AMSSS Review

Americana Softseat Review

It's pretty well agreed among riders that the stock or OEM seats are not very good. Many guys and gals replace their seat(s) at the earliest possible moment. There are many replacement options. Thumb through the adds in the back pages of most any motorcycle magazine and you can find gel pads, lambskin, wooden roller balls as well as adds for such well known names such as Mustang or Corbin. I wasn't interested in throwing an accessory pad of any type on my seat . "What a minute guys, I have to make sure my whoooppeeee cushion is firmly attached." I also was not interested or able to spend hundreds on a seat. Perhaps if I regularly traveled thousands or hundreds of miles at a clip I would seek out a high end seat and see if it was for me.

My original idea was to take my stock seat to a local upholsterer and have them replace the foam with memory foam. My thought was that the high end seats do little more than give the rider a higher quality foam and why spend hundreds when I'm convinced it can be done for less. The thread replies were helpful and one led me to AMSSS. I spent some time browsing their informative non-professionally made web site. Whether or not the site is professional is of no consequence. It's the seat that matters, Right? and the service. I will state however that a 242 by 172 pixel image should not be 365 kb. An image that small should be no more than 35 kb while still able to reveal all the data. This is something they must look into because I got real tired of waiting for the images to download on my dial-up connection. Not everyone has high speed internet. If I hadn't been seriously interested I wouldn't have spent the time. There are 19 images on the page that showcases the AMSSS procedure. At about 300kb per image that's 6 megabytes of pictures which takes one half hour to download on a 26.4 dialup connection. Even at twice that speed it's still a 15 minute image download. Totally unacceptable.I took their image and decreased it's download size by a factor of 10. But enough of that stuff.

I printed out their order form and ordered the deluxo package which included memory foam and gel pad on the passenger and driver seat. The price was $150 for both. Currently AMSSS has a summer sale going on. $25 dollars off. I couldn't very well send them my seat as then I wouldn't be able to ride and that's not acceptable. I bought and OEM seat from a fellow at the VTXOA forum. It cost me $45 so the price is now up to $195 and toss in $30 shipping ($10 for me to get them my seat and $20 to get it back) the total is $225. About $45 is recoverable when I sell the OEM seat so say $180 to do the seat.

I sent the seat off and at the same time sent AMSSS an e-mail letting them know it was on the way. The following is part of the original e-mail

"Also, please acknowledge receipt of this e-mai
I look forward to my seat(s). I have only heard good things about your work
Thanks"

I received no mail so two days later I sent another e-mail reiterating my request for some acknowledgment that they knew the seat was coming. This time I did get an e-mail

"We will let you know when the seat is complete and gets shipped."

and that's just what AMSSS did.

I sent my seat out on a May 23rd and received it back on June 4th. That's acceptable shipping due to having a no mail holiday sandwiched in there. The seats arrived on a Saturday about two hours before work. I had time to install and take my wife for a ride. She said her seat felt softer and I couldn't tell about mine. I was off on Monday so I took the bike for a 40 mile ride and was really bummed cause the seat didn't feel better it was worse. It was just plain uncomfortable and to make matters worse the driver seat looked like this when I got off:

So, Jerry and the folk at AMSSS had somehow pulled the seat fabric way too tight which caused the ripple and seat/tank interface gap problems. I wasn't happy and told Jerry as much in an e-mail. Here is his reply:

"Send back the seat to us and I will rework it. I will reimburse you for the shipping cost.
I apologize for the inconvenience. When the seat comes in we will give it a priority and try to get it back out within one day.
Again I apologize ,, this sometimes happens. "
Jerry @ AMSSS

I couldn't help and wonder about the comment "this sometimes happens". Did he mean mistakes? Sure, that does happen. Did he mean we sometimes pull seat fabric too tight? It really didn't matter AMSSS was doing the right thing. Fixing their major screw-up at there expense. I sent the seat back and and then got this e-mail from AMSSS:

"I will let you know when the seat gets in. Again I apologize for the inconvenence,
These things sometimes happen."

So far I really had nothing major to complain about. Mistakes do happen and Jerry at AMSSS was doing everything as I would have. My only complaint was not responding to my initial e-mail and that is no biggy.

I sent the seat back on June 8th via USPS Priority mail. As an aside don't believe the USPS and their priority claims. It all BS. They maybe convenient but their service isn't in league with UPS or FEDEX. AMSSS should switch. On the 20th of June I sent AMSSS this e-mail"

"Well I gotta tell ya. Your not looking good at all. I see that the seat was delivered to you 6-10-05 at 1:43 PM
you didn't acknowledge that as you wrote you would. You have had the returned seat 10 days now and your rush job to fix your error has taken longer than the original job. What's with that?
Let me hear from you today and I think getting my seat before weeks end is not unreasonable. If you need the ACCT number I'm sure you can look it up"

At this point my e-mail was more terse yet not rude. The e-mail I got back read:

"Your seat was shipped on 6/18/05....You should have the seat by Tuesday 6/21. Sorry for not letting you know that we had the seat, It's very busy around hear."

I sent this e-mail to AMSSS:

"Cool, Now I'm looking for the deposit to my paypal account as outlined in a previous e-mail that will cover the cost of my having to ship back your faulty product. You can do that today."

And this is what came back"

"I put a check in with the seat. Our business is NOW CONCLUDED.. "

Everything was OK until that last, "NOW CONCLUDED" My thoughts were, this guy does a bunghole job on my seat, doesn't reply to e-mails unless bugged and doesn't do what he says he will regarding prioritizing my seat on it's return job and he's yelling at me that our business in now concluded? Well, it's really only about the seat...Right? Maybe for some but not for me. I run an eBay business, I run a computer repair business and design web sites. I would never treat a customer or an error of mine as cavalier as Jerry at AMSSS. Perhaps Jerry is really busy doing seats all day and is pooped at the end of the day. So pooped he can't answer e-mails. Well that's tough. If someone is going to run a business they better answer all e-mails. Folk may not agree with that but it is my philosophy. If one doesn't take real good care of their customer someone else will come along, they will and you maybe back selling pencils on the corner.

But wait....This is a seat review not a review of how Jerry runs his business. The seat was done correctly the second time and it IS more comfortable than the stock seat. The seat is a definite improvement. I've put hundreds of miles on it and have yet to get uncomfortable. I haven't riden it for 200 miles at a stretch thus far so the review is incomplete. It took 170 miles on the OEM seat to get monkey butt which is good. Will the AMSSS seat extend that number? I'll have to do a ride to find out and when I do this review will be updated.

IN CONCLUSION:

Would I recommend AMSSS?

No I won't. It's hard to recommend when they did it wrong though they made it right. I also won't say avoid at all costs. Ultimately it's all about the product, Right?