In Which I Receive a Bad Review

I could have included this one as a dealing with idiots on the Internet as the review is left on Google. However, as it relates to a real world interaction, perhaps not. This one is interesting because anyone who has delivered services to the general public will be familiar with the issue. So, here is the review:

Daniel Rodriguez-Lay

1 review

6 days ago

My instructor was polite but made it obvious that he didn’t like me. The short one that looks like James may and rides a tiny bike to work.
Kept giving nonsense advice and then still after a month hasn’t put any of my info through for my full bike test. Everytime I call it’s “give him a few more days”. Thankfully phoenix is way more professional, better pad and actual bikers that own proper bikes and not kids bikes.
I didn’t tell him I had been riding bikes since I was 6 years old (now 41).
He said I’d need some lessons, that’s when I knew it was about the extra money.
Managed to get my full licence done with no tuition at all. Chippenham phoenix is the place to do your A licence.
B-bikers is a place to do your CBT if your desperate.

Ps. I still rest my finger on the front brake. Because it’s not a failable fault.
And when doing slow manoeuvres the human should shift his weight towards the apex and not the opposite way around. You need to re-learn some stuff or stop teaching things incorrectly.

Got my licence now with absolutely NO thanks to b-bikers.

Treat people like the paying customers they are and give them the assessment they deserve.

One statement in that review is accurate – the first sentence. The rest is bunkum. Not least because of what is missed out, which I will come to in a minute.

I’ll take the James May reference as a compliment. After all, I have a lot of time for James May and to be fair, I do share some similarities. The bike that he derides is the Enfield Scram, which I have mentioned here. Small, light, easy to ride and with excellent fuel consumption, it is ideal for CBT road rides. I wasn’t aware that I am obliged to seek the approval of students when it comes to my choice of training bike, though. That said, the snobbery that some people have towards the new Royal Enfields is typical of what we see here. Uninformed ignorance. He was on a 125, so the Enfield was perfect for the task of following him about on the road.

He mentioned that he didn’t tell me about his riding experience. Oh, yeah, he did. Ad nauseum. By the end of that day I was sick of hearing about his obviously exaggerated exploits. When a colleague arrived back at lunchtime from a test run, he was subjected to it as well and his reaction was the same as mine – we were dealing with a Walter Mittyesque knob. I’ve been in this game long enough to recognise the type – someone who has been riding for years illegally and finally decides to get a licence, but thinks they already know it all and we can’t teach them anything. Which is true, they are resistant to any attempts to improve their bad habits and this one was no exception. One thing that I picked up on was his use of one finger braking. During the emergency stop exercise I pointed out that his braking was inefficient as he wasn’t stopping promptly enough. He challenged this with the claim that four fingers on the brake lever would result in a front wheel lock. Not if you are braking properly, it won’t. He then challenged me that this would not result in a test failure as alluded to in his review. As is often the case with reviews such as this, the full conversation is not revealed. What I said at the time was that if he didn’t stop promptly enough the examiner may well decide that it is a failure and the one-finger braking would be the cause. Mr Rodriguez-Lay’s response was that the examiner was an idiot.

This was simply another red flag for me.

Let’s go back a bit. During element D we talk about attitude on the road. Mr Rodriguez-Lay regaled us with his road rage exploits telling us that on one such occasion, his wife had to hold him back. Given that this was precisely the kind of attitude we do not want on the road – hence the discussion – we had another red flag.

Perhaps the biggest cause for concern, which he fails to mention here, is the temper tantrum. He had difficulty fitting the radio earpiece prior to going out on the road ride. Not unusual. However, I’ve never had a student go into full blown meltdown and start swearing and throwing things about. He threw his glasses on the ground, where they bounced under the fence, resulting in having to crawl about on the ground to fish them out. Eventually, he furiously tore the cheek pad out of his helmet (fortunately it was his own and not one he had borrowed from us). The other student was watching this with a slightly dazed expression while I was wondering just how long I should let it go on before terminating his training. What I was witnessing was a complete failure in anger management, matching my then two-year old niece’s when I used the word ‘no’ to her some years ago. As I said, this display of petulance doesn’t find its way into the review (well, of course not – Ed) but does put another spin on the story.

Moving onto the comment about slow speed control. What he is referring to is counter balancing. This is a perfectly viable technique. However, I don’t normally mention it at CBT level and have no recollection of doing so on that day, and if I did, it would merely have been in passing as it wasn’t especially relevant as neither student experienced difficulty turning their bikes. So I’m not sure why he mentions it, other than to paint me as a poor instructor – along with the patronising comment about re-learning, delivered with a complete lack of self-awareness. I might mention this technique at DAS level if I think it will help the student. As I say, it’s a valid technique so I don’t have to re-learn anything here. In making this claim, he demonstrates his own lack of understanding of machine control, which, frankly, wasn’t good at all. He seemed to think that a YS125 should be constantly revved like a two stroke.

His claim that another school took him to test without any training is pure fabrication. No riding school will put a student on a bike and take them straight to test. It just doesn’t happen. Also, he seems unaware that we know each other and we know what the training regimes are that each of us uses – and it’s pretty similar. This individual did need further training and he will have had a minimum of two days at Phoenix to prepare him for modules 1 & 2. Given what I saw, this would be about right. He was sloppy, but it would be achievable as it appears was the case.

He claims that I didn’t put notes on the system for a month. I know what happened here. Although I put them on that same day, the proprietor of the school was fobbing him off, hoping that he would take his business elsewhere. I’m irked by this because it makes me look unprofessional. So I’ll address that final point about customer service. He paid for a CBT and that was what he got. I was courteous throughout, despite his appalling behaviour. At that point, the contract was fulfilled. I am under no obligation to take on further work should I choose not to. My colleagues and I discussed this at some length following that day. Given the anger management issue, I was unhappy to take him to test, as should it have gone badly, a meltdown in the test centre and having to get the bike back wasn’t a risk I was happy to take. My colleague also made the point that any student training alongside him would be at a disadvantage given that Rodriquez-Lay’s ego operated like a black hole, absorbing all the energy in close proximity. He is a bore that gives the Severn a run for its money and none of us wanted to train him. Unfortunately, rather than tell him this, the office chose the fobbing off approach.

To an extent, we are in Christian cake territory here. Are we obliged to take on a client if we choose not to? Given that there are no protected characteristics involved, no. As a self-employed person, I have declined to work with clients in the past for a variety of reasons and reserve that right still. Rodriguez-Lay was trained in a polite and professional manner despite his behaviour and unwillingness to learn, and got exactly what he had paid for. We simply chose not to continue the relationship albeit without being completely honest with him. We had no obligation to take further business from him. And he got exactly the assessment he deserved.

All of this reminds us that the general public can be difficult to deal with; arrogant, entitled and self-opinionated and treat service providers as if we are their servants who should jump to their commands because they are ‘the paying customer’ and are therefore always right. They don’t like it when those service providers then choose to walk away due to bad behaviour on the part of that customer. I’m a free agent. I don’t waste my time on people who are unwilling to cooperate or who make my life a misery when I have to interact with them.

One final thought here. The proprietor of the school has not yet responded and it will be interesting to see what he has to say. Having used my apparent tardiness as a fobbing off technique, I cannot see how he can adequately address the accusations of unprofessionalism, because if it was true, the accusation would be valid. If he now tells the truth, he has to admit to being less than honest with the potential client, which isn’t a good look on a review.