Hi all. First time post, long time lurker. I just recently became a member of the JD clan through a different route than most. This post might be of interest to other Canadians looking at buying some green paint and saving some money in the process.
Earlier this summer I finally decided to get myself a tractor to help out on our 25 acres. The old JD 216 just wasn't up to the task anymore. Thanks to this site and others, I narrowed my search pretty quickly to the JD 2305 and Kubota 2350. I eventually decided on the 2305, primarily for the fact that taking the various implements on and off was so simple (gotta love that 200CX and that iMatch system).
Anyhoo, I thought I'd get a ballpark price from the Kubota dealer and that went a lot as I would have expected. He noted the items I wanted, came up with a price, and knocked some percentage off of list to give me a number that didn't look too bad. Then I crossed the street (literally) to my local JD dealer and they put together a price for me. The difference was they were sticking to their list price.
Me: "This is more than I was hoping to spend. Is there some way we can get this price down?"
JD: "Well, you don't need to buy that tiller right away. That would take the price down."
Me: "That's not what I meant."
So, the 2305 was my first choice but the Kubota was a significant saving. Option 1 was to cave and pay the significant extra $$$ for the 2305 to a dealer who was not prepared to deal. Option 2 was to save the coin and settle for the Kubota.
That was when I came across
this post from (the now unbanned!) JDCAN in which he talked about buying a tractor from a US dealer and bringing it in across the border. So I got ahold of Javan at
Mutton Power Equipment and I was amazed at the cost differences I was seeing. After a bunch of emails back and forth, here is what I calculated.
Code:
Exchange Rate 1.065
Local Dealer Mutton(US$) Mutton (C$) Savings
2305 Tractor 12,500.00
62" Mower 2,500.00
200CX Loader 3,400.00
Subtotal 18,400.00 13,399.00 14,269.94 4,130.06
Plus Tiller 2,500.00 1,799.00 1,915.94 584.06
Plus iMatch 400.00 250.00 266.25 133.75
Plus Block Heater 200.00 110.00 117.15 82.85
Plus Grill Guard 220.00 169.00 179.98 40.02
Plus Ballast Box 250.00 199.00 211.94 38.06
Cash Discount -500.00 0.00 0.00 -500.00
Shipping 0.00 1,450.00 1,544.25 -1,544.25
Total 21,470.00 17,376.00 18,505.44 2,964.56
GST 1,288.20 1,042.56 1,110.33 177.87
PST 1,073.50 0.00 0.00 1,073.50
Grand Total 23,831.70 18,418.56 19,615.77 4,215.93
Total Savings 17.69%
Now that is a serious chunk of change. A couple things the sharp eyed Canadian might catch though:
- You didn't account for duties! These bad boys are duty free. Thank you NAFTA.
- You didn't account for brokerage! Yeah, I had my companies broker do the paperwork and haven't gotten the bill yet. But I was told it will be around $40. Not much impact on the bottom line.
So I made another visit to my dealer with wife in tow, spreadsheet in pocket, and chequebook in hand. My wife buzzed the tractor around the lot, after which I said to the dealer that we should go inside and talk further. I pulled out my spreadsheet folded in half, showing my itemized list and his prices. He confirmed the prices were pretty much bang on. Then I unfolded the paper to show the difference between what he was asking and what I could get it for. He was astounded at the delta. I explained I wanted him to meet me somewhere in the middle, as there were some tax costs in there he couldn't do anything about (even though I was on the hook for way more in shipping than he would have been), and that there were some advantages to buying local. But the best he could offer was
- knocking off the tire recycling fee (A whopping $4 per tire. There are only four tires! Do the math!)
- rounding down to the nearest $50 increment
As a friend of mine later said, making an offer like that is like leaving a 17 cent tip in a restaurant.
So then the BS started to fly. Here are my local dealer's claims vs. reality.
- You won't have any warranty in Canada for a tractor bought in the US. Totally bogus. JD's warranty is valid per region. North America is a single region (see here). Or you can call JD's warranty center at 1-866-993-3373. Ask for Cynthia
- The tractor won't be set up. All the attachments will be in crates. Bogus again, as the (hopefully) attached picture of the the tractor as it showed up on the delivery truck illustrates. Javan also mentioned that JD mandates that their dealers do all of this setup.
So it was pretty obvious that my dealer wouldn't deal. He had his chance. I called Javan at Mutton the next day to get my order in. I received the tractor three weeks later with one hour on the hour meter, all labels attached, all manuals provided, and with the tractor and all implements in perfect condition.
Regrets? The only regret I had was the shipper let me down. It took two weeks from pickup to delivery. One week of that was sitting in the nearest city a half hour drive away. Very frustrating, but no fault of the good folks at Mutton. Would I do it again? In a heartbeat.
By the way, props to JDCAN who gave me a call and put my mind at ease for going this route. His approach and experience was very similar to mine. Only problem was he worked hard to convince me I should go with the 2520!!! But I stayed with the 2305 and I'm happy I did. Now that I've got it, I see that it fits my needs perfectly.
Hope all this info helps somebody else north of the 49th parallel...