Visiting Holstein’s Harley-Davidson Dealership For The First Time

As part of the whole process of shopping for a new motorcycle, I'm going to be checking out as many dealers in the Omaha area that I can. When you're preparing yourself to drop about $18,000 to $19,000 on a new motorcycle, you want to make sure that the place you buy it from is going to be able to take care of you, that you can trust them a bit not to rip you off.

From the looks of things, unless they want to drive for a while, people who are interested in buying a Harley in the Omaha area have three choices - Dillon Brothers Harley at 180th and Maple, Frontier Harley in Lincoln and Holstein Harley-Davidson at 72nd and L street.

While it's not the first dealership I went to, I did have the opportunity to stop by the new showroom of Holstein's Harley-Davidson on the 15th of May, 2009.

Holstein's Harley-Davidson new store is located at 4940 South 72nd Street, right across from where Rod Kush's furniture store is/used to be.

I've been talking with some co-workers about different dealerships in the area, listening to their experiences and getting ideas about what the motorcycle-buying scene in Omaha is about. We have some long-term riders in my workplace, who have been buying motorcycles for decades in the Omaha area. Everyone I've talked to about the different dealerships in the area have been pretty unanimous - with most people having a negative opinion of Holstein's Harley. In some cases, vehemently negative opinions...

I've been told that Holstein's dealership wasn't really interested in selling bikes, that they just kept the franchise to get the dealership discount, that their service department sucks, that they treated people like dirt during the years that they were the only Harley dealer in town - that type of thing.

I snuck the visit in with the wife as we were heading home from Kubat's pharmacy, so I went with my wife and kids in tow. The kids were tired and the wife was tired of the kids being tired, but she indulged me and hauled everyone inside to check things out.

From what I could tell during my visit to the Holstein's dealership, it looked like they'd put some money into the building and the presentation of the place. It was very clean and well-lit. They had a pretty good selection of bikes on the floor, both new and used.

From what I saw, they had about as many bikes on the floor as Dillon Brothers Harley-Davidson has. I wandered up and down the aisles and checked out the bikes. I noticed that Holstein marks their freight and dealer prep on the tags attached to the bikes - something that was missing during my many previous visits to Dillon Brothers.

I was asked once if I needed any help by a youngish-looking salesguy. I didn't need any at the moment, told him so and he left me alone, which is what I wanted. There were a few other customers in the store, more customers than salesguys, so I figured I'd let him go help someone who might want to buy today.

The selection of clothing and accessory merchandise didn't seem as extensive in Holstein's dealership as it did in Dillon Brothers. I checked out a few helmets while I was there, and was helped by a nice saleswoman.

She seemed knowledgable about helmets and was eager to help me find what I needed. When we found out that they didn't have the exact helmet that I was looking for in stock, she took down my information and told me it would be ready in about 5 days. She asked if I was law enforcement, I explained my situation and she told me to mention it when I pick the helmet up to get a discount. Good customer service there, as long as they get back with me.

Despite what I've heard about their dealership, my first experience visiting Holstein's Harley-Davidson dealership was a good one. I haven't actually talked to anyone there at length, but I'm waiting for that call back about the helmet and will talk to an actual bike salesperson the next time I stop by. We'll see how that goes.
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