Canns-Bilco

I have been a Caans Bilco customer for over 20 years but never again. I have my tractor serviced there on an annual basis. This winter they told me I needed my center pulley bearings replaced. No big deal. The total cost with the annual maintenance was just over $300. In early June, after having used my tractor about eight times for the season, it started making a very loud noise coming from below the deck. Shortly thereafter I noticed pieces of belt flying out from under the deck. I immediately disengaged the PTO and the next day called for service on my tractor. I explained to them what happened and they said they would be out to pick it up which they did very promptly. Two days after they picked it up I received a call from the delivery person saying my tractor was ready to be returned and the cost was $300 to repair. I asked him what was wrong with it and he looked at the invoice and said the center pulley bearings were seized up and that caused the belt to fail. My tractor was returned and when I compared the invoice to my January invoice I quickly realized I was being charged for the same repair they had just performed about four months ago. I called the service department on a Friday and left a message. By Tuesday I had not heard back so I called again. The service manager said he would have to talk to his technician to see why the same repair had to be performed again. He said he would get back to me the same day. Six days later he still had not gotten back to me so I called again. He then told me he hadn't gotten back to me because the bearings only had a ninety day warranty. First off, I cannot believe a bearing has only a ninety day warranty, but I then asked him how the bearing could fail again after only eight uses. He said its an old tractor and stuff breaks. He said maybe they never found the underlying reason why the bearings went bad the first time. I told him the first bearing hadn't been replaced in over ten years and were likely just worn out. To expect new bearings to fail in four months is ridiculous. The service manager refused to accept any responsibility for the bearings failing in such a short period of time. I asked why he didn't call me to tell me they had failed again to see if I wanted to go ahead with the repair. He said, "You told us to fix it so we did." I told him I had been a customer for twenty years and would have likely bought my next tractor from them but now there is no way I would. That didn't seem to bother him. I realized there was no way I would ever get them to accept any responsibility for the failed bearing and the cost of the repairs so I gave up and hung up. UPDATE: I had to change my review because two weeks after I entered a bad review on their web page the service manager called me back and told me the owner told him to give me a partial refund for the work performed.

Every dealing I have had with them has been bad. When I first went to buy a tractor in 2000, I went there first. The salesperson told me if I did not buy the tractor there (a $30K purchase with implements) I would be at the back of the line for service. I left and bought the tractor from another dealer who didn't threaten me with poor service. The one time I did have them service it, it was done improperly, incompletely and was not picked up at the orginally scheduled time. I will never enter their business again. I am not alone in this - I have many others, including family members, that have relayed similar encounters.

Two years ago they did some warranty work on my tractor that created a bigger problem. It took me 16 months and phone calls to the Kubota factory rep to finally get it fixed and then the repair was done at another dealer. During the time I was having the problems the owner Roger Canns made me feel like I made the problem and never in the 10 times that I had the tractor back did he try to help me or apologize for the inconvenience. I've never seen a more disinterested cold owner of a company. For a whole year I had to pay a lawn service to do my lawn as my tractor was in and out of their repair shop "the number 10 is the actual times" no exaggeration.

I called Canns-Bilco late one Thursday afternoon because I needed my snowblower repaired. The following morning they picked up my snowblower. They told me they would try to repair my snowblower and deliver it back to me before the next major snowstorm, due the following Tuesday. They repaired, serviced, and delivered my snowblower by Monday morning! With all they snowblowers they had to repair, I believe they must have put in some long hours so that their customers would be ready for the next storm.