John Deere Customer Service

Calling John Deere's customer service line is rather ineffective when finding a dealer or repair shop, which surprised me. The system will find dealers and repair shops in an area, but how it decides what area to search doesn't fit with today's world.

When I called this number, I was given three language choices: John Deere offers services in English, Spanish and French. I was then offered five choices for why I was calling John Deere. I opted to get information about finding a dealer, and I discovered the major flaw in John Deere's system: the system asks you to enter based on phone number rather than zip code.

In theory, this option would seem to work well. Most phone numbers are tied to a location, and John Deere has customers enter the first six numbers of their phone number to get a precise location. However, in the cell phone era, this is completely inefficient. Many people stick with one phone number for their entire adult lives, only changing numbers if needed for their business.

That was my situation, as I wanted to search for John Deere repair shops and dealers in Honolulu, where I'm currently living. However, because of my phone number, the system would only search for places around Indianapolis, where I got my phone. If I wasn't planning to return to Indianapolis, using this system would be completely useless to me.

Even in Indianapolis, this system isn't very useful. That's because phone numbers aren't as tied to a geographic area as they used to be in the cell phone era. My phone number should have been tied to my nearest phone retailer in Indianapolis, but the first location John Deere provided me was in Fishers, 45 minutes away from my home.

The second location was even further away, and it wasn't until I got to the third location that I got to the closest John Deere location to my home. This shouldn't be the case, and it only happens because of tying the search to the phone number rather than ZIP Code.

Switching to a ZIP Code-based system would make this much more useful to the average person, as it would allow customers to search for the store that's closest to where they want to shop. On the positive side, John Deere does allow unlimited cycles through location until you get the one you want, but that can take much longer than necessary.

Based on this interaction, I wouldn't feel great using this number for customer service. The way the system is set up looks helpful, but it plays out like it's stuck in a bygone era. It might be helpful for people with landlines, but in an era where three out of four people only have a cell phone, it doesn't work as intended.