Mea Culpa

I know, I know...what good is a blog that stops for nearly 6 months? Various and sundry excuses pop to mind, but none of them worth the effort to try them. Suffice it to say, I've been irresponsible, thoughtless and lazy.

In any case...I'm b-a-a-a-ck! Just past noon on the first Saturday in June that feels more like a sultry Saturday in August here in lovely Wilmington NC... I'm gazing out at my lush lawn and just realized I completely missed the azaleas, apple and pear blossoms while on my 6 wk odyssey to San Diego for my son Jon's wedding.

Speaking of lush lawns, let's talk about customer service... HUH!?

Earlier this year, while lush lawns were months away, I called the local premium lawnmower repair service, one that I had used before and had been relatively satisfied with, to come pick up my fancy, not-too-old zero turn riding mower that has been giving me fits for a couple of years by throwing belts. Last year, I replaced a pully assembly hubby damaged removing one day when he got overly ambitious, but it never corrected the popping belt problem, which was probably mis-alignment. To counter it, hubby had been using belts that were smaller than called for... This year, I decided to correct it once and for all and sent it to the shop for a complete tune-up AND with specific instructions to fix the belt issue.

I got the machine back about a week before heading out to SD, with ALL pully assemblies replaced, aligned, yada, yada, yada (and PRESUMABLY TESTED), to the tune of $600+. Last thing I wanted was to have it die during high season and have to wait weeks to get someone to work on it, so I had them replace all the iffy stuff. Since grass was just starting to wake up, I didn't get a chance to try it myself before heading out...

While I was gone, hubby claims that the first time he tried it, grass wasn't that long and it just wouldn't cut, i.e., blades started slipping when they hit the heavy stuff, so, he changed the belt out to one that is smaller (ok, I sighed) and the next time he tried it a couple weeks later, belt started popping off just like before the $600 repair bill (hmmm). Since I was gone for 6 weeks during late spring, needless to say, by the time I got home and realized when I saw the savannah that the grass hadn't been cut in several weeks (he never told me about any of this while I was gone nor why he hadn't called them back about it before I had to), I was not a happy camper. Needless to say, tick season was around the corner and I had at least one tick magnet in the pack, so foot long grass was not an option...

I called the shop the day after I got back (5/13) and they sent someone out that day for a pickup and I explained to him about the belt continuing to pop off. I figured: how long could an alignment take?

A couple weeks after sending it back, I finally broke down and mowed the 2 acres using a me-propelled 21" hand mower...took me two days because it was so hot out and I couldn't do much more than a couple of hours worth without having a melt-down. I finally called them just before Memorial weekend to find out that they hadn't even looked at it yet but would right after the holiday weekend (grrr).

When I called and spoke to the repair guy, he told me they couldn't do anything until they had the correct belt and he didn't have any in stock, so had to order. OK, so how long to get a pretty common belt? I held off on mowing the lawn again because I wanted to be sure to test it out on the LONG & HEAVY stuff when I got it back, BEFORE they took off again!

As I discovered when I stopped in this past week (over a week after I spoke to the repair guy), apparently quite a while, because they were on backorder... I was so p.o.'d that I just growled, turned around and stomped out as the parts guy said he was going to try to find another supplier...

Meanwhile, ticks are out in force, but with the heat index so high, no can mow, at least not during daylight hours and I suspect my neighbors wouldn't be too happy with me mowing all night...

So, I've got the greenest, lushest lawn with lovely spikes waving in the light breeze... Maybe I'll try to get just what I can see tonight...although I do still want to leave some for when I eventually get my mower back...I probably ought to tell them that so they make sure they test it before they release it... how do they test it anyway?