Not sure what I'm supposed to face up to and I've never told anything but the truth. I didn't "get screwed". I have an 06 K9, that I love, with over 50000 miles on it. I've had a few issues with it but not from anything BD did. I tell no lies when I say I have the same transmission now that I had when the bike was brand new with no repairs or rebuilds just regular maintenance. I have a 2nd EHC in the bike but only because the factory repaired the battery box in 2010 and they didn't put the wiring back correctly which led to a short that toasted the EHC, the ignition module and the annunciator board. I know numerous people with multiple thousands of miles on their BDs and they are happily continuing to motor down the road without issue. What I can say with utmost truth is that the more BDs I work on the more a few common threads keep surfacing such as buyers who were lied to about the true mileage of the bike and in many cases just how the bike was truly treated while the seller owned it, shops that know nothing about the BDs and proceed to do shit work to the bike, owners who have tampered with the bikes when they don't know what their doing. I see broken bikes due to these issues far more often than I see bikes that just magically broke for no reason or because of poor design or quality on BD's part, your experience may differ...

Having said the above I can't disagree with your statement completely as they most certainly allowed their customers to conduct the R&D for them, and at the customers cost, in far too many cases.