Don_Curley
Bronze Member
This is my first post to the board ... and I'm not sure whether this belongs here (since it has to to with Kubota pricing), or whether it belongs on the Kubota buying board (since it also involves my newbie attempts to buy a Kubota as well). So I will post on both boards (and hope that's OK!). Also, this is bound to be a long post, so I apologize up front for that.
Anyway, here's my situation that I would surely appreciate some advice on. Other than watching my neighbors on their tractors, or contractors I've previously hired to do work for me on my property, I have next to no experience with tractors, implements, or the savvy purchasing of either (translate ... potential sucker-bait). After leaving the high-tech rat race behind in California a year and a half ago, my wife and I ended up with a 4-acre place in rural Utah and we have a lengthy list of earthmoving, trenching, leveling, cultivating, landscaping, tree planting, (etc.) work to do. After breaking our backs doing some of this work by hand and hiring others to do the "big stuff", we finally made the decision to buy a compact tractor. So far so good.
After a fair amount of research (mostly on the Internet), I discovered the TractorByNet discussion groups, and I also purchased the online "Compact Tractor Buying & Basics" PDF "book" which I read from cover-to-cover. After this effort, we decided on either a Kubota B2710 HST or B2910 HST to fill our needs. We put in some quote requests on three websites ... one responded with a quote, another one sent an apology for not sending a quote in a timely fashion (which still hasn't happened), and the last one has never responded at all. In the meantime, we visited our nearest Kubota dealer (160 miles away ... and when I said rural Utah, I meant in the middle of nowhere!). We were able to see both Kubota models as well as the implements we were generally interested in and became much more educated (relatively speaking), in a short period of time. At this point, we defitiely decided to go with the B2910 HST (for a numbr of reasons I won't go into at this point). However, this is when the "fun" started. Since I had much of the Kubota MSRP's, I was able to determine that this dealer (in a rural area of southwestern Colorado), was basically discounting about 7% off of the MSRP's (which by most of the commentary on the Kubota boards ... including that great B-series pricing table, basically sucks in terms of a good deal). When we got home that evening, we had an online quote from Carver where (without disclosing a lot of details), we were initially amazed at what amounted to 20% to 21% discounting off of the MSRP's for the basic tractor and LA402 FEL (and this was for a B2710 HST). We were basically jumping up and down and then remained down when we saw that the delivery charge to our home in Utah was going to be $1,700!!! Is this right??? I thought the cost might be in the $300 to $800 range, but $1,700??? This in effect almost erased any difference between the local dealer's bottom-line delivered price and that of Carver's. Moreover, when I got back to Carver today with the change to a B2910 along with a similar list of implements that we were looking at at the local dealer's lot, the new overall price came back at almost $500 more than the local dealer's package price! To say that this result was counter-intuitive would be an understatement.
First, does $1,700 seem like a reasonable cost to ship a compact tractor within the US? Second, since I do not have the option of checking prices and shopping at more than one local retail dealer, is a 7% off of MSRP discount for pricing purposes "acceptable", and if not, what other options do I have? My dealer only has one new B2910 available and I don't want that to get sold out from underneath me at this juncture, but I also don't want to feel like I'm getting a less than reasonable deal either. Any thoughts or advice on all of this would be greatly appreciated. (And sorry again for the very long post).
Thanks in advance,
Don
Anyway, here's my situation that I would surely appreciate some advice on. Other than watching my neighbors on their tractors, or contractors I've previously hired to do work for me on my property, I have next to no experience with tractors, implements, or the savvy purchasing of either (translate ... potential sucker-bait). After leaving the high-tech rat race behind in California a year and a half ago, my wife and I ended up with a 4-acre place in rural Utah and we have a lengthy list of earthmoving, trenching, leveling, cultivating, landscaping, tree planting, (etc.) work to do. After breaking our backs doing some of this work by hand and hiring others to do the "big stuff", we finally made the decision to buy a compact tractor. So far so good.
After a fair amount of research (mostly on the Internet), I discovered the TractorByNet discussion groups, and I also purchased the online "Compact Tractor Buying & Basics" PDF "book" which I read from cover-to-cover. After this effort, we decided on either a Kubota B2710 HST or B2910 HST to fill our needs. We put in some quote requests on three websites ... one responded with a quote, another one sent an apology for not sending a quote in a timely fashion (which still hasn't happened), and the last one has never responded at all. In the meantime, we visited our nearest Kubota dealer (160 miles away ... and when I said rural Utah, I meant in the middle of nowhere!). We were able to see both Kubota models as well as the implements we were generally interested in and became much more educated (relatively speaking), in a short period of time. At this point, we defitiely decided to go with the B2910 HST (for a numbr of reasons I won't go into at this point). However, this is when the "fun" started. Since I had much of the Kubota MSRP's, I was able to determine that this dealer (in a rural area of southwestern Colorado), was basically discounting about 7% off of the MSRP's (which by most of the commentary on the Kubota boards ... including that great B-series pricing table, basically sucks in terms of a good deal). When we got home that evening, we had an online quote from Carver where (without disclosing a lot of details), we were initially amazed at what amounted to 20% to 21% discounting off of the MSRP's for the basic tractor and LA402 FEL (and this was for a B2710 HST). We were basically jumping up and down and then remained down when we saw that the delivery charge to our home in Utah was going to be $1,700!!! Is this right??? I thought the cost might be in the $300 to $800 range, but $1,700??? This in effect almost erased any difference between the local dealer's bottom-line delivered price and that of Carver's. Moreover, when I got back to Carver today with the change to a B2910 along with a similar list of implements that we were looking at at the local dealer's lot, the new overall price came back at almost $500 more than the local dealer's package price! To say that this result was counter-intuitive would be an understatement.
First, does $1,700 seem like a reasonable cost to ship a compact tractor within the US? Second, since I do not have the option of checking prices and shopping at more than one local retail dealer, is a 7% off of MSRP discount for pricing purposes "acceptable", and if not, what other options do I have? My dealer only has one new B2910 available and I don't want that to get sold out from underneath me at this juncture, but I also don't want to feel like I'm getting a less than reasonable deal either. Any thoughts or advice on all of this would be greatly appreciated. (And sorry again for the very long post).
Thanks in advance,
Don
