Disappointed with John Deeres build your own calculator

[Robert_in_NY]

late last year I was looking to buy a narrow vineyard tractor. I had originally narrowed it down to Kubota and John Deere but was leaning towards Kubota because the cab was suppose to have more room which is what I was looking for. Room in a narrow cab is extremely hard to find because of the design of these machines.

Anyway, I was curious as to how close the prices would be between the two and figured I would build both tractors online first to see how close MSRP would be. John Deere came in almost $10k higher then a similar Kubota so I never even priced it through the dealer since it would have been way more then I would have wanted to pay.

Well because of how terribly disappointed I am with the Kubota I finally contacted the Deere salesman and asked about trading the Kubota for the Deere. Well they won't give me enough for the Kubota to make the trade happen but the price for the Deere was less then $2k more then I paid for the Kubota. If the Deere calculator had been much more reasonable with the pricing before hand I would have actually contacted the Deere salesman and not been scared away. I can't say if I would have bought the Deere or not but at least I would have gave them a strong chance. Now I am stuck with this Kubota till I can sell it outright then go with a Deere.

I don't know if any of the Deere dealers or Deere reps will see this but if its possible could someone mention it to someone higher up to see if they can adjust the calculator so that they don't lose sales like this by scaring customers away with extremely high prices (The Kubota came in around $50k MSRP and the Deere was $60k so it was a considerable increase for the same size tractor specced as closely as possible).

 

[Martian]

Sorry to hear. The build it feature is not the greatest and is meant to drive people into the dealerships, but as it seems in your case, kept you out of the dealership. Hopefully you get your tractor sold, or the Deere dealer will give you a little better trade dollar and get you into something your happy with:thumbsup:

 

[eagle107]

late last year I was looking to buy a narrow vineyard tractor. I had originally narrowed it down to Kubota and John Deere but was leaning towards Kubota because the cab was suppose to have more room which is what I was looking for. Room in a narrow cab is extremely hard to find because of the design of these machines.

Anyway, I was curious as to how close the prices would be between the two and figured I would build both tractors online first to see how close MSRP would be. John Deere came in almost $10k higher then a similar Kubota so I never even priced it through the dealer since it would have been way more then I would have wanted to pay.

Well because of how terribly disappointed I am with the Kubota I finally contacted the Deere salesman and asked about trading the Kubota for the Deere. Well they won't give me enough for the Kubota to make the trade happen but the price for the Deere was less then $2k more then I paid for the Kubota. If the Deere calculator had been much more reasonable with the pricing before hand I would have actually contacted the Deere salesman and not been scared away. I can't say if I would have bought the Deere or not but at least I would have gave them a strong chance. Now I am stuck with this Kubota till I can sell it outright then go with a Deere.

I don't know if any of the Deere dealers or Deere reps will see this but if its possible could someone mention it to someone higher up to see if they can adjust the calculator so that they don't lose sales like this by scaring customers away with extremely high prices (The Kubota came in around $50k MSRP and the Deere was $60k so it was a considerable increase for the same size tractor specced as closely as possible).

Robert,

Same thing almost happened to me. I nearly went for a Massey Ferguson cab tractor (very good tractor - not to offend the Massey people) when trading my brand new New Holland in, but my uncle said to try his guy over at Zahm and Maston and see what they could do for me. If you are dealing with Zahm at the location in Springville, then Dan Burges might be able to help you out. He is very good and fair; he worked with the owners to get close to where I needed to be. Unfortunately, JD's net/web prices are just that, a ballpark; you can never take them at face value. Once the deal was worked out, the JD was only $2k more than the Massey I was looking at.

 

[etcallhome]

Still waiting to get a price from the local MF dealer, on trading my 2305 in for new SC2410MF .According to MF web site I can buy new front blade and blower for the same money as a 1023 keeping mine frt blower and blade .
Also would pay the same price difference wether I traded in BH or just bought sub frame for 1023.. That one still hasn't set well with me and that is why I went to check what MF would do.

