The other side of P* O* customer

If the dealership is too big to bother with small accounts, say so from the begining, don't keep the equipment sitting around for months and then not service it at all. It's fine if the dealer only wants big accounts, but be upfront about it.

Most dealerships have an off-season program to inspect & fix machines - sounds like the balers where there long enough to get in on the off-season times.

I don't know you Nancy, you could be whining problem customers, who knows? ;) But most dealerships I visit love the type of customer who drops off a machine & says get it field ready - that is a lot of profit for them. Tightwads like me are the problem for a dealership. ;)

There is far more profit in $5000 of fixing something than in $100,000 of new sales, so that argument doesn't fly for me.

I woulda not taken the 2nd baler there.

--->Paul

To make you feel a little better I will tell you a story about a local seed and fert joint. They were an "outlet" for Miles Farm Supply. They did about half thier buissness with two big local farmers. Sent them on big duck hunting trips, gave them carhart coats, you name it. Treated every one else like they were second class people. The manager told me one time that he did not have time to mix up a batch of 2 tons of pasture fertilize. Would not order 50lbs of pearl millet seed, you name it. Well when the two local big shots who where always try'n to out do each other got behind on their bills Mile's sold the store to CPS, class act folks. The manager there treats every one the same. They will order any thing you need. Store is grow'n every year.

Oh, the high and mighty manager from Mile's is a glorified meter reader for the county water department.

Dave

Sorry for my delayed response. I will try to answer your questions as best I can with no excuses.

Question 1: “If your hubby was able to fix it himself, why didn't he do it in the first place?”

This was the first baler I have ever bought. I have never owned or operated a baler before in my life.

Bottom line is that at that time I was inexperienced with balers.

I believe that a dealership may be the best qualified and authorized place to have your equipment serviced and/or repaired.

The mechanics/technicians have the technical training, knowledge and “hands on” experience to repair your baler.

They are knowledgeable about certain parts/systems that need to be checked that the owner may not be aware of.

Once I received the operator’s manuals, I studied each page and familiarized myself with the operation, maintenance, and lubrication of the baler.

I will offer an example: When a person has never used a computer before and buys their first computer, if they have a problem they usually return it to the retailer where it was purchased or another computer retail store for either help or service. Most new owners will not try to repair the computer themselves.

Sometimes the old saying “if you want something done right, do it yourself” does not apply; certainly in my situation of never owning or operating a baler.

What I have learned and have taught my students is “Inexperience can be cured; stubbornness and pride are self limiting”.

I have no experience working on a baler; however, after dismantling the automatic tying mechanism, cleaning it, replacing the “farmer tech” with original parts, and adjusting it following the instructions in the operator’s manual, it worked fine. Only missed ties on the right side of the first two bales, but was able to readjust it and correctly tie the third bale.

My opinion is to let the professionals work on my equipment, watch, listen, and learn from the professionals, follow the instructions on operation, maintenance, and lubrication provided by the manufacturer, then do the maintenance work myself only after I know how to do it correctly and safely.

Question 2: “Why would you expect a dealer to grease your machine, aren't you capable of doing that yourself?”

I will refer to part of my answer to Question 1.

A dealership may be the best qualified and authorized place to have your equipment serviced.

The mechanics/technicians have the technical training, knowledge and “hands on” experience to service your baler.

They are knowledgeable about certain parts/systems that need to be checked that the owner may not be aware of.

I had tried to remove bearing caps to check the wheel bearings and repack with new grease.

Rather than destroy the bearing caps, which I could not figure out how to remove, I asked the dealer to check and repack the wheel bearings.

Once I received the operator’s manuals, I studied each page and familiarized myself with the lubrication requirements of the baler.

Since the dealership did not grease the baler as I asked, then it was up to me to determine how to do it right.

I removed every grease fitting, cleaned it with a rotary brush, soaked it in penetrating oil, made sure grease would go through it, and reinstalled it.

All guards were removed, chains were cleaned thoroughly with penetrating oil, and chainsaw bar and chain oil was brushed liberally on every chain.

All the bars were cleaned and sprayed with WD40 to prevent additional rust and wear on the chain links where the bar is attached.

Everything worked fine; no broken chains, no overheated bearings, no grinding noises from the gearbox, no u-joint failure, no worn sprockets, and best of all the baler did not catch on fire.

Over the years I have learned that oil and grease is cheaper than worn out or broken parts that result from intentional owner neglect.

Question 3: “Maybe they knew what they were in for and decided to bail instead of having to deal with a constantly disgruntled customer.”

Before we took the baler to the dealership, I talked with the owner over the phone and discussed what I wanted done to the baler. With any piece of equipment that I own, I always call and ask the sole proprietor or commercial business if they can do the repairs, if they will do the repairs, and when they can do the repairs.

When we took the baler to the dealership, the owner that I had talked with over the phone made out the work order of repairs/maintenance that we requested. We basically asked that he make any repairs necessary to get the baler “field ready”.

I did not expect them to “test” the baler to see if it would make a bale of hay. That would have been an unrealistic request in anyone’s book.

