Good afternoon James,
I just wanted to follow up with you on your email and some of the concerns you may have. I certainly understand frustrations when a product does not work properly and also understand if you feel you are not being taken care of properly. I sat down with our service manager Scott and discussed your issues and concerns as to this matter and can assure you we are doing everything in our power to get your new auger on your machine. While I know it’s frustrating to have a piece of equipment sitting here unusable, we can only get the parts as fast as John Deere will send them to us, we are at their mercy for availability of parts and warranty issues.
I want to go over a timeline for the repairs on your 726E snowblower so that we are both on the same page………….
12/9/2009, your left auger collapsed while the machine was under factory warranty, we found a stick lodged in the auger which was the main reason for auger failure. We, Eis Implement, cannot tell John Deere that or they will not warranty anything so the auger was replaced under warranty which costs $320.20. Briggs & Straton paid us $170.92, which was their allowance for that job, so Eis Implement covered the $149.28 difference.
3/21/2011, your right auger collapsed. You stated that you did not have any skid shoes on your machine, however they were there but the bottoms were completely wore off which causes the auger to drop low enough to hit the concrete. I can tell you this first hand James that I had the former model a 724D and had the same thing happen because I have concrete and had to blow snow quite frequently that year. The skid shoes are a normal wear item, they will wear differently for different customers depending on the surface you are on (concrete, black top, gravel) and it is customer responsibility to check these to make sure they are set according to your conditions. We try to set them a certain way but every situation is different, you may want them set higher if you have gravel so that the machine isn’t picking up stones, you may set them tighter to the ground if you have a very flat drive way or you may set them up a bit if your driveway is uneven. This is something we as the dealership cannot know at set up and generally the customer needs to double check the height of skid shoes as well as cutting edge. I believe at this time you were charged $208.81 because the machine was no longer under factory warranty.
3/24/2011, your left auger collapsed again and we noticed that the cutting edge had been set a bit too far back causing the auger to hit the concrete and admitted we should have noticed this after the repairs on the 21st and decided even though the machine is out of warranty we would take care of the repairs, we did however have you pay for the cutting edge because it was wore badly. The second and third auger failures had a lot to do with wore skid shoes and cutting edges, while we do agree we could have adjusted the cutting edge forward some we also do not know everybody’s snow blowing conditions, what works for some may not work for others and wear items need to be checked and adjusted accordingly, however we did pay for this repair ourselves to help you out.
I know you had mentioned you have been without the machine for 7 weeks, the downtime has been 5 weeks since the 18th of March, still this I understand is unacceptable but please understand we do not make or ship the parts we get as frustrated at times as the customer does. I can assure you that this isn’t normal from John Deere at all but sometimes we see this with seasonal items. I also saw that you mentioned we had a new 726E in our showroom and thought we suggested we should take it out of that one and put it in yours to get you going, when I asked about this I was told that conversation never happened and actually you had told Scott that any snow from here on out would melt anyway so it wasn’t as big of a deal as it would be if it were earlier in the season. That at this point is probably mute because we are sold out of blowers other than the one I have at home.
As far as the back ordered part goes, you should send something to Deere on this, I agree that it is an unacceptable time frame to wait for a part. I do believe we have done everything we can do to try to help, we have absorbed things John Deere will not pay for and picked up the tab for the last repair because we acknowledged we could have adjusted the cutting edge a bit for you. Outside of coming to your house and doing routine adjustments to wear parts I feel we have tried very hard to help you with your problems. I can accept you not being happy with the product right now, but do have a hard time with you being upset with us when we are trying to help you.
If you would like to discuss this further or dispute and of this, please feel free to call me or stop in to talk further.
Thank you for your concerns, we are doing what we can to get them resolved.
UPDATE--- Briggs and Stratton, the manufacturer of the snowblower has been working with Eis Implement to further resolve this "issue". Eis Implement has again contacted the above party about the latest resolutions and concessions that Briggs and Stratton and Eis Implement have provided. Eis Implement feels all measures have been taken to satisfy this party above and beyond. Eis Implement is a family owned business that takes great pride in providing superior customer service to thousands of customers each year since 1946 and has a positive standing with the Better Business Bureau.
