Big brother is watching.

[canoetrpr]

I've been a member here for about two years now. Learned a whole bunch on this forum and it helped guide my L3400 purchase last year. On the whole I've been quite happy with the tractor.

Unfortunately, due to very real errors that were made on the part of the dealer I purchased from, I have been less than impressed with them and I have stated so on this forum.

I won't go into details about what the errors / issues were. They were ultimately resolved to my satisfaction. However in my opinion they should have never been made, and after a few, I formed a rational opinion wrt. the competency of the selling dealer.

You should note that I have never identified my dealer by name, or myself by name for that matter.

When I decided to look into a L3540, I decided, given my experience, for rational reasons to talk to a competitor of my purchasing dealer - also a Kubota dealer. While I never went ahead with that purchase I asked them to look into the PTO CAM issue that has been spoken about in this forum. I never identified this dealer either. Ultimately the word I got from them was that Kubota would not cover it under warranty. For a while I didn't do much about it but I finally decided to contact Kubota Canada about it. Except I thought it unfair to not give the dealer who sold me the machine the opportunity to look into this issue for me before going directly to Kubota and asking them to cover a warranty issue with the work being done by a competitor of the dealer I purchased at. I also thought that I probably ought to give them the benefit of the doubt.

This morning I received a nasty rather unprofessional phone call from the my selling dealer who basically reamed me out for "slandering" them on tractorbynet and going to their competitors and threatened a lawsuit.

Note again, I have never so much as mentioned my name or my dealers name on here or anywhere.

The dealer went further and said that while they would get this covered under warranty but would ensure that they charged me for fluid, filters and trucking as the warranty didn't cover that.

I calmly asked the dealer to fax me anything that could point to me slandering their name on this forum or elsewhere. As a matter of fact this dealers name only comes up once on this forum at all and is a post from 2004 that is completely unrelated to me.

Of course I have not recieved a fax and there will be none forthcoming.

I spoke to a member of the staff who was aware of the situation who pointed out that they had received this information from the person at Kubota Canada who they had contacted about the warranty PTO work I was requesting. Whomever this individual is spent the time corroborating the fact that I had already talked to a competitor and further did big brotherly investigative work to link me to this username on tractorbynet and sent out this information to the dealer to inform them of which user I was and that I was "slandering" their name on tractorbynet.

I m now told through the purchasing dealer that Kubota will only cover this work from the purchasing dealer who is obviously very unhappy with me despite me never having used the dealers name on this site or anywhere else.

As you can guess, I am incredibly irritiated. I have very rational reasons for not being happy with my purchasing dealer involving lack of attention to detail on their part when my tractor was delivered. Such is life. Lots of consumers have some sort of falling out with their tractor or car dealer and take it somewhere else for warranty or service work. If the dealer or Kubota cared about what my concerns were, perhaps they could have asked . I don't believe that the way to treat the customers who are dissapointed in your products/services for rational reasons is to call them and threaten them with lawsuits.

I was told by the member of the dealers staff that I spoke to that this was a "misunderstanding" and that it was thought that I had directly named them. I have not recieved any sort of apology for this treatment.

As I am confident that both the dealer in question and big brother at Kubota Canada are monitoring my activity on this forum, I would like to inform them that I will be very careful about what I say from now on and I would like to advise other users in Canada to do the same. It is not adequate to not name your dealer if you have anything negative to say about them - regardless of whether it is valid or not as someone is trying to coroborrate your userid with which customer you are and what dealer you bought from and your dealer might be provided with a list of your "missteps"... so you better behave.

 

[Singlecoil]

I disagree about your last statement.

You did nothing wrong. They don't know what slander is apparently. Slander or libel as it would be in this case, is only valid if you intentionally posted something that was false, did so with intent to injure, and they can prove that they have in fact been injured by your posting. If there was a legitimate understanding, then you can offer to post a retraction. If you do that then there is no case. If what you posted was true, then there is no case.

You can tell these guys to go straight to he%$. At least you can south of the 49th parallel. I would think the laws are similar in Canada.
Don't worry about it for another minute.

 

[BTDT]

Sorry to hear of your ordeal, so are you still thinking of purchasing a new tractor (Kubota)?

 

[JerryG]

Sounds like someone at Corp. inflated their big nose into something to a greater extent than they should have and the dealer popped off before they knew what they were talking about. At the very least nether side handled it very professionally. All companies are going to have to figure out how to handle business a little different now that the Internet has influenced it to the extent that it has.

 

[canoetrpr]

Hi Singlecoil:

I'm being a tad sarcastic in the last paragraph

I know that I've done nothing wrong. For the record it might be worthwhile to analyse why I an unnamed consumer had come to a conclusion about an unnamed dealer.

- I informed them about the 3pt hitch jerkyness issue when I signed the deal. Issue was not addressed when the tractor was delivered. I don't care that they said that they "checked" with Kubota about it. It shoud not have taken much more than due dillegence to check on how smooth the 3PT was before delivery. A valve that moves in 1 inch increments, does not qualify.

- I ordered and paid for a 5 ft Woods BB60 bush hog. I was delivered a 4 ft Woods BB48. I actually didn't realise this until a few days in - being a new tractor owner and all. When I informed them of this they pointed out to me that I did have the right implement. It took me pointing out that the serial number on the implement did not even match that on my invoice.

