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West Central Indiana | From a retailer standpoint, I've just about had it. It's not just Deere. It seems like every PA equipment manufacturer is putting buggy stuff out there as soon as possible, and then the guys like me who sell and support it are left fighting the fires. Trimble and Outback have done a pretty good job of making sure things work before they get them out. Outback maybe more so even than Trimble. That's why we haven't seen the BaseLine yet. Ag Leader and Deere seem to be the worst, becuase they're both trying to be the first one to the marketplace with the latest and greatest. I've had a handful of good customers trying new things that I have promoted this spring and I've had to eat a lot of crow. Features that we promised them but don't work yet or you have to pay more to unlock them. Weird glitches that tech support can't explain. All this with little to no documentation with the current release. I was talking with a vendor of ours last week about a lightbar update that was recently released, and I asked him what this latest release includes. He told me that he didn't really know, that this company doesn't really publish anything on their firmware upgrades. How am I supposed to inform my customers what I'm doing to their equipment, if I don't even now?? All things that make me look pretty stupid when I'm sitting in the tractor or sprayer with Mr. Farmer and he is expecting things to work better than they are. I agree with you all, I hope the manufacturers keep tabs on these pages and take some of these posts to task.
I heard a speaker at a conference this past summer say that we are no longer in the infancy of PA and the progressive grower is looking for someone who knows what he or she is doing and not spending their time learning the equipment along side that grower. I have to agree with this statement, we've been doing this thing long enough that we should have the bugs worked out of things by now and should putting good, reliable equipment on the market that does what is says it will do at a price that doesn's wash away any advantage of doing it.
Soapbox speach finished. I feel better now!
Opie T | |
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Some GS2 thoughts from an outsider........
