Yeah and when was that? 4 years ago for your '18 Himmie? A lot has changed since then, economy-wise. Dollar is down, pay is up and therefore so are costs! Big cities are hit harder. Your mechanics out there must have worked cheap, even back then. Shop rates have been at least $100 an hour here for 10 years.
Yeah, a 3-week wait would be a dealbreaker for a 4 hour service for someone depending on their bike! However, the first service is more than just an oil change and valve adjustment - they have a checklist of everything they have to inspect. If it's a good dealer they'll go through the bike with a fine-toothed comb and give you the results of everything they checked. It's a lot of stuff! Also you have to realize that the valve adjustment has to be done cold and the engine oil is changed when hot. 4 hours is only enough time consecutively if the job starts when the engine is already cold. My own bike had to stay overnight because of that - I rode it in to the service.
It's hard to stomach a service that costs 10% or more as much as the bike, but those guys have to make a living too. I do my own services, but I did pay for the first one and I might pay for the 12K mile one, too. My dealer is expensive, but their techs are quite good. Took me a few months and some questions to realize how good they really are.
+1 Exactly. Go down the 30+ items of the 300 mile service schedule and I'll tell you as a mechanic myself, most anyone would be hard pressed to accomplish that checklist, if done properly and in totality, in under 6hrs.
Now I know in the real world that there are shops and techs that probably pencil whip or skimp on the checklist, but many good and ethical ones don't.
I actually spent much longer myself doing it. It's my bike and I went down that list and added more, because it's MY bike. It wasn't a chore but an opportunity, to get to know the bike better and even corrected some things I preferred my way over RE's or the bike's assembler.
I know many owners look at these maintenance schedules as an inconvenience or even an annoyance, preferring to ride rather than wrench, but believe me, it's not just for warranty compliance but rider safety and the reliability of the bike. That's why it's classed as Preventive Maintenance.
If you don't have the time, patience or inclination to do it yourself, and do it RIGHT, then definitely take it to the shop and don't complain. If you can't afford to have outside maintenance done and you don't want to service it yourself, you shouldn't have bought the bike.
I look at it this way, if I'm going to be taking the bike apart, pulling the tank, rear wheel... etc.. for a service schedule, then I might as well take advantage of the time and access to look at additional items I normally wouldn't see or have access to, and not on the checklist, like potential problem areas I hear of on this forum, like wire runs, wire and hose chafing or pinching, loose connections, unsecured or improperly routed cables; hoses, lines or cables contacting sharp edges or metal that might cut through 1000 miles down the road.. etc..
Like has been said previously, there's a lot more to the service schedules, especially the first one, than an oil change and tappet adjustment. Look at it as insurance