The above two issues were resolved to my satisfaction but pointed to a as serious lack of attention to detail on their part.

The list goes on with some minor things.

- When purchasing I asked about what the largest light duty rotary cutter size was I could run with the tractor. I was told 5'. After purchase I found that the manual says 6'.

- I was never told anything about ballast (loaded tires or ballast box) despite getting a loader on the tractor. Only after checking here did I find I needed one so asked and paid for it separately.

- When I made my deal I asked them to sell me a rotary cutter with a slip clutch. Months after my purchase when I go to slip my slip clutch as part of normal maintenance I find that I have no slip clutch at all! I decided not to persue this as I figured it was less aggravation for me to just purchase one.

- When I went to pay for my tractor, the dealer under charged me by about $500. I pointed this out to them and discovered that they had not charged me for the tooth bar. They fixed the paperwork and charged me correctly.

I understand that mistakes happen, however I believe that it is fair for me to make a rational conclusion about their competence given the lack of attention to detail.

 

[canoetrpr]

All companies are going to have to figure out how to handle business a little different now that the Internet has influenced it to the extent that it has.

Jerry, you've got that right.

 

[TedLaRue]

Wow.

Hard to know exactly what's going on.

Let me toss out a scenario (this is purely hypothetical). Suppose someone at Kubota Canada got a call from your dealer about the situation. Then they Googled L3400 PTO CAM warranty to see if the problem is unique or widespread or perhaps to see how it has been handled by other dealers. They discovered your postings.

Suppose they then called your dealer, informed them that this situation was being publicized on TBN, and gave them some grief for mishandling the situation and hurting the Kubota name. Then your dealer assumed they had been named and "slandered" and gave you the nasty phone call. In this scenario (again, this is purely hypothetical) Kubota Canada was responsibly researching a problem and then simply informing the dealer of a situation that needed fixed, but the dealer reacted a bit brashly. This seems quite plausible to me: the dealer mishandled a situation, got called on the carpet, and then, being upset about that, mishandled things again.

I was about to suggest that you call Kubota Canada, explain the situation and the dealer's threats, etc., but then I realized that you probably have already done that. They'll probably find your post first thing in the morning. Hopefully this will all be resolved for you and maybe your dealer will handle things differently in the future. Big Brother may be watching your posts, but if Big Brother doesn't treat customers fairly, we will read about it on TBN!

I hope you aren't awakened by a black helicopter with a maple leaf painted on it hovering near your home tomorrow morning!

 

[john_bud]

Canoe,

Actually, I think that Kubota Canada must have looked into your complaint and found that the dealer was making Kubota corporate look bad, silly, foolish and arrogantly unresponsive to the plight of a customer. Kubota is a company that has a good reputation, a reputation that has taken a century to form. They may have had a strong conversation with the selling dealer. Personally, I would send a copy of the correspondence to the Head of Quality for Kubota Tractors in Osaka, Japan so that they can understand how Kubota is not respecting the customers in Canada.

I can understand that the selling dealer would charge you for trucking the machine and for filters. I wouldn't want them to strain and pour back the fluid (which is done by the way), so new fluid is a chargeable item too. They may be uncouth pecker woods, incompetent at setting up tractors, illiterate to the point where they can't distinguish 48 from 60 and incapable of simple columnar addition, but they are correct on those points.

 

[RayMunising]

Wow! I think it's wonderful that Kubota Canada took the time and effort to track you down and address your problem. They score big points for showing such initiative. However, the reaction from your dealer is unacceptable. I would never deal with this person again. I would call Kubota Canada tell them what has transpired and explain to them that having someone that acts in such an unprofessional manner is not acceptable to you and would like some other dealer perform the work on your tractor from now on. I'm sure they will agree.

A note to Canoetrpr's dealer (who I'm sure is monitoring this thread): You need to call Canoetrpr and apologize big time and pray he is a bigger man than I and forgive you. I wouldn't. You crossed the line in my book.

BTW - there's a new thread about a recall on the PTO cable for the L3400/L2800. Maybe it addresses some concerns about the PTO on this tractor. Check it out Canoetrpr. You too Hamer.

 

[RichNJKubota]

Just a note on "big brother". What you do on the internet is basically public knowledge, or at for those that pay for the information. Basic info available to a web server includes - type of web browser, operating system, date, time, you're request to that web server, you're IP address and the link that sent you to the current site. And that's just what the web server gets. What about cookies and companies like double click? I have to admit I don't know much about this stuff but I can certainly guess that companies are compiling info on what sites you visit, your userid's, etc.
How far does the linking and gathering of "personal" info go? Think about your health insurance, gov't information, court records - divorce, bankruptcy, wedding license, birth of children, SS#, driver's license, local property tax info, bank info, credit reporting companies, credit card companies? Add that to your web history and you've got a pretty good picture of a person and their family and friends.
I have no first hand info on how much of this goes on but being a programmer I know it's possible and easy to do.
So, would Kubota, or any other large company, Google your TBN info or would they pay $25 for your complete web (complete with userid's and postings at TBN), personal and family history?