Auto Doc's
Lawn Addict
When I was a JD service manager, my shop was the warranty location for the nearest Lowe's and Home Depot's. The retail stores would usually just give the customer another machine most of the time and we would get the machine, conduct an estimate for repairs for the aftermarket warranty company.Now come they do that really?
Like the Walmart gave the customer refund on SP mower that he never put oil it. And it hole the block. Still had the new bottle of oil in the box. Besides how in the heck he bend the crankshaft in such short time.
Bent cranks, run with no oil and an occasional bent blade with a sheared flywheel key was what we saw most. Often times the warranty company denied repairs and settled with the store or the store wrote it off their books. I collected quite a few junk parts machines and some I would recondition and keep for myself or family members. Just to keep it legit with my dealer manager, I paid a $20.00 salvage to the retail stores for each core unit.
For a while, many "shady" people were buying mowers on a Friday, cut their grass and then return them for a refund without any issues the following Monday. The managers finally got wise to the game after seeing several repeat offenders trying to pull the same game over and over. Several customers got "blacklisted" in the retail store database network.
The riders never went back to the retail place of purchase, just the smaller equipment. If a new rider came to us torn up, we would just write up the estimate and get paid by the warranty company. The customer was stuck with any that were denied.
Those aftermarket warranty companies burned up a lot of my time playing games.