 

[Robert_in_NY]

Robert,

Same thing almost happened to me. I nearly went for a Massey Ferguson cab tractor (very good tractor - not to offend the Massey people) when trading my brand new New Holland in, but my uncle said to try his guy over at Zahm and Maston and see what they could do for me. If you are dealing with Zahm at the location in Springville, then Dan Burges might be able to help you out. He is very good and fair; he worked with the owners to get close to where I needed to be. Unfortunately, JD's net/web prices are just that, a ballpark; you can never take them at face value. Once the deal was worked out, the JD was only $2k more than the Massey I was looking at.

You know exactly what I am dealing with then, the local JD dealer for me is Z&M and its a toss between either Falconer or Collins as far as distance. I talked to Bill Henry in Collins about this tractor as I had met him before at a spray seminar they hosted for us vineyard growers and he seems like a good guy. What scared me away was when I did the build it calculator Deere came in extremely high and then I go on Z&M's site and their offering a used, open station narrow vineyard tractor with almost 1k hours for $39,500. I bought a brand new Kubota with cab for $42,500. Both had FWA so for $3k I had a brand new tractor with a cab. It led me to believe the build it calculator was accurate since their used prices were so high. I owe $39k still on the Kubota and it had 64 hours when he looked at it and the guys who set the number for trade allowance only offered $27k for the Kubota. So to trade up I would lose $12k automatically plus the difference between in what I owe on the Kubota and the price for the new Deere. I just can't take a $12k loss and were so far apart that I don't see them being able to bring the number close to what I need it to be. They knew what I owed before they made the offer so it won't do any good to try and negotiate from there. They just don't want my tractor but they did give me a great price for a new Deere so I am not upset. I just need to either find a buyer for my tractor or start working on the Kubota to try and fix the issues I have with it. I can do a lot of work for $12k to improve it but I don't really want to, would much rather send it down the road. I am going to talk to Bill again as he is working up a price on a new sprayer and see if he has a new(er) narrow I can demo so I can make sure I won't have any issues with it. I have put plenty of hours on slightly older Deere narrows but not any since they updated them.

 

[Robert_in_NY]

Sorry to hear. The build it feature is not the greatest and is meant to drive people into the dealerships, but as it seems in your case, kept you out of the dealership. Hopefully you get your tractor sold, or the Deere dealer will give you a little better trade dollar and get you into something your happy with:thumbsup:

I know, that is why I started this thread. I hope it reaches someone that might be able to help correct the issue so that it is more competitive and not push prospective buyers away. I doubt I am the only one who has used the Build it feature on these sites to do the initial narrowing down between models/brands. If Deere has their MSRP that much higer then the other brands then it is only going to push people away if you can actually sell the tractors for almost the same price as the competition.

 

[shortthrow50]

I was in the same boat as you when pricing kubota and john deere. I didnt trust it the calculator either so i went in person. Thats the only mistake you made and was a painful one for you. Dont kick yourself in the a.s.s over it man. But shame on deere anyway cause there website eats a.s.s

 

[s219]

I find it hard to believe you're mad that the online calculator, which is setup to give MSRP, doesn't give "street" prices. Those prices vary dealer to dealer, market to market, customer to customer, and day to day (maybe hour to hour). Expecting the online calculator to give a street price is like expecting the Chevy website to haggle a deal for you at the nearby dealer. There's a reason they are called "street" prices, and there's a reason you need to contact the dealer to work the deal.

Interestingly, the Kubota's website calculator also gives MSRP, not street prices. You'd also need to talk to a Kubota dealer (or call them, or e-mail them) to get an actual street price and work a deal.

If you just compare websites, both Deere and Kubota, and any other manufacturer, will be giving you MSRP. Obviously you can't take a website MSRP from one and compare it against a haggled street price from another. You need to haggle the best deal from each brand and compare those street prices. On tractors, it seems like the typical difference between MSRP and street price is about 15%, which is significant.

