In the first few months of the Library being open, we purchased a Gerni from the Mullum Mitre 10. Earlier this year we needed help with repairing it but found the manufacturer had entered into an exclusive partnership with Bunnings and that Mitre 10 could no longer help us.
We do go to Bunnings from time to time if we can’t get what we need from Mitre 10 but that’s not the point.
We weren’t the only one’s that were annoyed that Mitre 10 couldn’t help us. The Mitre 10 team were also unhappy that they could no longer do anything to assist us. The additional frustration was that we had a second Gerni that was donated to us, a Karcher brand, that appeared to have the same fault.
Someone told me that Farmcare repair items like Gerni’s so I called and was impressed that the owner took the time to speak to me at length about why he couldn’t help me. He told me he was weeding out the products that he sold that were supplied by manufacturers who were not providing reliable after sales support. He said the products were designed to be replaced rather than repaired and that the manufacturers aren’t supporting the retailers so the retailers can’t support the customers. He recommended purchasing Stihl products and that his team can maintain and repair these during and after the warranty period.
We now realise that we should have been more careful before buying the Gerni and accepting the Karcher donation. We have since developed our Donation policy and are currently drafting our Procurement policy. And we purchased a new Stihl pressure washer and were given a serious discount!
We’ve taken the Gerni and the Karcher to the Repair Cafe and have our fingers crossed that they will confirm that it’s the switches that need replacing and that these parts are available. If not, we will have to decide whether to look for duplicates at local tip shops to acquire parts or if the likelihood of the switches being a consistent fault render that effort not worth it.
For now, we have one working pressure cleaner with hopefully more to come.
Written by Sasha