Lance Scooters Paying Employees to Make Positive Reviews

Just an interesting quick post since I have been so busy and unable to post. I have spoken to a couple dealers that previously carried Lance motor scooters. They informed me that Lance has employees that they pay to write positive reviews about the Lance scooters because there are so many upset owners that write negative reviews, and they need to counter these reviews. I thought this was pretty comical, so I googled Lance scooter complaints and found some very negative reviews. After the negative reviews, there would be 5 additional reviews about how the scooters are so great, etc. You can begin to see that these reviews are 100% Lance Powersport employees because even some Vespa lovers criticize small aspects about Vespa models.

Hope this posts saves some people trouble of the many negative reviews you here about Lance Powersports.

Smaller Legit Scooter Companies

As we all know, there are a lot of smaller motor scooter companies emerging, which is good for the consumer and dealer because it brings more competition to the manufacturers. However, there are not very many that I would encourage anyone to buy. Some of the better smaller brands are Genuine, Lambretta (been around forever, but has new image), EagleCraft, TN'G. These guys are much more business savvy than the other emerging motor scooter companies, which is an excellent start. However, I have heard many TN'G dealers are dropping the line due to lack of support by corporate. I have not heard any complaints about Genuine, Lambretta and EagleCraft.

Online Sales of Motor Scooters

Okay, so I have decided that I had to make an entry about manufacturers and distributors that sell their scooters online. I do not understand why anybody, whether a consumer or dealer, would purchase a scooter company's brand that is sold or ever has been sold online. These companies include Tank, Vento, Lance, CF Moto, Qlink, Ricardo, Roketa, Fly scooters, ZNEN and many more motor scooter companies. These companies are just whoring out their product in any distribution channel possible. I mean you go to BigAss Motors in Northridge to get your Lance Milan scooter for $2,000. Then you go online and can get it for $1,000 shipped to your door. So, let's see, first of all, why would the dealer ever purchase the scooter from Lance Powersports when they are allowing another dealer to sell online who does not have any overhead, nor can service the scooter that supposively comes with a one year warranty on parts & labor, and they are selling it for half the cost (seems like business 101- Distribution Conflict). So let's see, the dealer is getting screwed because someone else is selling the same product for half the cost, the brand he is selling is getting a terrible image (Lance scooters in this case), he ends up fixing the guys scooter that bought it from another dealer online who made the money for doing no work, the customer that paid $2,000 for the same scooter finds the same Lance model online for $1,000 and gets pissed at the dealer, etc., etc. From the customer's point of view, they are also screwed whether they buy the scooter online or in a dealership. If they buy it online, they get a good price and the scooter comes with a one year warranty on parts & labor, but hard to get virtual service for your scooter, so you cannot get it serviced. It probably arrived broken and hopefully you know how to inspect it because having the throttle stick at 60 MPH and having the brakes lock up or not work (which are all current complaints) are not very fun. After you crash and get hurt, the extra $1,000 for the scooter that has been inspected by certified technician does not seem so bad. If you buy the Lance Powersports scooter from a dealership, as soon as you purchase it, it loses over $1,000 in value (50%) because the guy that bought his on the internet is not going to get what he paid for it when he sells it on craigslist, and yours is the same Lance brand that he has. So, it actually ends up costing you more money to buy a scooter brand, like Lance Powersports, that sells its scooters online. If you look at the entire cycle, the Lance Scooter will cost you more money. You may pay less for it at first, but your motor scooter will lose so much value at the end, that you would have been better off buying a Honda, Yamaha, EagleCraft, Genuine, TN'G, etc. (Notice how I did not say you need a Vespa or Piaggio because we are talking economical). I reccomend you start thinking the entire cycle. It seems people think of all scooters as disposable. That would be the same as me buying a new Ford Taurus for $13,000 over a Honda Civic for $17,000. Yes, the Civic is $4,000 more initially. But, when I went to sell it, I would get $8,000 for the Taurus and $15,000 for the Civic. I would lose $5,000 if I bought the Taurus and only $2,000 if I bought the Civic. That means I would have lost $3,000 more for the the Taurus than if I bought the Civic. There may be more to come on this topic because people need to start thinking! Do not just worry about the quality and initial cost of your scooter. Worry about the Net Present Value of each because Lance, Vento, Qlink, CF Moto, etc. do not make logical sense to buy.

Different Scooter Manufacturers

So, there are a ton of different scooter manufacturers to choose from when looking to buy a scooter. There is the most notable scooter company, Vespa http://www.vespa.com/, who is owned by Piaggio, which originated in Italy. However, today, even Vespa outsources its manufacturing to Asian countries. The most involved of these countries in the scooter manufacturing industry are Japan, Taiwan, Korea and China. Honda www.powersports.honda.com/scooters and Yamaha www.yamaha-motor.com/sport are two notable Japanese companies, which both began by producing cheap "knock offs" of the European designs. But, today, they have become dominant players in the motorsports industry, moving up the ladder in quality. There are also a robust amount of scooters that can be purchased online, including Tank http://www.tank-sports.com/, Vento http://www.vento.com/, Lance http://www.lancepowersports.com/, SUNL http://www.sunl.com/, Baron http://www.baronmotorcycles.com/, CF Moto http://www.cfmoto-usa.com/, Roketa http://www.roketa.com/, Ricardo http://www.ricardo.com/, Jonway, Lifan, Motofino, QLink, Schwinn, ZNEN and many more. We will not go into details of these brands because we do not reccomend that anyone purchases these products. There have been many lawsuits regarding injuries caused from individuals riding scooters of these various manufacturers. Some have reported brakes locking up, throttles sticking, brakes failing, headlights failing when riding at night, tires blowing out, etc. Those only include some of the problems that lead to injuries, which is our main concern. The list goes on for other non-injury related problems and failures. There are a few other new companies that have good products, but we will have a future blog regarding these.

The Scooter World

So, there are many scooters out there these days, including Vespa, Yamaha, Honda, Piaggio and Kymco to name a few. Scooters are becoming popular once again. They are moving into mainstream like the Toyota Prius did a few months back. Before it was not unlikely if you heard people refer to them as "gay" or "hippy mobiles". But today, people say, "where can I get one". Are they in stock? Because in most cases, there are so much demand for scooters, the top producers cannot produce enough.