Posted by JD Seller on December 08, 2018 at 19:22:35 from (208.126.198.213):
We are having a bit of trouble with a local JD store. It seems they push the service billing to the limit. Then change the bill when/if the customer complains. Some examples of what they are doing. At first glance it seemed like just simple mistakes but there is a pattern to it. Just for information the labor rate is $90 per hour for service calls.
1) This one happened to me/us. The boys bought a JD 8530 with a known transmission problem. Cheap tractor even with the repair. We take the transmission out. I took it fully apart. Due to an oil quality issue the clutch packs/disks where ruined. The bearing and such where in good condition. So mainly just needed the clutch pack disks and separators plates no housing ruined. To really get those packs back together easily it takes some special tools. Since it was right in the middle of harvest we decided to hire the local JD store to come out and put the packs together. I talked to the mechanic and he was fine with doing it for us. I had everything staged. Laid out all cleaned up for assembly. He came out right after lunch and started the work. I had to leave shortly after that. He called me at 4 PM telling me he was done. So maybe 3 1/2 to 4 hours time. Even having to pay for his travel to and from the store it would not have been more than five hours. When we got the bill it was for seven of labor plus a service call charge. I stop in at the store and the service manager corrected the bill after I explained it to him. So just seemed like a time reporting issue.
2) This one happened to a neighbor. He broke the feeder house chain adjusting bolts in his combine. He is up in his seventies with no one to help him on the farm. So he had them come out and replace the bolts plus adjust the chain. He dries his corn with an older manual dump batch drier. You fill it up and it dries the batch and shuts off. You then dump it and refill it and start over. He knows the drying time so he can come in from the field and refill it and keep things going. He had just filled the drier when the JD mechanic got there. He helped the mechanic replace the bolts and adjust the chain. He had the mechanic do a quick walk around on the combine. Nothing big wrong that could not wait until after season. The dryer kicked off right when the mechanic got done. My friend says it takes right at 3 hours per batch. So there time would have been around 3-4 four hours of time depending on travel time. He was billed six hour labor. Complained hours reduced.
3) Another local fellow. He was using a JD 4020 power shift to spray soybeans. He has a hydraulic driven sprayer pump. Plus it was one of the hottest days of the summer. The tractor's hydraulic system started acting up. He called the local dealership's mechanic directly. That tech could not get there until the next morning. That was OK. He called me on the off chance I could helped him out. I talked him through some stuff to check. One them being to check to see if his oil cooler/radiator was clean. I know the fellow and he is bad about running the fuel tank over with his slow filling gravity tank. The fuel runs down the side screens and get sucked into the radiator oil cooler. Then dust and dirt sticks to it. Well it was dirty/blocked again. I tell him to wash it out really well and use some dish sop to cut the oil film. He does that and the hydraulics run fine. He called the dealership and tells them to not send the mechanic out the next day. He was gone the next day. The next months Farm plan bill showed a $200 and some dollar service call charge. He had a copy of the bill and it was for a stroke control valve and two hour labor. He looked at the tractor and could not see anything done. He came over and asked me what the part number was for an if I could tell if it had been replaced. I looked the part number up and then looked at the tractor. Nothing had been done to it. The original paint was on all the hydraulic pump fittings/plugs. So he called the dealership and they told him they would check on it. They cleared the bill the next month.
So there are three accounts of the dealership over billing or miss-billing on service work. This is happening after the dealer closed the local store two years ago and we now have to go to the next town over. All of this is happening to the close store's local customers. I am hearing this complaint from others too. It seems to be getting too common to just be mistakes. So I am not really sure what is going on with 100% certainty.
Our dealing with this store are way down after the way they handled our open account. Nearly 90% of our parts now come from another dealership that is 60 miles away. We rarely have service work done by dealerships. We/I do not know any of the mechanics at the store we are getting parts from. So we/I can not judge if they are good or not. The local store's mechanics are all good but one fellow. I make sure and tell them to NOT send him out to us.
The local store manager and the parts manager have been both been out to see us trying to get our parts business back. The store manger was just out last week. I did talk to him about the service billing issues and he made it out to be all book keeping errors. I am just not sure. I also am not going to switch the parts back anytime soon. It would not be fair to do that after the other store stepped up and gave us very good service. They will deliver parts to us three days a week, if we have any ordered. They are using our shop as a drop point for any other customers in this close area. I know this is hurting the local store's parts numbers some. Makes things complicated when they never needed to be. If they had left their open account alone they would not have lost business. Now they are offering to go back to open accounts it that will get the business back. In my mind too little too late.
It has got me to thinking about trying the other store for service work too. What do you fellows think????
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