Thread: Are Kennards picking on me ?

Over the last few years I've hired a 4" chipper from Kennards a few times and each and every time I've had to take it straight back.
Problem is it will not self feed. Take it back, they replace the blades, apologise, it self feeds OK and I can get on with the job. One time they even reduced the cost to the 4 hour rate as a gesture of goodwill.

Saturday I hired the 4" chipper again. On booking it (in person) I explained about the previous problems and the person I dealt with agreed that this would be potentially dangerous if you had to push each & every branch into the hopper manually.
On collection I explained again, this time the person I dealt with just pointed to the test tag and said it was OK. He then went to demonstrate the starting procedure and the starter wouldn't work but he pull-started it OK (the warning bells should have been going off now !).

Got it home & guess what.....
Took it back and was told categorically that they do not self feed (yet experience tells me that they do) and that you have to manually push every branch in and then push the short length left inside the hopper in with the next branch !
Now I understand that the branch needs a shove to get it started but I am not happy manually feeding every branch (doubling the time taken to do the job) just because they do not replace the blades in the machine. There is the potential for wrist injury and looking in the hopper to line up the next branch to push the previous one through is an interesting suggestion.

Anyway after a heated discussion I got my money back and their Head Office & WorkSafe Victoria now have the full details.

Is it just me they are picking on ? Maybe I'm getting paranoid ?


Colin

Originally Posted by Stuck

The smaller hire mobs are the way to go. I booked a car float with one of our local blokes (Dennis Smith rentals) and to cut a long story short when I went to pick it up the trailer had a major fault and the attitude of the young feller that I was dealing with was a bit less than acceptable but he did arrange another float from their other branch. I went to pick that one up and it was usable albeit for a flat tyre and some inop lights so after about 45 min of me fixing it (saturday morning) we had it sorted. Completed the 1000km round trip with no probs. I phoned Dennis on monday morning and told him what had happened and he was very apologetic. The next time I booked a float through them they may as well of rolled out the red carpet. They did everything bar tow the float for me and when I returned it they refunded the deposit and the hiring fee plus put a fair wack of fuel in the tow vehicle. I never struck a problem with their gear after that. No more free fuel or hires though .

Cheers,
Anthony.

I have not had good experiences hiring car trailers. Delivered with inoperative or damaged lights, illegallly worn or damaged tyres and/or tyres of inadequate load rating, flat spare tyre, spare not same bolt pattern as trailer, incompatible lighting plug even after clearly advising the hire company that a large 7 pin plug was on the tow vehicle, inoperative or disconnected brakes, and so on.