Ryobi aka Stevens and co

Inverter generator RG 3200i

I'm unable to reach Ryobi on phone number ***, as it isn't connecting the call and I'm needing to lodge a complaint with Ryobi about the above mentioned generator which is still under guarantee and isn't working despite being seen to by the local Ryobi dealership in PE.

I'd like to address this complaint to Mr Erick Bezuidenhout please.

I bought the generator on 12 Oct 2021 and it initially arrived without a remote and after a week also refused to start. The local Ryobi dealership swapped it out for me and brought a new one which worked fine until 30 September 2022 when it didn't want to start. The local Ryobi dealership serviced it and couldn't really find the cause of the problem but resolved it by force starting it by manually manipulating the revs by tapping a lever inside the machine whilst turning the key. The generator had done 80hours of work by this date.

On 21 November the same trouble recurred and the same Ryobi technician saw to it once again. As before, he couldn't pin point the exact cause of trouble but did note it seemed to be leaking oil though the source of it was not evident so he put that down to spillage which may have occurred at the time of the service and oil change which Ryobi did on 30 September. He manually manipulated the revs again as before and the machine started. He said he was concerned that such a new machine was giving all this trouble and he'd refer to management for a swap out. They have not responded in this regard and the machine again failed to start on 9 December and oil was dripping out underneath the machine by this time. I reported it to the local Ryobi who've not done anything about it. The machine is standing, useless, in my garage.

The local Ryobi service centre is horribly mismanaged and grossly ill equipped to provide any decent customer service. On any given day you can enter the shop and find customers who are looking for their equipment which they'd handed in for repair many weeks ago and which has never been seen again. The Ryobi staff cannot locate most of the client's equipment due to a change in their method of logging and tracking client goods and instead, the staff hand the customers new machines and tools off the sales floor. It's an absolute circus! The staff also use the new equipment as a source of parts for machines they're trying to repair. No record is being kept of all the swap outs and replacements as no paper work is done at the time of the handover. The shop must be showing loads of lost stock!

As a result of the aforesaid, I'm not prepared to continue my business relationship with Ryobi and it's for this reason I'm asking for my money back please instead of a repair or swap of the item.