I did expect them to hook up the hydraulics to a tractor, raise and lower the tailgate, and raise and lower the pick up.

I even suggested that I would bring my tractor and test the tailgate and pickup; he assured me that both worked fine and that hooking up to my tractor would not be necessary.

I asked about the automatic tying mechanism and was assured that it was working. I probably should have asked to see the tying mechanism hooked up to a battery and tested with the remote switch. Truth in the old expression “Hindsight is always 20/20”.

So at this point we left our other baler to be serviced and repaired and took the other baler home.

In my opinion customer service is an attitude and behaivor that is conveyed by a “service provider” and perceived by a customer.

If the service that I am requesting is not available or not provided, then please let me know up front and save both of us some valuable time.

If I am not happy with the service, I can either complain or just do business with someone else in the future.

Many years ago when I was a banker, I learned never to prejudge a person based upon their appearance. Just because a person did not have several thousand dollars on deposit did not indicate their “true” wealth. I can recall at least one of my customers that ultimately became a millionaire after loosing virtually all of her possessions.

Since an employee, not the owner, at this particular dealership prejudged us based on our previous volume of trade, he plainly indicated to my wife over the phone that our business was not valued.

It seemed unusual to me that when I went to speak with him personally in his office, that his “tone” changed when dealing with a man instead of a woman. Years ago someone once told me “Mr. Howell you have a way of telling someone to go to H*** in such a way that they look forward to the trip.” To this day I am not sure if that statement was an insult or a compliment.

Bottom line is that I am not really a disgruntled customer as you have prejudged me to be. I just do not trade where my business is not welcome.

Back in the day when I was a law student, we were told by one law professor that there are at least two versions of the truth. I have just presented my version of the truth in this particular situation in answering your questions.

You have probably heard the old expression “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks”.

Last Spring this old dog learned a new trick – how simple it is to grease a baler.

I agree with you 100% that a baler is simple to grease.

Hope this answers your questions. My email is open and phone number 972-860-8307 is available if you have any other questions.

Once again I apologize for the delayed response.

Thanks,
James L. Howell

Their competition is Walter Implement, a Massey Ferguson/AGCO dealer. They go the extra mile to serve their customers.

And I have seen this scenario before, it's total bs, and many times you can tell up front that you are getting lip service, your whatever it is being worked on will be an ornament at their place unless you call and get all over their collective @sses until it's done. Now why do I want to have to do that when I do the same thing at work, checking on people and things to be done, big part of high rise building construction is to make deadlines, who needs it out side of work? I have also been fortunate enought to have dealt with a a couple of good service managers, that handed my list to the mechanic and it was done to the letter, one particular dealership where he said that I have one mechanic here that is top notch on the ford trucks, like mine, the work was done well and on time and he said in appreciation for your business I'll arrange for him to work on your vehicles, I met the mechanic and at times I'd drop a few thousand in work to this dealer, was a good relationship, you pay a premium but at least they made sure to do a great job everytime. I had an engine light that kept coming on, in the shop several times, kept coming back on, finally this mechanic figured it out.

It defies business ethics to bump customers, it means that you are shorthanded, and do not know how to manage your time, nor put the extra effort in to catch up or keep up with the backlog. It's not the easiest business to be in. We had a ford tractor dealership and regardless of what came in the shop, tractors or implements, time was managed to make sure all customer work was done, no matter how the schedule was manipulated, we also asked people to try not to wait until the last minute whenever possible, but that was about it on our customer policies, we always took care of our customers. We also had 2 tilt bed C series ford trucks for pick up and delivery, and 2 small service trucks 4 mechanics and 2 parts people that worked as a team to get it done, things were not like this years ago, I can certainly relate to the situation, I remember a lot about that business, although just a kid, without the good service, the customers would be gone and some of the large sales, like one we had to the power company for backhoes, were only closed after they tested out our service by intentionally leaving a tractor unplugged in the winter to see how we would respond to get them going again, 1 machine serviced properly and promptly sold 29 more later on, it was a big sale for us.

It's either do it yourself, or you have to ride these kind of people, when they should have just refused the work to start with, hey I'm just too busy looks a lot better to a customer than taking in something and letting it sit there.

I recently took our late model compact from the horse farm to get fully serviced at the dealer who sold it, was actually our competitor back in the dealer days and they did 95% on the list, I had some nitty gritty annoying things in there as well, that were not critical, a missing guard and minor things that if I had the parts I'd just do myself. I called up and checked a few times, but nothing like what you describe, he'd be right out of busines, they did a good job with a tractor that sees a lot of use and needs regular service work.

I'd have pulled that baler out of there after 1 week, and they should have just turned down the work, to begin with. You don't need them anyway, just find and order what you need and get it off the web, and those balers, you are best off knowing how to work on them anyway, keep some necessary spares on hand, my father was probably not the most mechanically inclined but kept a pair of late model ford moco's and 532 square balers running without having to take them to our shop, need to have patience that is for sure, not easy but can be done, sometimes just best done yourself when outside resources are unreliable.

Just my 2 cents