Can You Defend Kubota Corporation....

[Dargo]

Okay, I have to reply to a couple of things because I'm laughing so hard. For one, OrangeGuy, I appreciate your thoughts, but you simply are flat wrong. I happen to work around the auto industry, and not only do manufacturers get involved in getting vehicles repaired (they will pull the franchise from a dealer if they have too many complaints or if they refuse to repair their product - if the dealer doesn't know how, they send in their own technicians who either make the proper repair, or replace the entire vehicle), the local, state, and federal government also get involved. Why do you think we have "Lemon Laws"?! Not many people are willing to say "oops, I guess I just blew $50,000 here; oh well".

Second, </font><font color="blue" class="small">( Soften up the attack, use a little "honey", and discover how much more successful you can be)</font>. Maybe you've missed the part where I've spent 18 months working with the dealer trying to get numerous issues resolved. This isn't about one issue, two issues, or three issues; this is about several issues. Also, I've let me dealer literally put me off for months with tractor problems that prevented me from using my tractor. Sorry, but I think you are 180 degrees off. If anything, by not ranting and throwing a fit, I think I simply got ignored. I know you do not know all the facts, but your answer couldn't be further from a "defense" of Kubota in my situation.

Neil, I know you take care of your customers, but you also know other dealers don't exactly do so. If you say that Kubota Corporation is not ultimately responsible to fix the product they make, who is?? It has been well established that my dealer isn't going to fix my Kubota problems. Kubota rather bluntly told me they can't help. Am I supposed to write off $50,000 of Kubota products as a learning experience and go buy something that works? I believe you'll find that our court system in the United States is not going to allow a manufacturer to sell defective products and simply say "sorry, we can't help you"; especially when it is under their warranty.

Personally, rather than throw a big fit and cause a scene at the dealer and with Kubota, or even in the court system, I will simply repeat my story with documented facts and take my money elsewhere. I may be wrong, but I'd be willing to bet that once it becomes clear to the public that Kubota says that they are "not responsible" for their defective products, there might be just more than little ole me spend their dollars with someone else. As I said, there isn't a single manufacturer that I've previously bought a tractor from (other than Kubota) that I wouldn't seriously consider purchasing again, and I'm pretty certain that they will still take my money. /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif

 

[kingoflawns]

Hello junk, you recall my post about being blown off big time about the kubota snowblower. I paid out 23 grand for my set up. I sent a polite,direct letter to torrance ca. including photographs to terry criss, kubota satisfaction dept. Complete blow off, no letter,no call back,nothing. That is poor business, if i treated my clients in such a manner, i would be out of business. Perhaps my next tractor will be red? Scott.

 

[jim_wilson]

My BX23 just spent two weeks at the dealer to get a number of items repaired. The first one was the broken air cleaner bracket - I had over 300 hours on the tractor since I received it last July and the bracket has been broken since sometime last fall. Since it did not affect the machine working in any way that I could see I just kept using it like that knowing that I would get it fixed some time in the future. This was fixed under warranty with no questions asked by my dealer.

The next item was the hazards not working occasionally - this again was fixed by the dealer under warranty with no questions asked.

The last item I had a problem with was a chronic leak from the front axle that I thought was the pivot seal on the right side kingpin. The dealer originally thought this was the seal also - so they replaced it. And the axle continued to leak - so they looked a little closer and discovered that there was a hairline crack in the housing that was seeping hydraulic fluid from the axle housing. This again was replaced under warranty. I talked with the shop supervisor and asked him if this could have been due to something that I had done and his reply was "unless you have driven it off of a second story building no - we sell containerloads of these tractors and have never seen it and I looked on the Kubota tech system and could not find any reports of it. Most likely it was an inclusion in the casting that started the crack".

