Will Pellet Stove Dealer Service Suffer Due to Increase in Stoves Sold?

[MarkF48]

Some rambling thoughts......

Oil prices are high and a lot of folks are turning to pellet stoves, myself included. With all these stoves being sold there is likely to be an increased workload for those dealers that provide service. Simple thinking might say the dealer could increase his staffing to handle the increased service workload, but pellet stoves are a seasonal appliance and when they break it will generally be during winter months when they're in use. If the dealer increases his service staff what does he do with them off-season? I believe the Harman dealers are "factory trained", so keeping someone on that has training and experience with a particular brand might have some importance. Do dealers do off-season cleaning and maintenance that could keep staff busy?

 

[Waterbug]

Service work = $$$, wether it is warrenty work from manufacturer or out of warrenty repairs. No dealer wants to turn down the work/$$$ or have a dis-satisfied customer. Most of the dealers here in Michigan also sell top end grills/barbeques, spas/hot tubs, patio furnature and billiard equiptment. I'm sure that the have a lot of summer delivery/installation work for their other product lines.

EDIT: Many also sell gas/propane stoves or wood burners and are seeing decreased sales on those lines. I recently purchased an Englander pellet stove and the dealer had NO INTEREST in my 2 year old Heat-N Glo propane stove, as a trade-in at any price.

 

[jrsdws]

Interesting topic of discussion. Personally, I think the dealers could follow the lead from other industries and sub-contract the installs to local HVAC guys and keep their own specialist on salary as a "project manager" and/or tech specialist/consultant who can come and go over operation with home owner and light first fire, etc. then be available for trouble shooting.

 

[Waterbug]

Personally, if I buy a product from a dealer and he subcontracts the install, he just lost my confidence. As others have stated, finding a reliable dealer is just as important as finding the right product. If my first service experience is subcontracted, I'm thinking: "This guy can't even handle a basic install." I recently called Dishnetwork for a satellite install and the subcontractor that they sent out said that he couldn't aquire signal. Prior to calling him out, I had moved the dish equiptment from my previous home and with no test equiptment nailed the dish to a tree and had over half of the channels. (I'm a retired Electronics Engineer) I called Direct TV. Their tech saw the bracket that I had nailed to the tree, backed up 10 feet and installed their dish. It's worked 100% since the install a year ago.

 

[jrsdws]

Yeah I get that and agree....but it's common. The dealer would have to form a great business relationship with an installer or a small core group of installers AND guarantee the work 100% for it to work. As we all know, one single bad experience can be quite damaging to reputation.

As for the OP's original question: I don't know what the dealers there offer as we truly don't have many around here. We have a few geared more towards corn stoves as it is Illinois, but lots of them are farmers doing it as a secondary income gig or other part time dealers with NO install services. Sad but true.