I have decided to buy some new panniers for my BMW R1150GS. After much scouring of the web I sort-of-settled on the ones made in US by Al Jesse (I'm in UK incidentally). From the website (http://www.jesseluggage.com) they appear sturdy, capacious, and yet narrower than either the standard BMW items or equivalent capacity "boxes" from e.g. Touratech. They look good too. And another major plus is that, unlike all other makes (except BMW), the Jesse mountings are unobtrusive when the panniers are not fitted too. So they are my favourites - even though they are very expensive.

The bad news is that I have now emailed Jesse luggage (mailto:luggage@goodnet.com) three times over the last month and have not even received an acknowledgement, let alone a reply to my questions. This does not exactly encourage me to part with a large amount of money over the internet.

I'd like to buy something soon but if what I am seeing by way of pre-sales service is anything to judge by I'd rather keep well away from post-sales. So, does anybody have any experience of either the company or its products that they can share with me?

Regards,

Andy

By a curious coincidence, I have received a reply to my email of 10th January from Al and Julie Jesse about one hour ago. I have copied it below for those who are interested.

Andy

------------------- snip -------------------

So sorry for the delay in responding to your e-mails. We have been in the
process of getting our German distributor set up, and wanted to be able to
give you that as an option.

We have designed a new style of box this year. This allows us to give the
same capacity as our 110 liter bags for more bikes. Currently the largest
bags we offer will only fit on the 1150 GS. Our new style will fit on other
GS as well as street bikes. The size is still 110 liters, yet they are
narrower than our current 110 liter boxes. The new boxes will not fit a
helmet, however. The new bags will be lockable as always with no provision
for padlocks.

We should have photos of the new style boxes on the web site by the end of
next week. We will also have photos of the top boxes that we will have
available.

Our mounts are powdercoated steel and are proven sturdy from our customers
stories! The most recent story we've heard is from one customer who ran
into a cement pole - put a slight dent in the box, but knocked over the
pole!

Again, we apologize for any inconvenience our delay in responding may have
caused. Please have a look at our web site again next week, and you should
be able to see the new stuff!

Keep it on 2 wheels!

For a comparison between Jesse and Touratech bags, see my message dated from [28 February 2002] on http://www.horizonsunlimited.com/ubb...ML/000026.html

Jesse's post-sales service seems to be quite good.

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Pierre
http://www.geocities.com/skypie999/bikes/

I'm finding that most of the moto gear vendors I've emailed never reply. I wont name any names, but a phone call seems to be the best way to contact them. I dont necessarily have a problem with this, but I dont think they should put an email address on their website if they dont have time to respond. As a side note, Fred at Arrowhead responds to emails pretty quickly.

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Brett - 1999 KLR650
http://www.ridefar.com