I don't know, this whole attitude seems awfully naive to me. Who sees the MSRP and just concludes "oh well, that is the price" ? Do you just pay sticker price when buying a new car, because that is what the manufacturer printed on the sticker? MSRP is meant to be haggled on with cars and tractors and many other big ticket products. Nobody should assume they have to pay MSRP.

 

[vtsnowedin]

I used the build your own quite a bit in the last few months. I got annoyed with all the options that come up "contact dealer". WTF if I wanted to have the dealer price it I'd have him do the whole thing. If you call the dealer he gets on a computer and pulls up a price and gives it to you. I'm just as good at the keyboard as he is so why not have msrp on everything.
I found the dealer discounts almost always closely matched the things you forget they add on like freight and set up charges so the bottom line between the build your own and an actual dealers delivered to your barn yard quote was often within a $1000. I was looking near the economy end of the scale so the spreads maybe much higher on top end cab tractors.
Bottom line though is that they could do a lot to improve that program like getting rid of anything that comes up "contact dealer" And having the loader being an option on the tractor not a separate attachment. Also current deals , low interest offers $1000 dollars off if you buy two attachments etc. should be in the program so you could see how they effect the bottom line. Good luck with selling your tractor and coming over to the Green side of the force.

 

[RollingsFarms]

The site use to be a lot better and way more user friendly. Now it's just a pain to navigate the thing. The build your own used to even give you picture examples of different options so you could see them. Now they just make you guess and wonder what it looks like.

 

[Robert_in_NY]

I find it hard to believe you're mad that the online calculator, which is setup to give MSRP, doesn't give "street" prices. Those prices vary dealer to dealer, market to market, customer to customer, and day to day (maybe hour to hour). Expecting the online calculator to give a street price is like expecting the Chevy website to haggle a deal for you at the nearby dealer. There's a reason they are called "street" prices, and there's a reason you need to contact the dealer to work the deal.

Interestingly, the Kubota's website calculator also gives MSRP, not street prices. You'd also need to talk to a Kubota dealer (or call them, or e-mail them) to get an actual street price and work a deal.

If you just compare websites, both Deere and Kubota, and any other manufacturer, will be giving you MSRP. Obviously you can't take a website MSRP from one and compare it against a haggled street price from another. You need to haggle the best deal from each brand and compare those street prices. On tractors, it seems like the typical difference between MSRP and street price is about 15%, which is significant.

I don't know, this whole attitude seems awfully naive to me. Who sees the MSRP and just concludes "oh well, that is the price" ? Do you just pay sticker price when buying a new car, because that is what the manufacturer printed on the sticker? MSRP is meant to be haggled on with cars and tractors and many other big ticket products. Nobody should assume they have to pay MSRP.

You may find it hard to believe because it is hard to believe since what you seem to believe I said is wrong. I said the MSRP on the John Deere calculator is 10k higher then the MSRP on the Kubota site yet in reality the tractors are within $2k. If the MSRP on the Deere site would have been more in line with Kubotas then I would have known the Deere and Kubota were very close in price, not $10k higher. No where did I say I wanted the website to tell me the rock bottom price, nor was I mad about it. I was disappointed because if the site was closer then I would not have ruled them out so quickly. My purpose of this thread was in hope that someone may be able to address that on Deeres side or at the very least no one make the same mistake I did. But you can read what you want from that :thumbsup:

 

[ctlguy]

I find it hard to believe you're mad that the online calculator, which is setup to give MSRP, doesn't give "street" prices. Those prices vary dealer to dealer, market to market, customer to customer, and day to day (maybe hour to hour). Expecting the online calculator to give a street price is like expecting the Chevy website to haggle a deal for you at the nearby dealer. There's a reason they are called "street" prices, and there's a reason you need to contact the dealer to work the deal.

Interestingly, the Kubota's website calculator also gives MSRP, not street prices. You'd also need to talk to a Kubota dealer (or call them, or e-mail them) to get an actual street price and work a deal.

