Owning a powered wheelchair should not become a nightmare yet for many wheelchair users it becomes just that.
Here is yet another email we received. This one is from a women in Nevada who is trying to get her brother mobilized in a reasonable time and in some sane manner. This quite common scenario speaks for itself but says little about the concern some wheelchair dealers have for their clients.
I have been waiting for “
business name deleted” to help me since April. It started with a simple problem, the power chair has one speed….s-l-o-w. A technician tried to help us fix it over the phone unsuccessfully. The chair belongs to my brother who has MS. He’s pretty much unable to use it at that speed to ‘go’ anywhere. I found out finally June 1st that I needed a Doctors Rx for the repair…. I got it, had it faxed to them and added a new ultralight wheelchair to the Rx also. They have terrible customer service skills, don’t return calls, said they didn’t get the fax which we had transmission confirmation on. The only business we have done with that company is the initial purchase of the power chair–it’s not like we have a history of being a pain or anything. I just don’t want to do business with them because they’re so unorganized and unreliable. I need to get this resolved…..can you give me anyone to contact and we can shoot the Rx elsewhere?
The upshot- Of course we referred this women to the wheelchair manufacturer for assistance in locating a cooperative wheelchair repair company. Solving this problem may be as easy as hooking up a programmer to the wheelchair and adjusting the top-end speed. Or it may, like it has for many other wheelchair users, remain a nightmare.
There are several reasons for the repair dodge. The first is the low dollar pay-out rate by funders like Medicare and Medicaid for repairs. Many dealers claim that there are no real bucks in funded repairs. The other killer scenario is warranty work. If warranty work is involved some dealers try to dodge the warranty bullet. Why? Because manufacturers do not pay for the labor involved in making a repair under warranty. They will replace warrantied parts that go bad but they will not dole out the labor dollars. The general rule is- he who sells it bites the bullet on warranty work.
Not fair at all to the dealer who can see his profits vaporize over a couple of hot repairs. Less fair to the wheelchair user who has few alternatives. Getting warranty work by a dealer other than the one that sold the wheelchair seldom works out since that dealer made no profit on the sale of the wheelchair to begin with and warranty labor is not reimbursed. It’s a total loss at that point and good Samaritans are about as hard to find in this industry as Santa Clause in August.
Unfair to say the least. Destructive and contrary to the core purpose of having a wheelchair? Absolutely! It’s an age old industry practice that has been going on forever and there doesn’t seem to be a solution in sight. Yet many powered wheelchair users are caught up in this mess. Either out of pocket or funded they have managed to obtain a much needed wheelchair, but there it sits for lack of repair. Just one big expensive nightmare.
