Huster Part Numbers / Specs - different for box than dealer?

scootsch · Jun 18, 2017

I attempted to give a local Hustler dealer business yesterday - but they didn't fail to underwhelm me with their service. I walked in looked around their crowded disorganized shop...asked where the Hustlers were, and the kid behind the counter lazily directed me to the outdoor sheds "that should be open". I trekked out..and they were all locked. I don't like "professional" shops and their attitudes to begin with (this has applied to MULTIPLE mower shops, HVAC shops, electrical shops) so it didn't take much to turn me away. There was no one else in the shop to be occupying this kid's time (nor was there anyone else that could direct me - I didn't even want to talk to a sales person...just look at the mowers)...so I just hopped in my truck and continued down the road.

Do the big box stores (the blue one, in particular) sell the exact same spec mowers? From this forum, I think I've been talked up from the SD to the SDx and I can use my 10% military discount at the blue box store and get 6 months no interest financing (I have the cash to pay for it now - so I will pay it off in the six months and incur 0 finance charges). I'm all about supporting local businesses instead of the big stores but I have a real sour taste in my mouth for the "professional" shops and after yesterday I don't have any issues with taking my business elsewhere.

I'm not too concerned about the setup from the store - I plan to go over it and do my own PDI. In fact, I would prefer to just pick it up or have it dropped off in the crate and not have anyone there touch it (I'm very particular). Is this possible?

So - my two questions (to sum up my rant regarding "professional" shops):

Are the Hustler mowers at box stores the same as those at dealers (model to model)?
Would a store and or dealer give me the mower in the box and allow me to do my own setup?

I've done some more research and would like to know from the forum how much you've found dealers willing to deal to come closer to bbs prices? I wouldn't expect one to fully match 100% but I'm curious if you've found in general that they'll budge a bit. I don't plan on ever needing the dealer after the sale - I do 100% of my own maintenance but I would visit only for warranty work if needed...that's the one thing that I've got holding me to a dealer rather than bbs.

kraky · Jun 18, 2017

There are no differences in the product between the Box Store and the Dealer. But I think it would be a big mistake on your part to buy it in the crate and put it together yourself even if they would let you do it which I doubt they would. From what I understand a certified dealer puts the unit together and therefore would have some commitment I would think if there was a warranty problem that arose. Otherwise if you were to put it together and there was an internal problem with an engine or a hydro or who-knows-what that wouldn't be related to your putting it together somebody might blame you for the situation. And most box stores will give a 30-day pretty much no question return on things like that and why risk losing that by doing it yourself? As far as the dealer matching what the store does with the military discount I would not expect a whole lot out of that. Usually the products that are sold in both places have little margin and the dealer does not have a whole lot of room to Dicker unless he's way over stocked or has another reason to do it. It's very nice of the big box stores to give the military discount and it's hard to blame you for taking advantage of it but it's a little unfair for the dealer at the same time. It's also too bad your dealer seems like kind of a lost in time place.

reynoldston · Jun 18, 2017

I am the same as you. I would buy the mower from the place that gives me the best price. I also would walk away form the dealer that treated you like they did. I also do all my own work so the dealer service means nothing to me. I have worked for different dealers in the pass and you should find in the shipping box the instructions how to set it up. Some mower they even ship with the oil in them so its no big deal to set it up yourself.

MikeRSD54 · Jun 18, 2017

When I decided to finally buy a ZTR, and ultimately narrowed my choice to Hustler, I discovered that Lowes and Home Depot were now carrying them. So I went down on a Saturday afternoon to my local Lowes to check them out. I had the Raptor 52 in mind, and it was advertised on the website stocked at my location. When I got to the store, I saw none. I found this late teen at the desk, and had him check for me. He said none were in stock at all.... I insisted their website said otherwise, and pulled it up on my phone to show him. He calls someone else and tells me they have one but it has to be assembled, it will be out in 15 minutes. An hour later, I'm still waiting. Asked to see a manager and was led to a guy who was outside trying to remove a bolt he had cross threaded from one of the lap bars. He was a nice enough guy, but just not one to turn a wrench. I began to ask him about future service and he informed me twice that service was available from our local dealer in town, under warranty. This guy was a manager, by the way.

I was well aware of the 30 day return policy on power equipment from Lowes so I figured what do I have to lose so I pulled the trigger on it. Fast forward one week and I stop by my local dealer just to see what they have to say about parts, service, etc. They told me flat out they would not lay a finger on it, and that was under Hustler's orders. I asked who services the Hustler mowers from lowes and it turns out they ship them to Arkansas (at least from here) and the process takes days to weeks. He offered me a Raptor Limited for the exact same price out the door as my regular Raptor, but I was eyeing the SD's anyway, and ended up taking a SD54 home. Of course my raptor was returned to Lowes and I had a lengthy talk with another manager which likely did no good. I had no trouble with the return process, I might has well been returning a wrench.

