Wednesday, August 14, 2019

WARNING!!! Steer Clear of BEAST, BrushMaster or DEK Products!

This is a must-read if you found this blog while researching to buy a BEAST or DEK product!!!

Click or Tap photos to make them larger.

I do not usually do product reviews but I just have to on this one. It could save you thousands of dollars and maybe even your life.

The Company... GXi Outdoor Power Their brands "BEAST" & "DEK".  Although they sell a variety of products I will be focusing on my purchase. A BEAST CH10 Chipper Shredder. I will note that through my research, they have similar complaints on all of their products across the board with the mower being the worst.




EDIT EDIT EDIT: I missed this before but this sums up this companies business practice. It is a review from a former employee I found online. It completely aligns with my experience as a customer.

Key information 

"Customers are not allowed to speak to anyone in management"

"poorly manufactured and often break"

"refunds are completely out of the question no matter how many repair shop visits"

"warrantied parts are purposely delayed"


repost from below



For those who want the quick answer to why they should not buy these products.....

1.The Product will fail.
2.The warranty is bogus. The company will do everything to avoid doing the right thing.
3.The product is dangerous.
4.Lowes & Home Depot will not help you or stop enabling this company!

I am late posting this review because I was doing the right thing and giving them a chance to change their minds by filing a BBB complaint.

Results?
They were notified of the complaint.

The did not respond in the allotted time.

They were notified again.

Responded with "This case is currently investigation." (yep just like that)

Since that threw the ball in my court I had to respond so I just bullet-pointed the problem putting the ball back in their court.

They never responded and BBB closed the case as "unresolved".




The following will prove these things in-depth and should convince you to stay away from these products.

I will start with the safety issue.

Although I do not think it is common, it could happen. When my chipper failed, metal came apart inside of the machine and tried like hell to escape via the case. I was lucky and it just dented the case up and when it shot out of the shoot it did not hit anything or anyone.

Another customer had a different experience!



Almost hit his teenage daughter!


Here are some pictures of the damage to mine....




This alone may not deter you from buying this product. Maybe the reviews will?

You can see these for yourself on the companies Facebook page CLICK THIS TEXT TO GO THERE

If the link does not work for you, just search GXi Outdoor Power on Facebook then go to their reviews section.










Google Reviews...



Their employees tell the real story!


Note he states parts are "purposely delayed"! "set up to only repair" Several reviews complained of delayed parts!


Not enough?

How about their BBC rating? D+ (it has since dropped to D)



 So you ask why did I buy it with all of this negative feedback? I did not do my homework. I purchased this from Lowes and their site had good reviews on this product. It makes me wonder how they manage to keep the bad reviews at bay. Maybe it is because one of their top executives now works for GXi? It is only speculation of course.

If you still want to buy one of their products that's on you.

Oh, wait there is more... How about a News clip of a fellow having issues with his mower....

CLICK THIS TEXT TO GO TO THE NEWS PAGE


So my story,

Short version:

1.Used the machine 3 times.
2.Machine broke within the warranty period due to a bad weld.
3.Took it to GXi's suggested repair center.
4.Broken weld reported to GXi
5.Claim denied. The reason given: Machine was used for a year and was rusted and corroded.

Long....  

 Purchased their chipper June of 2018, used it for three days. Note I am just a homeowner that lives in a subdivision and purchased this to do my spring trimming etc. I took the machine out of my shed to start my spring cleanup in April 2019. When I started it, it started immediately ticking then blew apart. I was within warranty so I contacted the company via email. After finally hearing back from them, they sent me to 3 different places to have it approved for warranty work. BTW the first place, Northern Tool, had me pick it up the next day because they did not want to be involved with GXi at all because they failed to pay warranty work in the past. It was evidently so bad they did not even want to order parts from them and fix it on my dime.

    The next place they had me take it to, Ace Hardware, told me they only work on engines and that GXi did not explain the issue to them when they agreed to see it.
    The last place, a local small engine repair shop told them it was a weld that broke loose and they did not think it was my fault at all. GXi then tells me it was a weld problem and they will not cover it because I used it for a year and the machine was "rusty and corroded" The machine did not even have wear on the feed shoot and the only thing keeping it from looking brand new was some dust from what little chipping I did get to do and the massive case and hammer damage the failure caused. Again GXi sent me an email admitting a weld issue... welds should not fail, this is definitely a manufacturer defect!
To top it off, they took forever getting a parts list back to the repair shop, so they could not even give me a timely quote to fix it. It came back higher than the machine was worth. 
All email replies to my pleas stopped once they denied coverage. 

Next will be all of my proof in case you still want to buy from them.

My purchase....



Proof I contacted them within the year warranty (April 23, 2019)...




The claim denial email from GXi were they also admit a failed weld...




Proof of the broken weld...



How it should look...


The rectangle piece you see in this photo is missing from the other photo. It came off and destroyed the hammer and dented up the case before shooting out the machine and going god knows where.

I had first sent them photos of the machine while it was dirty from use and they took the dirt for rust. I asked them to verify the condition of the machine with the service center but they ignored me completely. I also took the time to clean up the machine and sent those pics to verify.... no response.

Here are a few pics I sent them initially of the dirty machine. I mean in their defense ( I can not believe I just typed that) the dirt could be mistaken for rust??




The broken weld.







Once they told me "rust and corrosion", I had no choice but to take the time to disassemble the machine and clean the dirt off to prove it was basically still like new. They did not care.

Here is the machine cleaned up... I did miss some dirt but you can clearly see it is in nice shape. There is a slight amount of rust from where the metal damaged the case during the meltdown.


This is where you feed the limbs in, you would think it would be all scratched up from my "year of use"
















Rusted and Corroded??????

I left out a lot of the details to shorten this up a bit. I have countless emails, phone calls and bad experiences with this whole ordeal that I will be happy to supply to anyone interested or doubting the story.

 So, there you have it. After all my research on this company, the pattern is to string the customer along, and then revert blame back on the customer and deny the claim. You get a better example of this by reading the BBB complaints<---Click to read.. You see it in almost all of their responses.

    One guy had to take it to 3 different shops for the same answer and they would not take their word and wanted him to send the part in!

If this does not deter you from buying from this company, I am not sure what would.

I would also like to take a minute to tell Home Depot and Lowes... shame on you for subjecting your customers to this awful company!

#GXiOutdoorPower @GXiMarketing  #GXiPartsandService
#BEAST
#DEK
#Lowes @Lowes
#HomeDepot #thehomedepot @Homedepot
#GordonJackson
#TomDillon
#GXiInternational ( Bridal company... ladies beware!)
#chippershredder
#chipper
#mower
#zeroturn
#generator
#pressurewasher
#shredder
#lawncare
#landscape
#treework
#brush
#junk
#warranty
#BrushMaster
#brush
#CH10
#zBeast
#TurfBeast
#sulky
#walkbehind

Why all of the hashtags? I have a paid ad running on facebook to expose this company. Please share!!!