Powder Mill Equipment

In many ways they are a good outfit: nice people, they do quality work at what appears to be a reasonable price, and are sincere about wanting to keep the customer happy. However, dealing with them is an exercise in frustration: this is one of the most poorly managed shops of this type I've ever encountered. In the most recent instance, my tractor was picked up by Powder Mill Equipment's truck on March 26th. Even getting a pickup scheduled was difficult: Starting at the end of February or early March, I began calling to try and get a service pickup. Over a two week period, I got a different story about the severity of the backlog and when to call back each time I called to try and make an appointment. Each time I called, I found that the date when I could call and actually get a pickup scheduled was shoved out again, farther into the future. An appointment was finally scheduled for March 26th, and they came and picked it up that morning. Since the second week of April I've contacted them about once a week to check on status, and have been told some variation of the adjective "soon" each of the last two times. (I was basically told "we'll get to it when we get to it" the first time I called them.) I have yet to get the unit back. In the meantime, tons of Springtime yardwork I'd planned to do has gone undone because I did not have the tractor available to help me clean up leaves and branches from the winter, or to haul rock, compost and soil around the property. Now I have grass growth that has kicked into high gear, and still no mower in sight! I am not sure what the problem is, but suspect, based on past observation when in their shop, that we have a crisis-oriented work ethic where the squeakiest wheel (and biggest customers) get serviced first, and smaller customers like me get postponed until convenient. I can appreciate that any merchant wants to keep their bigger customers happy, but my own past experience as the manager of a shop that also did electronics repair shows that you don't have to let the little guys drop between the cracks, and that you especially don't need to keep a customer's equipment in your storage yard for weeks or months until you have time to work on it - doing so only fills up your storage space and gets the customer angry. A little better planning and management of the stream of repair jobs coming through the door would go a long way towards reducing stress both for the shop's staff and their customers.