ok here is the deal and you are warned--post might get long winded
Just 5 years ago, no problem, we (dealer service managers) could file for a pre-approval, and backdate the failure date, no problem to get it covered if it's within about 30 days of expiration date of your limited warranty
and on that note I am no longer a service manager I gave that job to someone else who "likes" doing that kind of thing, I don't get along that well with other people so I went back to wrenching, by myself, in the far back corner where I rarely see anyone but maybe a coworker and occasionally the boss when he chews my butt
Kubota's warranty system has
DRASTICALLY CHANGED. Why? Because people like me were taking "too good" care of customers, using warranty to buy stuff that they didn't need to, and it cost them (kubota) a TON of money (Billions). Secondly the Kommanders cost them a ton of money too, and the changes they've made to the systems were a long time coming + the costs involved with stupid "warranty" repairs. 80% of "warranty" repairs aren't defects and that's what all manufacturers are trying to nip in the bud, getting really strict, now they are wanting fluid analyses, ecu data, wiring harness test data (from the DVOM), and now they can also see exactly how much time the technician spent on the repair via integration with the dealer's business systems. Real similar to automotive stuff. In doing this, it helps Kubota focus on building a better piece of equipment and helps the dealer weed out potentially fraudulent "warranties". The bad? Obviously it's a pain in the backside to deal with!!!
I mentioned the Kommanders, at one point the confidence program was still in effect, there were projected 133,000 Kommanders that got each over $1000 worth of updates done to them. Do the math. Likely ate up a good portion if not all (and then some) of the new profits on them. That doesnt' even count the actual defective "other" stuff, engines, decks, hst's, etc. You get the idea. Now we're looking at the hst bolt recall, also costs them a ton of money all because some moron on the assembly line forgot to properly torque 2 or 3 bolts (depending on the model). Thousands per tractor I don't know how many of them there are. DEF headers if fixing to be another big one as I understand. We are talking potentially billions of dollars that kubota's gotta eat recalls and warranty repairs are expensive. That said, think of warranty this way. You buy a piece of equipment for $20,000 (nice round number). A percentage of that goes to actual build cost, say $5000 just to throw a number out there. Another percentage goes to freight, then to crating costs--and a percentage is also allocated for warranty repairs, and that is actually a pretty low allocation. Don't know the actual percentages, but on a certain Yamaha machine, 6.3% of MSRP, or was at one time. With yamaha (at the time) when the warranty repairs exceeded the threshold, there was then a red flag. We had to call the RTAs and ask for approval if any repair was over a certain amount and if the total warranty repair bill over the life of the machine up til that point was over the threshold, they'd really grill you as to why. Sometimes deny repair and then you (the dealer) had to figure out how to either help the customer or not. Those customers who were "warranty abusers" were almost always automatically denied, you know, those guys who'd take their atv and run it through the river and then gripe about it smoking, bring it to us all cleaned up to "hide" the evidence....but factory training taught us what to look for and once we found it, it was automatically denied by yamaha. Nowdays, every single repair (all manufacturers I deal with including kubota) require digital pictures to be sent. Takes more time, costs more money, fills up a hard drive and takes up bandwidth.
Preapproval is gone. Now you have to file for "goodwill", and that usually means the repair cost is shared between 3 parties, the dealer, Kubota, and the owner. The cost of the repair would consist of the part, labor, tax, and freight (typically) and the process takes forever and a day to get the ball rolling because there's only a few warranty admins in DFW (I think that's where they are?) that handle the entire USA's kubota warranty issues. They used to be in DFW for our territory, spend many a day in there "learning"
So with goodwill, say if the flat labor rate is 1.0 hour (I don't know what it really is) plus a $26 tachometer cable plus $5.00 freight charge. At 100/hr that's $131. Split 3 ways that's what, $43 and change each, which costs you MORE than the cable does if u just buy it and install it yourself, plus it takes forever. Once the goodwill option is chosen it goes directly to the regional service rep who then reviews it. Remember the RSR also is driving halfway across the country to go look at a pushmower that the owner is griping about low power, or he could be going to look at a KX080 that has engine problems, those guys never stop (ever) rare to have a day off honestly. So you have to wait on them. You will have to wait on the warranty admins. You will have to wait for the dealer to submit all the information and pictures. It takes forever. I have seen it take a couple weeks, not counting shop backlog if they have any.
Basically, in a nutshell, if the warranty ended yesterday and your tachometer cable died today, go buy a tach cable and put it on yourself. Your warranty is expired. You had 2 years to buy extended warranty as well (as long as your reg warranty is good you can buy extended but once reg wty is gone, you can't buy extended).
now if you had a failed engine or some other big part, yeah it's worth looking into a little more but for a $26 cable it's hardly worth the hoops you have to jump thru
