chester aftersales service

Bugger about being fair,when I've spent upwards of £2000.00 with company and they've made problems for me,being fair is replying t phone calls to sort it out,not ignoring the problem and hope it goe away.

After three days of waiting for returned calls to sort the mill out, finally sent them an email and told them if I hadn't had a reply b

5.00pm on the Wednesday they would have to fetch it back and I'd have refund.I phoned them after 5.00pm and told them to fetch it back and o course I then had all the buck passing excuses for not returning m calls or sorting it out.

BTW I don't have one,never mind a dozen high street names sellin machinery on the high street where I live,you're obviously living in different town to most of us.

Alla

-- Allan Waterfal

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And you're obviously prepared to twist my words to make an argument, I'm sure you understood my comparison.

I must have spent several times that over the last few years on energy, phones, appliances etc and have yet to find one household name (does that term suit you better?) I would recommend for service. Not calling you back is to be assumed, supplying faulty goods or services is a regular occurrence, and warranties that are close to worthless are common place, that's the world we live in unfortunately.

Greg

Yes the Chinese are making better stuff than they once did, but a wander around any model engineering exhibition still shows that if you buy cheap you get what you pay for, and those are all exhibition models that have been 'prepared'. The very fact that some suppliers offer to 'prepare' your purchase for an extra charge speaks volumes about the state of what comes out of China at these prices.

Greg

The "preparing" is typically cleaning off the rust preventative gunk, lubricating and setting up, not replacing bearings, re-grinding beds or generally modifying the machine so I don't understand your point at all. Mind you if I parted with £5k-£13k for a new Myford I would expect a machinist to be supplied to operate it for me.

Steve

Perhaps you need to go on a supplier management course?

Steve

That may be what they say in the brochure but the reality is different, many of these Chinese imports just don't work in the state they arrive because the factories have virtually no quality control (someone in this thread returned one for that reason I believe) and 'preparing' involves remedying such problems.

Greg

A point here Greg on the exhibition models. Many of the machines on show are actually poor relations of what you can expect from current shipments. Many of these are first generation or second generation of machines when the supplier is probably on their 10 shipment. They can't afford to keep changing show models over, fitting them to transit stands etc for every shipment.

As regards preparing, the public and shipper do this all the while Many have got bent handles, missing knobs from light fingered parties etc.

With the odd exception of a new model I'll bet you that most off the shelf items are better than show models.

-- Regards,

John Stevenson Nottingham, England.

Visit the new Model Engineering adverts page at:-

The show models are indeed often different tocurrent production, but that's another issue as it can mean you don't get what you think you've bought which may be a big disappointment.

Getting back to the preparation issue, I know of people who've bought these machines and found they couldn't even turn the chuck for burr on the gears and swarf in the oil, they've had to completely strip down and rebuild them. Razor sharp edges that would cut you to shreads are the norm and binding leadscrews are not uncommon to mention just a few of the faults I've heard of. Even something as simple as the caliper I bought at Pickering had to have the edges removed with an oil stone or I would have slit my hands using it.

I'm not saying don't buy these machines, indeed they do offer a lot of value for the money, lets face it a machine that would have cost several months wages a few decades ago now costs a week or two's. I routinely buy Chinese power tools etc because they're virtually disposable at the price and are often as long lived as brand names at double the price. The point is that people should be aware of what to expect and not bleat so much when they get what they've paid for.

Greg

Liberally snipped

Which is probably why Arc Euro Trade are honest enough to put two prices up. An "in the box" price and an "engineer prepared" price. That their engineer preparation on an X3 mill costs £255 should wave a flag at anybody to show that these machines need a work over before they are ready.

*Usual disclaimer - I've never bought anything from Arc Euro and don't know them. I just think their approach to pricing has positives.

Charles

If you're refering to the 626 mill I sent back,I would have been quit happy with the mill.It was Chesters who added the cast iron dust to th ways,left fixing screws out,miss-aligned the motor,scratched the bed b dragging a sharp cornered object over it,only supplied six of the ER 3 collets,five of which had no protection round them and were free to ban against each other in a carrier bag and one of those six was full o rust and unuseable.

All the above had nothing to do with the quality of the origina machine,as I said before it was Chester who managed to turn the mil into a POS.There were also other problems with the machine that wer purely down to Chester.

Alla

-- Allan Waterfal

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And I know it takes a good day to do a machine to a standard Ketan is happy to ship even given that they know exactly what they need to do. It would probably take a few days starting from the unprepared box and you will not have the tools for some of the jobs :(

I had the fun with my Centurion from Chester - if I had the option for 'prepared' today I'd take it ;)

With reference to 'pete's' comments regarding his Model B Super he purchased from us nearly 12 months ago we feel it is now time we responded to this issue having spoken with the customer.

The fault was first reported to us on Saturday morning which as you will note we do open on a Saturday morning as a service to our customers, albeit with skeletal staff, which not everyone offers.

The Engineer 'pete' spoke to tried to assist and it seems there is some confusion over this conversation. He suggested that in the event the customer did not have the relevant gasket or seal, as a temporary measure, cardboard can be used as a stop gap until the correct part could be supplied. At this point, it was not possible for the engineer to check from our files if the machine in question was still under its

12 month warranty period, he was unable to do this until Monday morning when our office was fully operational again. This conversation was also reported to the office sales manager who then acted upon this information, found the machine was still under warranty and we tried to contact the customer to advise him of this and begin the process of trying to rectify the problem. Unfortunately after several attempts we could not get any answer but left an answer machine message but as of yet we have had no reply. In every effort to contact 'pete' we sent him an email at around 11.30am on Monday suggesting some possible solutions and if this was unsuccessful to get in touch with us so we could arrange to send replacement parts. We had a response to this when our office reopened on Tuesday morning thanking us for the information and he would keep us informed, we have no further replies.

We wish to clarify that regarding Engineer site visits, our terms and conditions clearly state that an engineer visit can be arranged should this be required but this is chargeable to the customer. Our standard warranty is a 12 months manufacturers parts warranty, which is a return to base warranty, though we do offer technical telephone suport when required.

We do appreciate that we cannot please everyone all of the time and we do appreciate and take on board all of your comments. As we are one of the largest companies supplying Model Engineering equipment in the UK we fully appreciate there is always room for improvement and we will continue to try to do this.

Best Regards Anth> Charles P>