Troubleshooting and Warranty Improvements

Dear Valued Dealers,

At Bobcat, we are dedicated to continuously improving our services and providing superior support to our dealer network. Earlier this year, we visited many of you across the region to gather insights into the challenges you face with our troubleshooting and warranty processes. Based on your valuable feedback, we are thrilled to announce several significant updates, effective January 1, 2025.

Removal of Efficiency Approval Requirements

We have removed the mandatory efficiency approval requirement for major components. Your feedback indicated this process was often slow and unclear. Moving forward, if you determine that a component has failed, you can proceed with the repair straight away and submit the warranty claim afterward.

To assist you when you’re unsure about whether a failure is covered by warranty or if you have enough information to support a claim, we’ve created the Advise Request case. You can use this to submit any questions related to a potential claim on whether it’s warrantable or if you have sufficient data to support the claim.

Additionally, to avoid unnecessary warranty rejections when more claims are submitted without prior contact, we’ve developed several warranty requirement guidelines These guidelines are 2-3 pages long and outline what information (test results, documents, pictures) should be included in a warranty claim. Please share these with your technicians to ensure they collect the necessary information during their first visit. They will be available for you to download from Bobcat Online Publications (BOP).

Updated Suggested Service Times (SST) and Diagnostics

We annually review our Suggested Service Times (SST) to ensure accuracy. This year, we:

• Corrected nearly 500 codes and increased labor hours for these codes by 50%.
• Remind you that SSTs include time for removing and reassembling components.

While diagnostic time is generally not covered, we may reimburse extra diagnostic time if:

• Additional tests were requested through Service Cloud.
• You faced a particularly complex issue.

To simplify this, we’ve developed a new Excel tool to document work and justify reimbursement requests.

Revised Warranty Reimbursement Scheme

We value the effort you put into maintaining an efficient, high-performing workshop with well-trained personnel. As recognition, we revised the warranty reimbursement scheme to reward our most capable dealers based on your service performance recorded during the DAR process. The table below shows the markup applied to your warranty labour rate (WLR):

WLR = Warranty Labour Rate
SLR = Shop Labour Rate

For example, if your DAR score was 75%, your warranty labour rate under the old scheme would have been 75% of your shop labour rate. With the new scheme, it will be 85% of your shop labour rate.

User-Friendly Warranty Policy Document

We want our warranty policy to be an easy-to-read guide for you. Therefore, we have completely rewritten the document to include all relevant information in one place, clearly and simply, guiding you through the entire warranty process. We have also clarified several points, such as:

• Removal of the requirement to provide an external test report of turbo chargers.
• Removal of the maximum 5L re-imbursement for oil leaks.
• Ensured all items not covered are listed in 1 section

This update will simplify navigating the warranty process and understanding coverage for you and your teams.

Your Feedback Matters

These updates reflect our commitment to being more customer-focused. If you have questions or suggestions, please share them with your Service Manager. We’ll consider your input for future improvements.

Additionally, we are strengthening internal communications to ensure our aftermarket teams are fully aligned and able to support you promptly and effectively.

We believe these enhancements will greatly improve your experience, enabling you to deliver even better service to your customers. Thank you for your continued partnership and trust in Bobcat. We look forward to a successful collaboration in the year ahead.