Saddlemen Saddlebags - Don't Waste Your Money

 

This summer, sitting around the house, laid off due to the ‘Rona, I decided to do a couple of things with the bike. One of those things was to get a nice set of saddlebags.Well, that was the goal, anyway.

 I looked around a few motorcycle accessory websites, and settled on a set of bags called the Saddlemen Cruis’n Teardrop Saddlebags. They were nice looking imitation leather with an interior plastic framework to hold the shape, and they had a yoke that mounts underneath the seat and the bags themselves attach via zippers for easy removal to take your bags into a tent or motel room. They even included chrome D rings to lock the zipper pulls to, and little padlocks for the illusion of security.

 

I spent most of the day June 10 installing them. I can’t really fault Saddlemen for that – we all know that “universal fit” is an optimistic term at best. I had to fight with my bike’s configuration and do a lot of disassembly to get those brackets in. But hey – it wasn’t like I had to go to work, right? The bags themselves weren’t all that easy to mount, either. The material was stiffer than regular leather, making it hard to get the zippers lined up properly. They also required two strings each (front and rear edge of the bag) to be tied to the support brackets, plus a nylon webbing strap with a quick release buckle on the bottom of the bag to strap to the bracket. So much for an easy saddlebag removal. Oh well – I always pack stuff in a bag before it goes into the saddlebags anyway and rarely remove the bags.

 

So, after all that, I used the turn signal relocation bracket that was included in the package, because the bags crowded the signals just a bit. Then, the bags went on. Looked great, too. I went on a shakedown run – about 20 or 30 minutes with mixed residential riding (frequent stops) and some interstate blast to see how they held at speed. All looked good. That was Wednesday. On Thursday or Friday, I went across town – about an hour round trip, mostly highway miles. They still seemed good.

I had a rare fit of insomnia Friday night/early Saturday (June 13) morning, so I went for a predawn ride. It was all going great – kind of refreshing to ride in cool night air as a break from the summer heat of the day. I was enjoying myself on a rural state highway, and then it happened. I heard a “whop whop whop” sound. At first I thought my tire had gone flat, then I realized the ride didn’t feel any different. I came to a stop at a red light and looked back at the tire, to find that the left saddlebag was almost off the bike and had been flopping against my tire. The zipper had come undone from the base – the opposite end of where the zipper pull was. Luckily I wasn’t on a long trip on an interstate when it happened, or it would have completely come off or worn a hole in the sidewall before I knew it was happening. As it was, the tire ate a hole into the corner of the bag, and there was a strip of melted bag plastic all the way around the wheel rim. I pulled over and used bungee cords to hold it off the tire until I got home and removed the bags. (Yes, you can see in the photo that I didn't attach the little padlock. That's because I thought they were more for security, but you can also see that the zipper completely let go at the other end.)

When I got home, I looked at Saddlemen’s website and the best information I could get was to call during business hours. I was kind of ticked at that, because I’d rather have sent an email then, so it would be waiting for the warranty people when they came into work on Monday. I left a voicemail and got an email reply the next day saying I’d hear from them in 24-48 hours. When 72 hours rolled around, I sent a reply email and never got a response from that. Finally, a week later, I ended up talking to a live person, who told me I should have emailed them with my information and problem. Now I was more irritated, since I’d wanted to do that very thing, but the website was misleading.

 

For the next three weeks, I’d be promised an update, and not get one in a timely manner. I’d have to leave multiple emails and voice mails before I’d get a response. The response usually didn’t happen until I allowed an angry tone of voice to come through (after a long retail career, I try to at least keep a neutral tone when I’m angry with customer service). At one point, I went over a week with no response. The customer service person apologized at one point, saying he’d been sick and out of the office. I can sympathize with that, but it seems like if he were going to be out for a while, knowing he had an unhappy customer, he should have asked somebody to cover the account for him. He kept having to talk to the warranty department and go back and forth between them and me. I have no idea why he couldn’t just connect me with them. I’d already decided I was done with this company once the situation was done. I can understand a defective part. What I won’t accept (again, after a retail career) is substandard customer service.

Finally, I was told since it had been so long, they would just send me a new set of bags and I wouldn’t even have to return the old ones. They’d ship the bags that afternoon and email me the tracking number.  I thought that was a good move, and felt like they were trying to make it right. That was a Monday (July 13). July 15 came, and still no email, so I emailed the rep again. I got a voice mail from him the next day saying they’d ship then (the 16). No tracking number either. No surprise.

 

The replacement bags finally came, and I installed them. Luckily I didn’t have to wrestle with the mounting brackets again, so it was just a matter of zipping them on and tying the support strings and straps to the brackets. I wasn’t entirely happy with the support arrangement, feeling like the bags rested too far aft of the supports, so a friend and I bent up some metal rods and attached them to the supports. I also didn’t like the idea of those strings either getting caught on the tire or coming united, so I replaced them with carabiners.

 

All was well until I’d had them reattached a couple of months and noticed the “chrome” hardware was already showing rust. Granted, I don’t have a garage, and my bike sits in the weather, but it seems to me that saddlebags are a touring item and should be able to hold up to inclement weather for years. 

Shortly after noticing the rust, the carry handle on top of the right saddle bag tore. I was attaching a small overnight bag to the passenger seat with a bungee cargo net. The hooks went to the fender and the saddlebag supports, and I just hooked the middle hooks to the carrying straps to keep them from flopping. You’d think a handle intended to carry a full saddlebag would stand up to a bungee hook that isn’t bearing any weight at all. Anyway, I took that bag off and used the right bag from the original set.

 

That was okay until last Friday when I went to bungee my lunchbox to the passenger seat to go home from work, and saw that the right bag zipper had come undone. Once again, it didn’t just come unzipped like a jacket would – it came undone from the base.

So, now I have to call Saddlemen after work Monday and see if they’ll give me a refund. I doubt it since they already replaced the bags once. At best, they’ll probably offer me another set of bags, but they can keep them. My experience with Saddlemen has been nothing but negative, and I’ll never buy another thing from them. Lousy customer service, and from my experience, consistently shoddy merchandise. They have a good reputation for their seats, but apparently that’s where all their effort goes, and they don’t care about the bags.