HODAK said:
Island, why not take advantage of one of the offers from those four dealers? .
I appreciate the advice but something about that sticks in my craw. If there is ANY potential liability to be absorbed by whomever helps me with a loader fix that does not involve me shelling out big bucks and time for unnecessary transportation, I feel it should be Kioti. I don't personally think there is more than half an iota of risk here and perhaps on that basis I should stop charging windmills but the idea that Kioti would rather have some nice guy dealer put his/her meal ticket on the line to help me when there is a large corporation that dodges their obligation to a customer just seems wrong.
Several of us have called Kioti and asked that the program allow owner installation but to no avail. This issue of needing to transport the tractor to a dealer far away is something that Kioti is well aware of and specifically decided to ignore or disallow. How they can in good faith expect the customer to absorb those costs (and mine are nothing compared to Sodamo's) tells me something I really don't like to think about their corporate ethos. If I am wrong about something I think I should bear the brunt of fixing it. If the dealer did something wrong then the dealer should own up and fix it. In this case it is a design defect that Kioti owns and should fix in a manner that is not grossly inconvenient to their customers. I wouldn't complain about having to drive my tractor 20 miles down the highway. There are others, like myself however, who are going to be forced to spend serious time and money to get this stupid reinforcing plate installed. No one thinks this is a tricky installation. Kioti hasn't send their dealers to special classes or probably done anything other then provide the parts. How hard can it be?
To me this has become a bellwether issue on Kioti's corporate responsibility, responsiveness and customer service. They are not getting good marks in any of those areas relating to this loader issue. I think I was the second or third person to report a loader being cracked after Highbeam alerted us all to the problem. That means this has been going on for over 13 months. (By the way I still have not received a letter.
) After all that time and patience to be told to shell out $500 to transport an otherwise healthy tractor off an island and then truck it 80 miles to the dealer is asking the customer to bear 99% of the cost of fixing Kioti's design error even though the loader was under warranty.
I'm not certain that this type of company policy is unprecedented in the tractor world and I don't know that Kubota, NH, JD, Mahindra, TYM, MF etc etc might not be just as bad, but it is certainly not up to a standard of customer service expected in the USA in the 21st century. Maybe there are some windmills that need charging in order to change Kioti's and other companies policies on this sort of thing. I certainly wish that while shopping for a tractor I had information that would have indicated the type of customer service I could expect from the tractor manufacturer/importer. I think we focus a lot on TBN on looking for a good dealer but there are some things that a dealer cannot control that relate to the manufacturer. Maybe we need more threads in this and other forums to discuss this and similar issues with other companies (Kubota and it's cracking fenders comes to mind) to allow TBN shoppers the advantage of seeing how past upgrades/recalls and "cosmetic" fixes are handled. I love my CK20 but to be honest if there had been information that allowed me to see that, for example, NH had much better customer service, that might have swayed my purchasing decision. Blue's not such a bad color.
So, I don't think I am finished charging windmills. I apologize to my Kioti brethren for whom this is not an issue but for those of us who live remote from our dealer, the types of hassle that this and other simple warranty issues pose are to me worth fighting for. I cannot stand Ralph Nader anymore but it was only due to his dogged and sometime seemingly irrational persistence that led to some important changes in the balance between manufacturers and consumers in this country. I'm not drawing a parallel just accepting the lesson that fighting for a reasonable principle is sometimes inconvenient and boring but still worthwhile in the end.