So just my 2 cents....go with a dealer if at all possible.....Yes it is the same mower, but it ends there.

turboawd · Jun 18, 2017

MikeRSD54 said:
When I decided to finally buy a ZTR, and ultimately narrowed my choice to Hustler, I discovered that Lowes and Home Depot were now carrying them. So I went down on a Saturday afternoon to my local Lowes to check them out. I had the Raptor 52 in mind, and it was advertised on the website stocked at my location. When I got to the store, I saw none. I found this late teen at the desk, and had him check for me. He said none were in stock at all.... I insisted their website said otherwise, and pulled it up on my phone to show him. He calls someone else and tells me they have one but it has to be assembled, it will be out in 15 minutes. An hour later, I'm still waiting. Asked to see a manager and was led to a guy who was outside trying to remove a bolt he had cross threaded from one of the lap bars. He was a nice enough guy, but just not one to turn a wrench. I began to ask him about future service and he informed me twice that service was available from our local dealer in town, under warranty. This guy was a manager, by the way.

I was well aware of the 30 day return policy on power equipment from Lowes so I figured what do I have to lose so I pulled the trigger on it. Fast forward one week and I stop by my local dealer just to see what they have to say about parts, service, etc. They told me flat out they would not lay a finger on it, and that was under Hustler's orders. I asked who services the Hustler mowers from lowes and it turns out they ship them to Arkansas (at least from here) and the process takes days to weeks. He offered me a Raptor Limited for the exact same price out the door as my regular Raptor, but I was eyeing the SD's anyway, and ended up taking a SD54 home. Of course my raptor was returned to Lowes and I had a lengthy talk with another manager which likely did no good. I had no trouble with the return process, I might has well been returning a wrench.

So just my 2 cents....go with a dealer if at all possible.....Yes it is the same mower, but it ends there.

i think someone on here mentioned that dealers get $50 from hustler for doing warranty work on lowes bought machines.

bertsmobile1 · Jun 18, 2017

It goes like this.
The local shop pays around 30% more for the mower than Lowes and he gets them on somewhere from 60 to 120 days credit after which he has to pay for them.
This is why you get sudden, 1 shop only special deals for a limited time on a specific few machines.
Lowes then sell the same mower for a price that is 10% cheaper than the dealer but at a substantial higher profit level.
Add to that Lowes do no pay $ 1000 to send a mechanic off 2 times a year for training, they do not have to pay rent on 1000 sq ft of service space nor carry a large stock of special tools & parts nor pay expensive compensation insurance on their mechanics and public liability on the work they do not do.
So they are creaming off all the profits at little cost and most times they do not have to pay Hustler a cent till 30 days after you have paid for it.

Then warranty work is done by scheduled service times, according to Hustler ( and every other company ) .
These times are what it takes a factory trained mechanic to do a predefined job in a spacious workshop with every special service tool available on a brand new never used machine with no interuptions or distractions, working at a sweat raising pace.
In most cases this is less than the time it takes the dealer to clean a used machine , let alone work out what is actually wrong so it will cost the dealer 2 to 3 times more to do the warranty work on a customers mower than the factory will pay them.
Or to put is simply, the dealer looses money doing warranty services. Then in most cases the "payment" when it finally comes through will be in the form of a purchase credit and generally during the off season when the dealer is not purchasing much.

So when some one walks in the door with a mower the dealer did not sell so made no money on, then expects them to smile & be happy to loose more money fixing a mower for some one who proverbially spat in their face, they don't get the most favourable treatment.
Most shops will accept a warranty job and it will sit there till the mechanics have nothing to do and be used as a loss limiter.

The sole exception to this was Sears who actually did the high cost servicing and Sears went broke

scootsch · Jun 19, 2017

kraky said:
There are no differences in the product between the Box Store and the Dealer. But I think it would be a big mistake on your part to buy it in the crate and put it together yourself even if they would let you do it which I doubt they would. From what I understand a certified dealer puts the unit together and therefore would have some commitment I would think if there was a warranty problem that arose. Otherwise if you were to put it together and there was an internal problem with an engine or a hydro or who-knows-what that wouldn't be related to your putting it together somebody might blame you for the situation. And most box stores will give a 30-day pretty much no question return on things like that and why risk losing that by doing it yourself? As far as the dealer matching what the store does with the military discount I would not expect a whole lot out of that. Usually the products that are sold in both places have little margin and the dealer does not have a whole lot of room to Dicker unless he's way over stocked or has another reason to do it. It's very nice of the big box stores to give the military discount and it's hard to blame you for taking advantage of it but it's a little unfair for the dealer at the same time. It's also too bad your dealer seems like kind of a lost in time place.

