In mid August of I was searching for a used compact tractor with loader, backhoe, and mower to purchase. After much searching, I found Rinehart Tractor's webpage and talked to John Rinehart by phone several times and we also corresponded by email some 10 or 12 times.
I compared his offer of tractor, loader, mower, auger and trailer with numerous other dealers and his offer was better numerically and also based on the pictures he sent me of the tractor and equipment, including the trailer. Plus he claimed on the phone and in his email to me that they reconditioned the tractors they sold and didn't just repaint them.
I made the deal with him to purchase the package on August 19 and asked that he preload the tractor and equipment on the trailer since it was a 500 mile round trip for me to go pick it up and I wanted to be home before dark. I gave him a deposit by credit card and planned to go down on the 22nd but rainy weather prevented that and I ended up going on the 30th.
They had not loaded the tractor and equipment when I got there and I had to wait for them to get to the business and then to load the equipment. John drove the tractor around for me to look at it before they loaded it but I couldn't get on the tractor nor start it up. His wife even came out and told me to get off the yard because of their insurance.
After I had paid them and gotten hooked up to the load, his wife came out to check the load, ostensibly to be sure I had everything, but I'm sure also to be sure I had nothing except what was supposed to be there. Since they did all the loading and strapping down on the trailer, there was no way I could have put anything else on it.
Less than 10 miles down the road the load the straps loosed up and the auger and scraper blade almost fell off on the highway. I pulled off the road and tightened up the straps and added some rope I had to tie down the auger and scraper blade. I also stopped every half hour or so to check the load from that point on.
Almost immediately after turning onto I-95 going north, one of the trailer tires blew and I almost had a bad wreck in rush hour traffic. I called the SC DOT office and they sent a man out of his area to help me get the tire fixed since I had no spare and no jack for the trailer. (The picture of the trailer that John sent to me saying was my trailer did have a spare however.) The SC DOT employee and I found that the trailer tires were new but 8 years old. (There was a recent national news expose of new but old tires and how dangerous they were) The trailer was built by Lone Wolf Trailer Company in Falkville, AL and presumably they are the people who put 8 year old tires on the trailer.
The impact of the tire blowing broke, or cut, one of the straps holding down the tractor. I tied it temporarily with the rope I had and limped on into Florence SC where I stopped at the first place I could and got a chain and binder.
Rather than getting home before dark, it was almost 10 PM when I finally got home.
The next day when I unloaded the tractor I discovered the oil pressure guage did not work and after running the tractor a little while I also discovered the temperature guage did not work. Then a hydraulic fitting blew and in finding out what happened to that fitting, I discovered the oil filter had been bent severely by someone while they were trying to remove it but because of the tight space it would not come off. The filter was not leaking however.
There is no way anyone, anywhere, can recondition any piece of motorized equipment without knowing that it has oil pressure and does not overheat in running it. And the first thing they would do after knowing that it has oil pressure would be to change the oil.
Rinehart Tractor has refused to do anything, even answer my complaints, except to have their lawyer write me telling me to shove it.
I made a mistake trusting that they would honor their word but obviously they feel it's ok to tell a customer anything to get them to buy and then ignore them.
I also found that while John Rinehart represented himself as the owner, his wife Darlene is listed as the owner by suppliers who sell to them. I presume that's why John will say anything to convince a customer.
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