If you just compare websites, both Deere and Kubota, and any other manufacturer, will be giving you MSRP. Obviously you can't take a website MSRP from one and compare it against a haggled street price from another. You need to haggle the best deal from each brand and compare those street prices. On tractors, it seems like the typical difference between MSRP and street price is about 15%, which is significant.

I don't know, this whole attitude seems awfully naive to me. Who sees the MSRP and just concludes "oh well, that is the price" ? Do you just pay sticker price when buying a new car, because that is what the manufacturer printed on the sticker? MSRP is meant to be haggled on with cars and tractors and many other big ticket products. Nobody should assume they have to pay MSRP.

I agree, you can also submit your online work to a dealer for follow up. For specialty tractors (orchard and vinyard units are) that don't fall under the normal tractor line up a call would have helped. Customers absolutly have some pull with requesting oem's change things but remember the dealers do to. I can't imagine dealers are going to request oem's lower their msrp one penny. It is super tough to swallow the loss on very late model, low houred used units. And of course a orange tractor is worth less money on a green lot (and vice versa) I feel the op's pain.

 

[Grateful11]

I hate how you get to the second page and you try and add something and it refuses to do because it says you haven't added the correct packages to add this item or that item. Everything goes through on the first page but I rarely ever get anywhere on the second page. Been trying spec. out that JD 5065M my wife has been looking at and you just have to take a calculator and add things on the second page. Not to offend but least Kubota's Build It page works. Looks like she's going Green this time.

 

[charleyfarmall]

Agreed that it needs work. I spent a lot of time on it before I had it fully figured out. Still, in some cases you can't add a loader to the tractor. It works but it still needs work.

Robert, I am sorry to hear that the Kubota isn't cutting it. I think you are being taken advantage of when it comes to the trade in allowance. With only 64 hours it is a new tractor and you should get a near new price for it. Try listing it yourself for sale on MachineFinder, eBay, craigslist, Tractorhouse, and Fastline. You might have to do without a vineyard machine for a bit but it might be worth it. Any chance Deere's 4720 would work? They can be made quite narrow if you can manage with 66 hp.

 

[Robert_in_NY]

Agreed that it needs work. I spent a lot of time on it before I had it fully figured out. Still, in some cases you can't add a loader to the tractor. It works but it still needs work.

Robert, I am sorry to hear that the Kubota isn't cutting it. I think you are being taken advantage of when it comes to the trade in allowance. With only 64 hours it is a new tractor and you should get a near new price for it. Try listing it yourself for sale on MachineFinder, eBay, craigslist, Tractorhouse, and Fastline. You might have to do without a vineyard machine for a bit but it might be worth it. Any chance Deere's 4720 would work? They can be made quite narrow if you can manage with 66 hp.

My main requirement is that the tractor be as close to 60" outside width as possible and no more then 64" and be powerful enough to handle my sprayer. I can't do without the vineyard tractor right now, it gets used every 10-14 days for spraying and I can't skip a round. So I will need to wait till I am done for the year and then decide what to do. Neil Messick forward my issues to Kubota and they have contacted me to get my view of the problems but so far I have not heard anything more back but I expect they will want me to take the tractor to a dealer for them to go over and try to figure out the problem. It will be nice if they can but my local dealer I bought it from didn't seem to care when I originally told him about it so I don't have much faith in it.

I agree also that they gave me an incredibly low trade allowance but all that means is that the orange paint stays on the farm instead of green paint. They did give me a very fair price on a new Deere unit though so I am not upset at all. For all I know they have trouble selling Kubota narrow tractors and if thats the case then I don't blame them for not wanting to invest a lot of money in it only to have it sit on their lot for a long time.

 

[Robert_in_NY]

It may be more money but at least it's not a kubota. And it's green. Like money. See the correlation here. We can't all afford the finer tractors. That's why there are brands like kubota!

Brand loyalty isn't my strong suit. I buy what I feel best suits myself for each particular task.

