It has been my experience that brand-name dealers carry the 3rd-party attachments not as a profit center for selling the attachments, but so as to enable the sale of a tractor when somebody comes in and asks for something the major brand doesn't make.
The salespeople don't have the ability to be knowledgable on all the 3rd-party attachments, and there probably is not a lot of money in it for them.
In the case where there is a competing name-brand and 3rd-party versions of the same thing, it gets even more difficult to get good information and good servce out of the dealer because he is more interested in selling the name-brand.
For example, I was looking at a Wallenstein backhoe for my JD4100. After looking at the unit in the distributor's wharehouse, the Wallenstein distributor sent me to a JD dealer buddy of his to actually run the purchase through. The dealer wasted all my time trying to talk me into the JD backhoe for an extra $1000 which I already knew I didn't want anyway because I wanted a 3-point, not the awkward JD 46 BH frame-mount. He didn;t budge from list price a penny on the Wallenstein because that would widen the gap further to what he could do on the JD.
When I told the Wallenstein guy about it, he apologized and said that he didn't realize JD made a backhoe for my tractor (the 46 was new at the time). Then he gave me the phone number of a Kubota dealer buddy (his son-in-law) who was much more motivated to work the easy sale dropped in his lap (and couldn't sell me a JD BH, and the Kubota BH he could sell me wouldn't fit my JD, so had no other choice). His price was about $1000 lower than the JD dealer's price for the exact same unit.
I didn't end up buying any backhoe, but I sure learned a lot about those two dealerships and how sales really happen on 3rd-party attachments.
Bottom line - for third party attachments, find the manufacturer's rep/distributor for the territory in question and get the skids greased with him to run the deal through his favorite dealership / sales guy. Also, he is the one to talk to directly about delivery schedules. He is going to care a lot more about the sale than the dealership.
- Rick