Now in a posting going back a few weeks there was a number of other people saying that the front axles on the BX tractors were also leaking. I believe a couple of them said that replacing the seals did not fix the problem. Some others said that they replaced the hydraulic fluid in the front axle with gear oil and the leaking stopped. I worked in an auto dealer for a while and from that experience and my own experience fixing stuff for the last 25 years I would say that some of the above mentioned BX owners are good candidates to also have a crack in their axle housing - but the dealers just aren't finding the problem. Just because Kubota does not have any incidents on record of cracked axle housings (besides mine) does not mean the problem is not out there - it just means the dealers aren't correctly diagnosing the problem - and/or owners aren't even bothering the report it.

 

[ccsial]

We are in a time when most companies are under staffed. They simply don't have the people to answer all the questions they get. I have always said that the dealer is more important than the brand. The dealer should go to bat for you. I deal with three dealers. My Kubota, JD and Ford(NH) dealers have been excellent so far. All three of these dealers are fairly large and all do a lot of AG business as well. I asked around about them before I bought.

As the global enconomy expands and large corporations have to compete we can expect more of this. They will push off as much on the dealers as they can, so the good dealer becomes more important.

Pushing off support to dealers has become more and more prevelant in the industrial world too. It is hard to find a really sharp person to get tech support from these days.

 

[JoeR]

</font><font color="blue" class="small">( We are in a time when most companies are under staffed. )</font>


This is a very accurate statement. I work in engineering for a very large wireless carrier, and can tell you that we average over 80 cell sites per engineer. We can't possibly respond to all the complaints or issues. I have had escalations, and most had nothing to do with engineering. Sadly, our customers service and sales people are not knowledgable enough to handle simple issues. Bad phones, billing issues, etc... Somehow they get dumped on us, and I have to tell the customer, "Sorry, but I can't give refunds or fix your billing issue." If our sales people had listened to the customer, they could have resolved the problem, but the sales guy is on commission and he wants a sale not a complaint. Our customer service people are under the gun to handle 60 calls an hour, so if the call takes to long to resolve, they dump it on someone else. Then we have the customer who wants something for free. I love these people! They complain all the way to the top, because they expect a free phone! They tell me they dropped 20 calls in a week, I look at their records and find they didn't even make 20 calls that week! They average 2 calls per day, and each call last more than 20 minutes. If they were dropping we would see repeat attempts on the same number, and a disconnect reason indicating a drop.

Overall, most problems can be resolved by the local sales and service staff of most organizations. You just have to find the right person who gives a manure!

Joe


Joe

 

[jim_wilson]

I just wanted to make a comment about your " Joe Consumer" remarks - because as far as tractors go - that's what I was before I found TBN. You used the heavy duty alternator as an example - and it is good one, because I am one of the people who asked for the high amp alternator in my BX23 when I bought it - because of what I read here. But what this example points out - besides what you mentioned about TBN not necessarily representing the real world - is that maybe Kubota does not do a good enough job with their literature in showing all of the options available for their tractors. This may well be affecting profits on their end and the dealers. If the optional high amp alternator had been more prominently explained/displayed in Kubota literature or on their website TBN might not have had as big a role to play in explaining the options to me.

I spent a few years working in a Mercedes/BMW dealer when I first got out of college. I learned that in the car dealer world there is a pecking order - if you are a good mechanic you can rise up and go work in a dealer that sells high end cars, you make more money, the customers are generally better and th cars are cooler to work on. This is not a slam against 'tractor people' but I am sure a similar type of situation exists in the tractor/heavy equipment world. There are guys who work on lawnmowers, there are guys who work on tractors, and there are guys who work on heavy equipment - if you are good you rise up and go where the money is, and I am sure it isn't in fixing lawnmowers and BX tractors. Tractor dealers - and this an over generalized statement I know - are not in the same league technically as say a dealer who sells Lexus or Mercedes automobiles. Kubota as a manufacturer has a lot less to lose when one of their products has a problem than say a major car manufacturer does. If I am Joe Blow walking off the street and I have never come across TBN the reality is that I am probably going to buy a tractor based on less than complete information. And any bad thing that happens to me on that tractor will in all likelihood not ripple across the market they way it will with something like an automobile because tractor owners (at least in my neck of the woods) are few and far between. If you really want to influence the marketplace suing isn't way to do it - there is a web site out there - whose name I can't mention because it will get removed from string - that does reviews. If these reviews actually were Consumer Reports-like critical and did head to head evaluations I believe this might have a much bigger effect over time than any lawsuit. Once people knew they could go online and get a level headed review of a certain tractor and compare it head to head against the competition all of the " I think my Deere FEL lifts more than your Kubota" BS would go away and the manufacturers would be forced to actually start posting realistic specs and fixing their problems.