 

[charleyfarmall]

Brand loyalty isn't my strong suit. I buy what I feel best suits myself for each particular task.

I agree with that statement. I happen to drive green but I didn't always.

You are right, your Deere dealer may know that it will be hard to sell an orange vineyard tractor. I am sure there is a market for it, but it may not be in New York. When you look around do the other local vineyards drive Kubota's? If so, maybe they would like another!

Which model Kubota is it and how much hp does the sprayer take?

 

[Robert_in_NY]

I agree with that statement. I happen to drive green but I didn't always.

You are right, your Deere dealer may know that it will be hard to sell an orange vineyard tractor. I am sure there is a market for it, but it may not be in New York. When you look around do the other local vineyards drive Kubota's? If so, maybe they would like another!

Which model Kubota is it and how much hp does the sprayer take?

Kubota doesn't have much market share at all here outside of the homeowners using them on 1-5 acre lots. I know of 3 M series that are used in the vineyards but their the standard M but with extremely skinny tires so that the owners can use them in their vineyards. My vineyards are a lot tighter so I am stuck needing a true narrow. But the 3 M's that I know of are all because of one guy. He bought one and he is the type of guy that pushes what he uses on everyone else so two of his friends also bought because of him. The one has all John Deeres but bought the Kubota to replace the Case-IH that had reached trade in time. He uses it mainly on a pull type harvester.

Mine is the M8540 Narrow, I pull a 400 gallon air blast sprayer and my current sprayer wants around 50hp but I wanted to make sure I had enough power to run any future sprayers (multirow and such) as well as be able to work with harvest or to pull a harvester if I go that route. So I don't want to really go below 70pto hp as it will limit my options for the future expansions of the farm.

Kubota is fairly new to the vineyard market and around here it is hard to convince people to try something new. Just like I am experiencing now, if it isn't a John Deere or New Holland narrow then the trade allowance or used price is crap. Sadly, Kubota is considered to be an off brand to most of the local farmers. When I bought it I had plans to keep it 10-15 years or longer even so I didn't worry about that but I never expected to be this dis-satisfied with a new tractor. However, I do love the Case-IH Farmall 45A I bought. Every time I use that tractor I am just glad I bought it. Never regretted it once and that is how all new tractor purchases should be. Thats how it was with the New Holland TN65 12 years ago as well.

 

[charleyfarmall]

I was just looking at the specs for the two tractors. I have had some experience with Kubota long before I ever had a Deere. I had borrowed a friends Kubota to help while haying and used it with the baler and ended up hating the tractor and transmission. I was already spoiled by a 12x12 transmission and was used to being able to find almost exactly what speed I wanted.

What is it that you are disappointed with in the Kubota? Is it the transmission? Unfortunately the Deere has a pretty decent 12x12 power reverser with an optional 16x16. I really don't understand why Kubota has stuck with the 8x8 transmission in it's nice tractors when everyone else offers a wider range of speeds and usually a wet clutch.

I was afraid that you would say that Kubota had little market share. That's why the Deere dealer can't give you much of a trade in on it. The market is too small in your area. you will do better marketing it yourself at the end of the season this year.

Kubota's cabs on the larger tractors are generally pretty nice and although I think Deere has a nicer cab, it's more like gilding the lily. Both machines have essentially the same PTO power.

 

[charleyfarmall]

I just looked on Tractorhouse to see what was listed. Only a few 8540 narrows and not enough pricing information is available. There were a couple in PA and one in WA. The others were in Canada and had tracks on the back ( actually I think one was in MI too). Fairly small market.

The JD 4720 doesn't have the hp you want and has a minimum width of 66" so too wide. You would love the transmission and cab though.

The current New Holland machines look like they have the right stuff. I have to admit some bias. Although i own a NH TN75 DA ( Cab, 16x6 reverser) and it is a good tractor, it's more like a hammer than a really nice table saw. it does what it should but somehow I have never warmed up to it. It's kind of stupid but I've never liked the color and would have preferred the red Case version of the same tractor.