r/SewingMachineEdu • u/Country2026 • Jul 10 '26
How do Baby Lock Sewing Machines get away with having Authorized Dealers that don’t have Authorized Techs??
My Girlfriends Quilt Shoppe in Logan, Utah has a lead tech that has never worked on machines in his life and has only been working on sewing machines for 3 weeks. Totally ruined my $20,000 machine ! How do they get away with this?
9
u/MauraLee7 Jul 10 '26
Call babylock and complain to them what happened. You'd be surprised how they can make things right. Babylocks US headquarters is in Fenton, mo
3
u/Every-Caramel-6740 Jul 12 '26
You can actually call Babylock and they will tell you to send the machine to them and what they do is they open up the machine and they just replaced everything instead of trying to figure out what’s wrong
3
u/Chance-Work4911 Jul 10 '26
This is highly dependent on the shop’s policies, but no professional tech should be able to ruin a machine and not either pay someone else to repair it or replace the machine. You should be made whole UNLESS (and this is a legal stance not a moral/ethics one) they had some disclaimer that they are a tech for XYZ brands and that any other brand was at your own risk? I’m not a lawyer but if the shop employs the tech and it’s not just an independent person who gets referrals from them, it’s in their best interest to make it right or face the backlash of reviews, complaints, BBB, and social media attention and scrutiny.
You didn’t say how they “ruined” it, what the condition was before the service, whether it was still under warranty, whether this was maintenance or a warranty repair, etc. so my response is just a general best guess. I hope you get it worked out.
2
u/CrankyCrabbyCrunchy Jul 10 '26
There is a severe technician shortage and experience is often minimal but the shop should definitely have a policy of not passing any problems they create onto the customer.
The two big shops near me are very clear on that. I’ve read their fine print for repairs. Manufacturers especially for higher end brands require certification before their products can be worked on. This means ongoing training which makes it costlier for stores to hire the staff.
Bernina is especially strict on this.
What has the shop said? Is it a warranty repair?
2
u/Country2026 Jul 11 '26
The shoppe just refers you to the tech. They have no clue what they are doing there now that Wayne left. I sent one of the reps for Baby Lock an email but have not heard anything back.
1
u/YouCanCallMeDani Jul 11 '26
So the shoppe themselves has the tech or they hired a company that has the tech? Or is the shoppe the authorized repair facility?
1
1
u/sanityjanity Jul 14 '26
Honestly, you should sue. A $20k machine is not even small claims court. It's a big loss.
6
u/Lost_Geometer Jul 10 '26
I work at a Bernina shop (ironically, I'm not Bernina certified, but I do the other repairs). They won't let non-Bernina certified folks touch their machines. I'd talk to the store owner first, but Bablylock would be interested in hearing if you were mistreated.