If You Are Willing

[sshire]

To be clear, I'm pretty sure that Eric and I  have been happy with BooBoo and The Duke. 
Generally, the Grizzly machines are at the higher end of Asian imports. The issue, as I stated in my letter to Mr. Balolia, is the concept of having the owner of a machine under warrenty serve as the service tech.
If you remember the guy who bought the (Grizzly) Southbend and had to replace the bad bearings.
Not something I'd want to attempt. I'm sure I could figure it out, but why should I have to do that?
Last year, after running the self-cleaning cycle on the one year old oven, I noticed that the oven floor had a few chips in the enamel.  I called Wolf customer service. Two days later, 3 guys showed up, disassembled the oven, replaced the floor, some heat tubing and reassembled. All under the warranty.
The oven is about the same price as Eric's grinder.  Is it because it's made in the USA? I couldn't imagine Wolf sending a new oven floor with a note that said, "Good luck on the repair."
Why, then, do we accept paying good money for a machine and have no problem acting as free labor?

[Kim]

Eric,
For what its worth, I also sent a note to Grizzly.

Hopefully if enough of us point this out to them, they will realize that we're a sizable market, and providing more prompt customer support could help their business.  If they don't they will likely be losing some future business.

Good luck Eric, and do keep us posted!
Kim

[Tennessee Whiskey]

Thanks for all of the support guys. I had a shipping email this morning. It left Redmond Wa. at 1:55am PST this morning 7/03/14. It is being sent UPS Blue 2nd day commercial. I guess with tomorrow being the 4th it may be Monday before I see it  . You know, I really hate to bitch, but, as Stan said, it's more about having to provide free labor to repair a brand new machine more than anything else. Every company is going to have a bad part or product every now and then, but, when it's a specialized product I think they should have someone available to repair it and not the customer. I'll keep y'all posted and I will even takes pics of the rebuild.

Whiskey

[steamer]

I figured that, if I sent an email to Grizzly, Mr. Balolia,  the president would never see it.
For the first time in don't know how long, I sent an actual letter to him at the mother ship in WA.
Had to look around to find an envelope and stamps, but it's sitting in the mailbox waiting to be picked up tomorrow.
Stay tuned.

My email went to every department in grizzly....no sweeping this one under the rug.

I also linked the forum on the email.....they'll be reading.

Dave

[b.lindsey]

Eric, I really can understand your frustration and we are all hoping for a good result even if we unanimously disagree with the "do it yourself" policy.  I am anxious to hear what if any feedback they give to the emails on this matter. We are all indebted to you for sharing this experience here even though it is ongoing. I am following along with interest.

Bill

[Jim K 324]

          Hi Eric ; I understand your frustration with your new machine, Don and I were talking
                    about  Grizzly Service , your are not that far away from their Springfield plant
                    They should have a tech at your place to do the repairs not expect you to donate
                    your time to fix their screw up. Don said that he is not too happy with his mill
                    as he is having spindle problems with it.  Maybe we as grizzly  customers will
                    make enough noise to get their attention . Good Luck!!!

                                   Jim

[philjoe5]

Don said that he is not too happy with his mill as he is having spindle problems with it

Jim, (or Don),
What is the mill spindle problem?

Cheers,
Phil

[Tennessee Whiskey]

Just a little update for you guys. The spindle has made it as far as Louisville Ky. and with the holiday I ain't gonna see it before Monday. I did get a phone call from a customer service manager and he says that they had received several emails saying that I wasn't happy with our arrangement of having to do the work myself and I told him that, no, I wasn't happy about it, but, at this point what are we gonna do. He assured me that the change out was a simple two minute job, literally, we'll see. So, y'all have a happy 4th and don't blow any fingers or toes off with those fireworks, and Steamer, they will get you locked up, up  "theya"

Whiskey.

Again guys thanks for the support and let's no let up telling old Grizzy how we really feel. Oh yeah, has anyone had a response from them?

[b.lindsey]

Not to be pissy Eric, but if its a two minute job for you, its a 1-2 minute job for them too!!  All the more reason the unit shouldn't have left the distribution center without being checked.  While I have had no direct experience with them, I did request a quote from them 5-6 years ago when I was changing our machine shop lab over from Smithy 3 in 1'a to full size mills, lathes and even a surface grinder. I couldn't even get them to quote the job and it ended up being a total of 8 mills, 3 lathes and 1 grinder. The order went to JET instead with local suppliers all over the place. When one of the lathe motors burned out within two weeks they sent two service guys with a new motor and replaced it on our shop floor. While I am not panning the company...yet!...your experience along with the South Bend story and others are only confirming my skepticism...sad  but true.

Bill

[Don1966]

Don said that he is not too happy with his mill as he is having spindle problems with it

Jim, (or Don),
What is the mill spindle problem?

Cheers,
Phil

Phil am showing .005" movement in my spindle and if you have a grizzly mill check it and let me know how much movement you get. Eric I know you have the same mill. I noticed the movement when I am drilling it never was a bad as it is now. I have to check back to see how old it is but it doesn't have that much time on it.

Don

PS
 I checked the date on the mill and I purchased it in December of 2012.

[b.lindsey]

Don, are you saying the quill itself has .005 " movement in it? That is a lot!

Bill

[Don1966]

Don, are you saying the quill itself has .005 " movement in it? That is a lot!

Bill

Yup! And I am not a happy camper Bill. I will have to disassemble it and see where the wear is coming from.

Don

[Nerdz]

As a newbie in the machining world, I will be watching this. I was hoping to buy my first mill from Grizzly as Ive heard So much good talk about them. Im hoping this is one of those rare things that can happen.

Watching with Support .

[PStechPaul]

I can understand why a company selling "cheap" tools may be reluctant or financially unable to send a repair tech from the factory to do warranty work, but I think they should compensate you for your time if you do it yourself. They can probably easily afford, say, $30/hr and most repairs would cost them less than $100 and it would be enough to buy some extra tooling or a lot of beer (or whiskey) 
 
Also, perhaps a company such as this could recruit the services of some of their customers, or local machinists, who could be within an hour's drive and might be willing to make a few extra bucks.
 
The company I do work for, ETI, manufactures and services large circuit breaker test sets that are comparable in size and weight to machine tools (500-1500 lb), although they are a little less tricky to transport, since they have casters and many companies haul them in trucks to remote sites where they use them. But they are shipped to all parts of the US, and it is often a tough decision whether to have a defective unit shipped to the factory (where it can be repaired even if extensive rework is required), versus sending a technician who can only carry so much in the way of tools and parts, and may not be able to fix it, requiring a return trip or shipping.
 
These units sell for $10,000 to $40,000 or so, and there is probably a 30% profit margin, so shipping costs of $1000-$2000 bites pretty deep, and the cost of sending a technician on a two-day round trip is comparable. I think there is a stipulation in the warranty that transportation and shipping costs are not included and are the responsibility of the customer, but hat can be hard to swallow if it is a design or manufacturing fault. A more equitable arrangement is that customer pays for shipping to factory, and factory pays for return shipping. And sometimes a customer can bring the test set to the shop and wait for the repair, or stay overnight, since they are often "on the road" with the equipment anyway. But that's not the case with largfe stationary machine tools.

[philjoe5]

Don,
Which mill do you have?  I have an X3.  I'll check the spindle runout tomorrow


Cheers,
Phil