My dealer charges the same as HD and Lowe's but he provides excellent service.

He filled out the paper work, had my trimmer put together, gassed up and provided a couple extra bottles of oil to boot.

Service is great. I call him up with parts and he lets me know when they are in.

I recently bought the Echo 210 trimmer. My local Stihl/Echo shop was selling at the same price as HD.

The Echo comes with a 5 year home owner warranty. If the 210 ever gives me trouble, I know I can stop by the shop and have it fixed on the spot or wait a day or two for a more serious repair.

The other advantage of buying from the small shop, every time I buy something else, it gives me just a little more price negotiation leverage on the bigger ticket items. :)

If the small shop was selling the 210 at the Echo $240 MSRP list price, it might be a tougher decision.

Both Echo and Husqvarna do a pretty good job of wholesale pricing so that the professinal dealer can sell at competitive pricing with HD. You also will probably find a better variety of models to fit your particular needs at a professional shop. Very few shops of any kind will have all of the models but variety will probably be better as well as info on those not in stock for ordering give the professional shop the advantage.

Seems pretty silly to me for a buyer to go to HD for these products when HD sells them to you in a box where your local professional shop services and checks them out for you first. They also can go over them with you as to starting, running and maintenance depending on your personal knowledge level with the equipment.

Will the HD buyer get a lower level of service from the professional shop, most times no difference. Any warranty concerns will get priority attention regardless. The only time a HD buyer may get shelved is when we are extrememly backed up with non warranty work. If we get more then 4 or 5 days backlogged we may put repairs bought elsewhere on hold until we get better caught up with OUR BUYING CUSTOMERS.

One other thing for HD buyers to beware of. Their return policy means they often have so called "Factory Reconned" unit for sale at a deep discount. Keep these things in mind when buying a recon unit.

1. No manufacture recon's their product for resale. To label them as Factory Reconned is intentionally misleading. Some local repair person or HD's regional repair facility did it. Some do good, complete inspection and repair, others do not.

2. There is no factory warranty on recons. You buy one with only HD's word on it that it will be repaired at one of their sources. We get maybe a half dozen recon's in every year requesting warranty repair from folks who don't know better or were lead to believe different. It does get old getting screemed at from a P.O.'d HD customer that we can't help them.

I bought the Echo 210 trimmer from HD and have been quite happy with. There's not really that much setup witht he trimmer and dealer shops around here ARE much higher that HD, so there is a that difference.

The dealer will still repair them, so I don't see a problem. I don't have to have the trimmer available in one week like I need my tractor to mow the lawn twice a week.

I don't have a good choice in ECHO dealers near me, but I did call two who were farther away. In both cases, the prices were equal to Home Depot or lower. Home depot wanted $10 more for the 230, and the 210 was the same price. I asked the clerk at Home Depot where I would get it serviced under warranty, and she named a power equipment dealer within two miles of the Home Depot. When I got home, I called this dealer and was told they do not service ECHO equipment. They only service STIHL. Thank goodness I did not fall for that one. I found that unlike STIHL, the dealers will sell for less than the list price on ECHO products. This is probably true because HD sells them. One of the large dealers near me just droppen the ECHO line because of Home Depot. Charles Ranheim

Hello all.

Could we soon see ECHO and Shindaiwa products in the same Big Orange box store?
I initiated a Tool Shed post: Shindaiwa/Kioritz (ECHO) Announce Alliance.

http://www.shindaiwa.com/nam/en/home_nam.php

Good day.

Here is a link that might be useful: Shindaiwa link

HD is not supposed to deep discount the product under the agreement with Echo. It would not be in their best interests anyway as they need the parts and service support. We find HD helps us by raising the brand awareness and customers return to us because of the service.I have heard of dealers dropping shared lines but IMHO, they are only hurting themselves.

Buy from a local dealer whenever possible. If you have a problem they'll likely give you priority service.

If you buy from Home Crapo the local dealer will likely still service the unit but you'll go to the back of the line.