7/30/00Again, I won't mention names. Part I dealt with an engine manufacturer and Part II a manufacturer of hand held equipment powered by their own engines. Both are amoung my preferences in the outdoor power equipment field and perhaps my disatisfaction results in a higher expectation then the others. In any case, I see no need to mention who they are and cause myself any backlash from them. My hope is that maybe there's a small chance they will read this and get the message to clean up their act and meet those higher expectations.
In this situation, the "Funny Little Men" title really isn't the most appropriate as we've recieved good support on the matters at hand, but the product having a problem when it shouldn't is of a related nature so I've chosen to expand on Part I by calling this Part II.
The problems are with a new "family" of engine that is used to power mulitple types of hand held equipment. Both ignition and carb jetting failures have caused all sorts of headaches for the servicing dealer as well, of course, for the buyer. These are new engines which simply have not had sufficient testing prior to being rushed to the market to meet deadlines to introduce products that can be sold under the tighter emission law standards. These new laws have been a challenge for all makers of outdoor power equipment, no doubt, but the servicing dealer shouldn't have to be saddled with re-manufacturing and performing the R&D for the manufacturer. We simply have enough to worry about taking care of the customer with normal everyday concerns.
This hand held product line is not sold by the "Big Box" retailers. Good thing too. One can only imagine the chaos that would exist if these products were sold in the box by non-servicing mass merchants. Their floors would be cluttered with returned product that doesn't work. If the products that are sold at mass merchants had this high rate of failure someone's grass would be grass.
The sad thing is these are really good engines that simply have a couple of problems with bolt on components not made by the engine maker that have caused the problems. A diode failure with the ignition module and incorrect main jet selection in the carb or an incorrect inlet needle setting on the carb. Except for the jet selection these problems are the makers of the components, not the engine/equipment manufacurer. However, if the engine/equipment manufacturer had done adequate testing prior to pushing the product to market, these problems would have been found and corrected.
Ah haa! That's where the "Funny Little Men" comes in. The corporate big shots in their "Funny White Shoes" in the finance department were just too concerned with making money and forgot their product means QUALITY when they pushed a product with limited testing out on the market.
"Funny"?..........LMRM;Bob :<=