CAVEAT EMPTOR - BUYER BEWARE: YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED
I bought 2 of £165 Bosch professional jigsaws from Marshall and Parsons, a few years ago. One I gave as a wedding present to my son in law in Germany. He tells me it has never even been taken out of its case, so I suppose it wasn't the best wedding present, but it did seem a good idea at the time. The other I kept for myself. I used it once for about 1hr in total, in the 1 yr guarantee period. It was described as refurbished or re-worked not sure of the actual term, by M and P which is why it only had a 1 as opposed to the normal 3 yr warranty on Bosch professional tools (tools with blue bodies). Just after the 1 yr warranty expired I went to use it for the second time and the automatic blade holder refused to accept the saw blade without spitting it out straight away. I had a very difficult time even contacting Marshall and Parsons at all, and even after I did I got absolutely nowhere. They were no help at all. Complete waste of time, as I said I only got them to answer the phone at all after many calls. Their attitude was as the warranty had expired they were in the clear and did not want to know. I pointed out any service man worth his salt would be able to tell at a glance that this machine was in virtually unused condition, despite its chronological age. Tough! was their attitude, they would not do anything. I had to go to Bosch to get them to repair a virtually unused machine.
During that first year, before I knew the jig saw was a lemon, I also bought a Bosch SDS GBH 38 Max drill for just under £400. Guess what. I hardly used it due to a slipped disc which as a result my plans changed for a few years. Then one day a couple of years down the line, again after the 1 yr warranty had passed, I went to use the drill for the second time, and discovered the HAMMER ACTION was not working. AN SDS MAX drill without a hammer action is almost useless! Again this machine was supposed to have been re-worked or whatever M and P call it, and supposedly as good as new. So now I have a virtually unused drill which cost a not inconsiderable amount of money, and am facing a large bill from Bosch to get it to work. I contacted M and P again, and again found even getting a response from them almost impossible. Eventually after ringing and ringing over days I got no answer on the phone. So I emailed and I explained about the problems getting in touch with the service dept. I told them about ringing multiple times a day over 3 or 4 days without answer, and they asked me for my number, promising to get the service dept to call me in the immediate future. I waited 7 weeks for the service dept. to ring me. I tried to call them myself again many times during that 7 week period, without success. After 7 weeks I emailed them and explained I had given up trying to get any meaningful service from them, but asked instead if they could send me a workshop manual so I could get an engineer friend to repair it. They emailed me a diagram , not a workshop repair sheet or manual. However I was so grateful to get any response at all from M and P I decided to try and fix it anyway, with the not very good exploded diagram they sent. As my engineer friend was in hospital at that time I waited for him to recover, which he did after a couple of months. By the time he was fit enough to attempt the repair, I had planned to forward the email and diagram to my engineer mate, but my computer had just crashed the week before , it refused to re-boot at all. It just died. No matter what we did we could not resurrect it. So I contacted M and P again by email, from a friends computer, as by then I had learnt phoning them is a complete waste of time. I asked them if they would be so kind as to re-send the diagram they had sent me before and explained about the dead computer and the unobtainable email with its diagram. I received no reply. I resent the email a few weeks later and again have received no reply, some weeks further on. It looks like I will have to go back to Bosch and fork out a small fortune to get the hammer action working . Now maybe it was just bad luck that the 2 machines I bought as re-engineered by M and P and sold as good as new, both developed faults bad enough to stop me using them after virtually no use at all, but certainly for a PROFESSIONAL RANGE TOOL I think it is unacceptable. I seem to recall Bosch Professional Tools with the distinctive BLUE BODIES are supposedly supposed to be rated for continuous use, by tradesman using them all day long, i.e. they are supposed to be able to stand a hard life. Not to fail after an hour of light use. I know I will never buy anything from this company ever again, and I advise any unwitting potential customers to try to find their tools somewhere else rather than this company, who obviously have a serious problem with providing any meaningful after sales service. LIkewise I believe the quality of the re-engineering they do, prior to re-selling the tools as good as new must be open to serious questioning. "Caveat Emptor!" as the Latin expression goes, In English BUYER BEWARE!
John Stevens B.Sc. (hons) Computer Science, Cornwall.
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12 December 2016
Unprompted review