USEF Perks for John Deere

[heidicald]

Has anyone used the discount that is supposedly available on John Deere mowers through USEF? If yes, was it hard to get? How much discount was it?

We are looking at a riding mower LA145, it is about $2200 and we'd like to know if it qualifies. The office for answering is closed on the weekends.

Thanks!!

[deltawave]

IME it's a good thing to walk in with, in terms of bargaining and setting a price, but we got a much better price than the discount would have given just by doing plain old negotiating. :)

Tell them you have the discount, but would expect them to beat it. ;)

[poltroon]

I bought my tractor that way.

The discount is 23% which is quite good. It was quite a bit better than our dealer would offer otherwise, comparable with the discount they give on the equipment that is returned after a season's lease to the vineyards. The discount applies to the tractor and to all the implements you buy at that time (we bought a front end loader and a rough cut mower). They want to know you will be using it on a horse farm, and not for example for vegetables. The mower you're looking at may or may not qualify, but they definitely will be asking you about whether it will be used around your horses. I can't say how rigorous that has to be. I was asked the question, I answered horses, and that was the end of it.

The discount is not available in conjunction with other promotions - for example, we were not able to get both the 23% and the 0% financing that Deere was offering at the time.

It took 2-3 weeks to arrange - you don't just show your membership card and walk away with the discount. There's some paperwork that the dealership has to do, and I think I had to have a phone conversation with someone, but it was not particularly a hassle from our point of view as a buyer, just took a little time.

The USEF membership certainly paid off that year.

All that said, you may get as good a deal or better on another make or in another direction. It depends quite a bit on the dealerships in your area, whether they generally sell the kind of tractor you want (some dealers seem to specialize more in small operations, some in large operations), how far they are from you, etc. In our case, the Deere dealer is the closest and also the most horseman-friendly group, which helped.

[deltawave]

As poltroon says, you probably can't combine deals--we went with 0% financing and a very good discount on some implements over the boilerplate USEF discount. It worked out to a better deal for us, especially the no-interest part. :)

[TrueColours]

We have used the USEF discount for buying our big tractor and then a blade and mower attachment as well

It was great - saved us thousands and I believe it was 20% that we got off everything at the end of the day

It was a couple of years ago but I gave them my number, they contacted head office and we got the tractor picked up a few days later and the discount was shown on the invoice so it was pretty instantaneous all the way round for us

Good luck - WELL worth it! :)

[heidicald]

Thanks for the info! I will give it a try and see if the lawnmower we need will qualify. If it is 20%, hey, thats about $400, so totally worth it!