 

[Mike_C]

</font><font color="blue" class="small">( Its just hard for you guys to understand what a weird world TBN is. Its nothing at all like what joe consumer faces on a day to day basis. On here you read about things like sticking hydro pedals and heavy duty alternators regularly. In the "real world" I have never had a customer ask for a heavy duty alternator
)</font>

I attribute that to the fact that most of the TBN users are more educated, more interested, and more involved than "Joe Consumer". I'm sure there are a lot of people out there buying tractors who barely know how to operate them, much less work on them themselves. Then there are probably die hard farmers who use their tractors for farming, but don't have a computer (not all I'm sure). But if you look at the profiles of TBN users, you see things like "Mechanical Engineer", "Electrical Engineer", "Air Force Pilot", "Retired Engineer" (no offense to anyone I skipped over), yes, this is a different breed than Joe Consumer, so yes I would expect to see people on here talking about heavy duty alternators where you would not from the people visiting your store. Take me for example, I ordered the heavy duty alternator from tractorsmart.com and installed it myself. I never walked into a Kubota dealer and asked about it, so I'm among those that dealers never hear from... but you hear me on TBN... The classification of "Weird" is relative. To me and a lot of folks on here, these discussions of problems, modifications, repairs, etc, are not weird, they are everyday life to us. If that makes me different than "Joe Consumer" then I will take that as a compliment!

 

[Junkman]

Sorry Mike...... you are not "Joe Consumer".... you are just a Good Ole Joe Consumer Wanna Be .... /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

 

[cp1969]

Lousy customer service is by no means the sole province of Kubota.

Honda. Say it and people automatically equate it with satisfied customers. I bought a brand new motorcycle from a dealer 200 miles from home because the local dealers would not budge off list price. I gave them every opportunity, but they would not. So, fine, I drive the 200 miles, pick up the bike, and it does not even make it through the first tank of gas before the battery is dead. The alternator is inop, from day one.

So, I take it to the local dealer. This is in June. They tell me they will work on it, but only on a low priority basis, as their customers get first priority, and it will probably be Labor Day before it is finished. I said I thought I bought a Honda and that any Honda dealer was obliged to do warranty work, and what would a person on a cross-country trip have to do? Rent a hotel until Labor Day?

Anyway, I took it to another dealer who was better but still not too enthused about working on it. They had it fixed in a couple days. While it was there, I wrote a letter to Honda Corporate explaining my situation. Months....MONTHS later, I got a form letter back from them.

FWIW, I did the same thing when I bought my Harley...the dealers around here treat you like Royalty. Honda needs to learn from Harley in that regard.

 

[ccsial]

</font><font color="blue" class="small">( <font color="blue"> </font> the dealers around here treat you like Royalty
)</font> <font color="black"> </font>

The fact that a Harley costs about 3 times the Honda explains that one.

Customer service is expensive. You went to a dealer 200 miles to get a better deal. Many people will leap over tall buildings to get a good deal. But then they also expect to be treated like royalty at a dealer they didn't purchase from. The real world just does not always work like that.

When I started my business 33 years ago I was only doing consulting work. I quoted a job to a large corporation near here. The project manager said he like my proposal but wanted me to increase the price by 20%. I was shocked and asked why. He told me that he expected good service from me and did not think I quoted high enough to provide it. I'm sure that would never happen today but I have taken that to heart. We have had customers leave for a cheaper price. Some have come back after a bad experience. There will never be a free lunch.