See the thread below about the guy cross threading the bolt in the lap bar - those are the things that keep me awake at night. I tend to keep equipment forever. I do understand your point, though. In fact - I've been bitten bad once before by this and I'm still living with it. I bought a Honda HS1132 tracked snowthrower several years ago and just loaded up the crate and took it home (dealer gave me a whopping $50 off for doing my own setup). I was never quite able to level it correctly...and found out several years later that there was a recall because the housings were twisted due to a poor setup at the factory. The dealer wouldn't do anything for me.

scootsch · Jun 19, 2017

bertsmobile1 said:
It goes like this.
The local shop pays around 30% more for the mower than Lowes and he gets them on somewhere from 60 to 120 days credit after which he has to pay for them.
This is why you get sudden, 1 shop only special deals for a limited time on a specific few machines.
Lowes then sell the same mower for a price that is 10% cheaper than the dealer but at a substantial higher profit level.
Add to that Lowes do no pay $ 1000 to send a mechanic off 2 times a year for training, they do not have to pay rent on 1000 sq ft of service space nor carry a large stock of special tools & parts nor pay expensive compensation insurance on their mechanics and public liability on the work they do not do.
So they are creaming off all the profits at little cost and most times they do not have to pay Hustler a cent till 30 days after you have paid for it.

Then warranty work is done by scheduled service times, according to Hustler ( and every other company ) .
These times are what it takes a factory trained mechanic to do a predefined job in a spacious workshop with every special service tool available on a brand new never used machine with no interuptions or distractions, working at a sweat raising pace.
In most cases this is less than the time it takes the dealer to clean a used machine , let alone work out what is actually wrong so it will cost the dealer 2 to 3 times more to do the warranty work on a customers mower than the factory will pay them.
Or to put is simply, the dealer looses money doing warranty services. Then in most cases the "payment" when it finally comes through will be in the form of a purchase credit and generally during the off season when the dealer is not purchasing much.

So when some one walks in the door with a mower the dealer did not sell so made no money on, then expects them to smile & be happy to loose more money fixing a mower for some one who proverbially spat in their face, they don't get the most favourable treatment.
Most shops will accept a warranty job and it will sit there till the mechanics have nothing to do and be used as a loss limiter.

The sole exception to this was Sears who actually did the high cost servicing and Sears went broke

To be clear - I didn't walk in with a mower that I didn't buy at the dealer. I walked in attempting to buy a mower from the dealer. I may even give this dealer another chance when I have the time again to do it.

I appreciate the predicament that the dealers are in - maybe their staff could be just a little bit helpful or act like they care.

scootsch · Jun 19, 2017

MikeRSD54 said:
When I decided to finally buy a ZTR, and ultimately narrowed my choice to Hustler, I discovered that Lowes and Home Depot were now carrying them. So I went down on a Saturday afternoon to my local Lowes to check them out. I had the Raptor 52 in mind, and it was advertised on the website stocked at my location. When I got to the store, I saw none. I found this late teen at the desk, and had him check for me. He said none were in stock at all.... I insisted their website said otherwise, and pulled it up on my phone to show him. He calls someone else and tells me they have one but it has to be assembled, it will be out in 15 minutes. An hour later, I'm still waiting. Asked to see a manager and was led to a guy who was outside trying to remove a bolt he had cross threaded from one of the lap bars. He was a nice enough guy, but just not one to turn a wrench. I began to ask him about future service and he informed me twice that service was available from our local dealer in town, under warranty. This guy was a manager, by the way.

I was well aware of the 30 day return policy on power equipment from Lowes so I figured what do I have to lose so I pulled the trigger on it. Fast forward one week and I stop by my local dealer just to see what they have to say about parts, service, etc. They told me flat out they would not lay a finger on it, and that was under Hustler's orders. I asked who services the Hustler mowers from lowes and it turns out they ship them to Arkansas (at least from here) and the process takes days to weeks. He offered me a Raptor Limited for the exact same price out the door as my regular Raptor, but I was eyeing the SD's anyway, and ended up taking a SD54 home. Of course my raptor was returned to Lowes and I had a lengthy talk with another manager which likely did no good. I had no trouble with the return process, I might has well been returning a wrench.

So just my 2 cents....go with a dealer if at all possible.....Yes it is the same mower, but it ends there.

I am going to give the dealer another shot when I get the time to stop by again. The whole experience particularly annoyed me because I don't have a lot of time and I've been wanting to stop in for weeks at this shop - I finally did and it was a waste of time.

kraky · Jun 19, 2017

I had a John Deere dealership for 30 years and sold out about 10 years ago to the big boy that's what John Deere wanted us little guys to do. I live in a town of 4000 which is a pretty active little town and we sold a pile of lawn and garden..... about two hundred Riders a year and 50 little four wheel drive tractors every year. It was a little aggravating for us when the lawn tractors started showing up in the box stores but they are 50 miles away and we didn't really lose too many sales to them. In some ways it wasn't even a bad deal for us because we had people that had seen them there and didn't realize they could get a John Deere for that price and then they came in our store to check it out and found out we were basically the same..... but they have a terrible margin..... after setting them up a lot of our $1800 units netted us a whopping $125 profit. I am not sure if the box stores could buy them cheaper than us or not it would sure make a lot of the bigger dealers really mad that have to live next to a box store if they found out they were getting a better deal.

Huster Part Numbers / Specs - different for box than dealer?

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