’re not out of the woods yet.

I promised Wayne at Motoport I would post his email to me in its entirety. I have only removed my first name from his email. I posted this on advrider.com’s equipment forum, but I am unsure if the post will be allowed to stay because I posted on behalf of a merchant. So I’m reposting it here. I will quote Wayne’s comments, and bold my rebuttal.
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I ordered my kevlar gear from Motoport almost three months ago today. I have returned the jacket twice for alterations, and the pants once. The gear has never come back as I wanted it, and at this point the jacket fits worse than my $150 Tourmaster Transition II jacket. Here’s the story how wanting to resolve a problem with a small-time vendor wound up costing me a little over $650 on a jacket that doesn’t fit right.
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I wrote a post about Sergeant’s SentryPro XFC topical flea and tick product almost a year and a half ago. The treatment threw Porter and Rosie into an allergic reaction that consisted of trembling, panting, scratching, and “air licking.” I made the post because I was upset. I was upset at Sergeant’s for putting the product out. I followed the directions and BOTH of my dogs has an adverse reaction. I was also upset at myself for not using my usual Frontline (which I’ve never had a problem with before or since the SentryPro incident).

So, I made the post in May of 2007. I had no idea that thousands of people would read the post, hundreds would comment, dozens would email me personally, and the post would be the number one Google search result for “SentryPro XFC.” I got mentioned on The Consumerist. Some of my readers started a class action lawsuit.

It took all of that an sixteen months, but Sergeant’s finally responded.

People who have posted a comment in the past are automatically emailed when someone makes a new comment, so hundreds of people got an email tonight with Sergeant’s reply. A few people have already started to reply …. I have a feeling this isn’t over by a long shot.

My altered Ultra II Air Mesh kevlar jacket and pants arrived while I was away in California last week. The initial order was very mis-sized, and I had sent the jacket back to have it resized, and the knee armor on the pants relocated.

After almost three weeks of waiting, I was really anxious to give the gear another try. Unfortunately there is going to be a Round Three between myself and Motoport.
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You can create a gamer profile on the Xbox 360. This profile allows you to keep track of your friends, game achievements, etc. Since I have two Xbox 360s in the house, I had to come up with an easy way to move my gaming profile from one console to the other. Microsoft sells memory cards in various sizes to do this, and to also save games. Since both of my 360s have hard drives, I could get away with the smallest card available, which is 64MB. I didn’t want to pay retail for it (about $30) so I went to eBay.

I bought a new 64MB unit from a longtime eBay seller. The listing stressed the unit was new several times in the ad. I wound up buying it for $14 shipped. I was slightly surprised when the memory unit arrived a few days later. It wasn’t in retail packaging, and had an inventory sticker on the plastic case. I immediately thought the unit was refurbished.
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