Did you try out your CUT at home before purchasing

[JerryG]

Re: Did you try out your CUT at home before purcha

Taking a tractor out for a farmer to try out before buying is standard fair in lots of Ag areas. A lot of farmers wouldn't even think of buying before trying one out first. I would be willing to bet that most of the compact dealers that do bring one out are in Ag areas and most of their customers are farmers. My dealer has offered numerous times to let me try a piece of equipment out at my farm, I have yet to take him up on it.

 

[rdam]

Re: Did you try out your CUT at home before purcha

Amazing !!!! Any dealer that brings you a "new" loaner, or delivers a "new" tractor to your place to test is pretty high on customer service. Imagine this; "That crazy dealer loaned me a piece of industrial construction equipment and didn't give me an owners manual or instructions and now I'm wrapped up in the spinny thing in the back and I'm gonna sue"

A tractor is not a car. Tractors, by their design, are meant to be "abused". They were not designed to pull Christmas floats. That being said, I would not want "my" new tractor, delivered to a prospective customer with almost no tractor experience, to test. The prospective buyer, who, like me, probably has little or no experience operating tractors, is NOT pulling Christmas floats, giving hay rides, or riding the fence line. He is grinding gears, overloading hydraulics, hitting trees, using FWD on the pavement etc, etc.

Like Henro, I requested my tractor be a crated unit and not "demoed" out. My dealer did have an L3130 FST with loader that I "played" with on his lot. I learned a bunch in that "play" session as I had never used a loader before. But, being a nice guy, I didn't abuse the tractor because it wasn't mine. Unfortunately, that's not true for everyone.

 

[yellowsocks93]

Re: Did you try out your CUT at home before purcha

Jerry your are so right. At the JD dealership I work for we will loan out combines and tractors for the farmers to try. We just got a new JD 9860 combine in and within hours it was out to the farmer's field for testing. I have never even looked at or driven the tractors I have bought since we never had any in. I just hoped it came the way I wanted it to from the factory.

 

[Ender]

Re: Did you try out your CUT at home before purcha

I rented my TC-30 and the dealer brought it out to me and took it back to his shop. Took the cost of the rental right off the top of the price of the tractor. So I guess he loaned it to me for the weekend.

He was the only dealer that would even rent one. Sold me though...

TC-30, FEL, Backblade

Ender

 

[dieselsmoke1]

Re: Did you try out your CUT at home before purcha

After my dealer and I had settled on the price, he loaded the tractor on my trailer...no paperwork or money, just a handshake between 2 men. Smiled and waved as I drove away with his tractor, said "see you next Monday".

You're probably right JerryG. He's an agricultural dealer and that's how a lot of their sales are made.

 

[JerryG]

Re: Did you try out your CUT at home before purcha

That the way my dealer is. It was a month before I signed the papers on the last tractor.

 

[frank_f15]

i guess on ocassion a dealer might bring a tractor for u to try at home, but i don't think it is the norm. can u imagine if a dealer delivered any tractor to everybody that wanted to try one out? heck everytime i need a larger machine to do a task i could just call up the dealer and say i WOULD LIKE TO DEMO a yada, yada with BH , use it and say , not quite what i want! when i bought mine the dealer let me drive it around the yard, move snow, dig in a pile of dirt , and see how i liked it.

 

[40Kchicks]

Re: Did you try out your CUT at home before purcha

I also think your right Jerry. When I bought my skid steer I went into the JD dealership and told them I was interested. The next day they had one at my place. They insisted I give one a try. The CAT dealer also had a SSL that they drove up and down the valley to let farmers and contractors try. They brought it out and let us use it. It’s actually a great service. Before the demo I was leaning towards getting the JD but once we demod the Cat with its super smooth electrical over hydraulic controls my wife would not consider the others and I was in agreement.

One last thing I noticed was how much harder the dealers started dealing when they came by and saw another companies demo sitting at our place.

 

[Woodbeef]

Hey Frank,

It is the norm around here for everything from lawnmowers to tractors and every piece of ag-equipment you can think of. The guys that just demo to get work done on the cheap,don't get to do it very many times before the word gets around about them. What I've noticed you have to watch is the dealer that tries to get you to only demo his when you do not have any of the competition there to compare it against. I've not seen it with CUTs but I have with Ag-tractors..........kinda makes you wonder what they are affraid of,eh????

The multiple brand demo is great........neighbor did it this spring. Ended up with a Deere 4610. It was a good way to compare it against the others side by side doing the same jobs at the same time. Plus lots of fun too!!!!

 

[Bird]

Frank, I suspect when dealers let potential customers "try out" equipment at home, it's when they've already, in their own mind, decided that the the customer really is likely to buy.

I don't know whether any other tool distributors did the same thing or not, but when my brother was running the Matco Tool truck, calling on each garage once a week, many times he had a mechanic question him about a particular tool or diagnostic equipment he had on the truck as to whether it was really as good as advertised, and he frequently would just say, "I don't know, try it out a week, and you tell me." In nearly every case, the mechanic bought the item, and on the rare occasions when they didn't, my brother would just find another mechanic to "try it out" until he found one who'd buy it at a discounted price (which was nearly always more than his cost at least).