Sunhill Machinery Cust. service is great!

[Bruce Brurud]

I recently bought a used Sunhill 6" jointer that I thought only needed new bearings. After tearing it down I found that the cutterhead shaft is worn due to the bad bearing. The only good thing about my sad tale is that when I called Sunhill about parts, the phone was answered by a real, honest-to-gosh person! Better than that, she had a nice voice, a sense of humor and went out of her way to help me out. She even consoled me for having to put almost as much money into the used jointer as I would have spent buying new. I don't feel any better about it, but at least she tried.

[Don Morris]

That was my experience with them too. There was one creeker who had an opposite experience, but I think that's just not common from what I've heard. My 8" jointer was missing a knob from a cross country trip, the crate was banged up a bit, but the machine was in good shape. The customer service people were very pleasant and the part was in the mail the next day. Sunhill must send their people to Customer Service 101. I know a couple companies who should but obviously haven't.

[Rod Sheridan]

Hi Bruce, I don't know how damaged your cutterhead shaft is, however many machine shops can often repair a worn shaft for less than the cost of a new one.


Regards, Rod.

[Loren Hedahl]

A few years ago I attended the woodworking show at Puyallup, WA and stopped at the Sunhill display to see what they had added since purchasing a 6 inch jointer from them.

The gentleman at the booth was friendly, courteous showing me everything from his line of saw blades to a large industrial sander that he knew I had no intention of purchasing. He was interested in my piano rebuilding efforts and said he was sorry to have grown up too poor to afford a piano or lessons.

He gave me a special price on a helical head for my jointer and while I was writing the check he stuck several saw blades in the bag.

Turned out he was the owner of the company.

[Bruce Benjamin]

I bought an 8" jointer from them a few years ago and got a mixed bag of good and not so good customer service.

The bad started when I got a 6" jointer even though the paperwork stated it was an 8". I had already partially removed it from the packing material when I discovered their mistake.

The good started when they were very apologetic and immediately sent me out the proper jointer even before they had picked up the old one. Unfortunately I still had to figure out how to rebox the 6" jointer, (The box was trashed in shipping.) and I had to burn another 1/2 day of work waiting for the delivery truck to arrive. Sunhill did send me an extra set of blades for my trouble however and that was nice.

The bad returned when the new jointer had some hidden damage to the base. From what I could tell the damage didn't occur in shipping. It either happened in their warehouse or in Taiwan, I don't know. I let them know about the problem but I told them I would try to fix it myself, (Needed to be straightened) if they agreed to send me some of that funky blue touch-up paint. They agreed but they never sent me the paint.

More bad when I decided I wanted to build a mobile base for the jointer. I called and talked to the salesman, Ricardo and asked him what the height of the table was when completely set up. I didn't want to assemble this beast without assembling it on the mobile base. I wanted the tables to be at about the same height as my other tools so I needed to know how tall to make the mobile base. The salesman gave me a number and of course it was completely wrong. He gave me the height of the top of the fence even though I was very clear about what I wanted. I spent good bit of time cutting and welding that base only to find out that he really screwed up. I had to disassemble the jointer to get it off of the base and cut the base apart so that I could modify it's height. It didn't end up very pretty but with a grinder, some paint and a lot of cussing I got it to work. Again, they were apologetic. They offered to send me one of their own mobile bases and another set of knives to make up for my trouble and I thought that was very generous of them.

The final bad came when I discovered the fence was badly twisted. They said they would send me a replacement that would match perfectly. Well, I got the new one in only a few days but it didn't match perfectly. Aside from being the wrong color, I had to drill new holes to mount the fence to the fence bracketry since they didn't line up at all. At least the new fence was straight and once I had the whole thing set up right it performed perfectly.

Will I do business with them again? Yes, I probably will if they have something I want. But while they seem to be great about being apologetic and offering free stuff to make up for their errors, they really need to work on making sure their customers get the right products and the right information in the first place. If they would get that right they wouldn't have to send out so much free stuff. Between having to return the first jointer, repair the second one, heavily modify the mobile base I built, and modifying the replacement fence so that it would fit I had quite a bit of extra time that I shouldn't have had to spend. I guess it beats the heck out of the places that screw up and then don't bother to try to make it right.

Bruce

[John Thompson]

My encounters with the Sunhill people at two IWF's have been pleasant. And my encouter with recieving their 6" jointer years ago was also pleasant. Customer service responded well and the jointer was finally sold to a gentleman local. He loves it and has made no negative comments about issues dealing with their CS. But.. he may not have had to as the jointer had no problems and he hasn't mentioned any to me since he got it over 2 years ago.

Sarge..