What we do not promise
Where do we say no at the first call, so that nobody plans a harvest around a date we cannot hold?
Standing refusals
4
each one a promise this desk used to make, and stopped, for a reason written next to it
Answered at the first call
All four
rather than on day four, which is when every one of these used to come out
The cost is losing the job. The alternative cost is a customer who turned down a neighbour's combine because of us.
Read by
Everyone on the counter
three people, three counties, and the same sentence from each of them — which is most of the point
What a refusal has to have
- 1A reason that is about us or about supply, not about the customer. “We do not hold those parts” is a reason; “that machine is very old” is a judgement.
- 2The honest alternative said in the same breath — borrow one, ring the breaker at Kearney, or bring it in for a free diagnosis.
- 3The same wording from everybody. A refusal that comes out differently from three people is heard as three people deciding they cannot be bothered.
- 4No exceptions made quietly. If we break one of these for somebody, it comes off the list or it is not a rule.
The phone-quote rule is the one that gets broken, always by somebody trying to be helpful, and always to a customer who then remembers the number and not the caveat.
What this cost to learn
Two seasons of trying to cover uncontracted call-outs after eight at night alongside the contracts. Three technicians across three counties did both, badly, and the customers who had paid for out-of-hours cover were the ones who noticed.
Nobody wrote that down at the time. It lived as a grievance for about a year before it became a sentence, and the sentence took ten minutes.
Four, and the words to use
Same-day on machines over fifteen years old
Not promised, at any time of year.
We do not hold the parts and nobody makes them to a schedule. Promising same-day means a technician standing in a yard confirming what the customer already knew, and then a four-day wait anyway. Said at the first call, with the likely wait, so the customer can borrow a neighbour's machine instead of waiting on us.
Anything on the discontinued 60 series
Diagnosis only. No repair timeline given.
Parts come from breakers and a fair number of them never come at all. We will tell somebody what is wrong with it for free and we will not pretend to know when it will run again.
Harvest call-outs after 8pm outside a service contract
Not offered. Contract customers only, and the contract says so.
Three technicians cover three counties. An hour spent on an uncontracted machine at nine at night is an hour not spent on somebody who paid for exactly that, and for two seasons we tried to do both and did neither well.
Quoting a repair over the phone
Never, on anything.
Every phone quote this business has ever given has been wrong and about a third have been wrong by more than half. The customer remembers the number and not the caveat, which is entirely reasonable of them.
None of this is on the website and none of it is in the terms. It is a page three people read, and the argument for keeping it internal is that a public list of things a dealer will not do reads as a warning rather than as a courtesy — which may be wrong, and is reviewed every January along with the service contract wording.