The Return Of The Mowers

I love Angie's List!  I have had nothing but superb service and value from every contractor and medical service I have selected since I joined.  Consumers Union for the local community...

Angie's List gives letter grades for quality, price, responsiveness, punctuality, and professionalism.  I focus on price and quality.  Price and quality together = value.  You can search for service providers many ways, but I only look at the ones with straight A ratings.  If the only ones were too far away, I would accept a couple of B ratings but price and quality HAVE to be A rating.  So far, that has not been a problem. 

And also so far,  I found dad a geriatric doctor when he first arrived, a dentist specializing in elderly patients, a vinyl siding replacement company, a roof replacement company, a tree removal company, and most recently a mower repair company.  Every single experience has been outstanding!

Today I got my riding mower and regular walk-behind mower back.  The regular mower wouldn't start this year, and when it did last year (with great pulling of cords and bad words) the deadman lever didn't work and I had to stop the engine by shorting the spark plug against the engine block.  They took apart and cleaned the carburetor, emptied and cleaned the gas tank, replaced a broken deadman lever cable, added about the same amount of new gas back, and sharpened the blades. 

The riding mower was running well enough, but developed a sudden banging/rattling sound under the deck just as I finished mowing last week.  Fearing a loose drive shaft or blade, I stopped immediately.  And even more suspiciously, there was no bad sounds with the blades disengaged while just driving the riding mower to the trailer to bring it to them.  They removed and replaced the drive belts, and found what they initially thought was a bent part of the blade undercarriage.  It was dried grass clippings, but so hard after sitting all Winter that the blade was actually bouncing off it.  They said they had to use a regular chisel to remove it and then they cleaned off the dried grass from the rest of the undercarriage.

That was embarrassing.  I ought to know enough to scrape the packed grass clippings from the undercarriage by now.  But I haven't done that for 3 years; its awkward to get a riding mower up off the ground for access to the underside, so I always think "well, maybe next time".  But at least it's done now and I should think about a way to get easy access to the bottom in the future.

When I was a teenager, the house had a sunken basement with cinder block walls and concrete steps steps leading up the the lawn level.  It just so happened to be exactly the width of my car tires, so I had a wonderful spot to change the oil and do the very simple car stuff I knew about.  I need something like that for the riding mower.

But the point of all this is that this place (Tool Solutions, Inc) did great work, nothing more than needed, and the cost for both mowers was...  $98!  My guess was $200 at best.

And so I will go over to Angie's List and give them a straight A rating.  I used both mowers today and they both worked better than ever, the price was great, they did the work quickly, discussed the needed work without exaggerating anything,  and were very (but quietly) professional about the whole repair.  And they are 3 youngish guys, only in business for 4 years.  I will be glad to go back to them for anything.

They don't know I am writing this...