viking-platinum-775 Archives - Page 2 of 4 - Ruffing’s Artist Dolls and Toys

Posted on May 20, 2010January 9, 2019 by Elizabeth Ruffing — 4 Comments

My Viking Platinum 775 Repair Issues

I made a quick video of my Viking Platinum 775, in its current state. I’ve been trying to get it repaired or replaced. My phone number and email address have been lost or misplaced by both the original seller and the repair technician, so far. The one is sure the other can fix it, but since this is how it is behaving after it came back from being repaired, I would feel better about it being replaced. The seller doesn’t have any more at this time, but he says he’ll look for one “just in case”. I feel like we’ve already reached “just in case” myself. The machine has been out of commission since October of 2009, after just 11 hours and 53 minutes of actual sewing time. I’m concerned about sending it all the way across the country again, risking additional damage in transit. I’m also thinking, since a lot of the malfunctioning it is doing is entirely random, that, even if someone gets it “working”, that doesn’t mean it will work the next time I turn it on. What if it works for a day, or a week, and then goes haywire again?

Anyway, I made this video so the repairman would be able to get some idea of what the machine is doing, which is a lot of crazy, random stuff. Those are all those fancy decorative stitches and alphabets I am trying to sew in the video! Remember those from when I first got it? Here’s the old stitch sampler, from when I first got the machine:

And another sampler, from when it came back from repair. It does sew the stitches sometimes:

You can see that, in the video, I’m just getting some helter-skelter sewing instead. I think I chose an “A”, “R”, and “X” for the letters I sewed in the video. They came out like chicken scratch. Here’s the sample from the video:

If I turn the machine on and off, sometimes it will still sew the stitches I select. Other times, it won’t. At random, the needle will go off to the right, or the stitch length and width won’t come out as programmed. It’s just not a whole lot of fun.

I’ve never had such a long, drawn-out ordeal over the repair of a piece of machinery. It wears me out. I know it is just a machine, but I dread having to deal with anyone or anything else in regard to it. Can you imagine taking a small appliance to someone for repair, and having to wait so many months to get it working? Imagine if your washing machine started acting up, and and you had to go do your wash at the laundromat for 8 months. Or if you had to rent a car for 8 months while you waited for yours to be repaired. Imagine if no one, the manufacturer, the salesperson, or the repair technician, acted like that was a big deal. Imagine if it took 2-2 1/2 months just for the company to mail out every part they discovered needed to be replaced. It’s just absurd. I’m glad I bought a backup sewing machine from Sears. I hope it never has any problems.

Posted on April 27, 2010January 9, 2019 by Elizabeth Ruffing

Baby peaches

We were out in the yard this evening, and I couldn’t believe my eyes. Baby peaches! My newly-planted little peach tree already has several tiny peaches on it. How exciting. Of course, those will have to be snacks for some small woodland creature, because that narrow branch will never support full-grown peaches. Still, every exciting.

The iris are in bloom as well. I need to divide my iris bed so we will have more blooms. Iris blooms become more scarce as the plants become overcrowded. That can be a fall project.

I’ve been working on some Lucy dolls that have been waiting a long while for their appliquéd details, and I’ve got a Super Slug almost done. My Viking Platinum sewing machine is working sometimes, and sometimes not. It seems to calm down after I turn it on and off a couple of times, or leave it to rest for a while. Still, I’d like to resolve this as soon as possible. I’ve surpassed my limit on patience with this six-month repair ordeal.

I found a small, but amusing-to-me distraction in a desktop aquarium. I know everyone probably has seen these before, but I wanted one after I saw them years ago. Apparently, no one around me wanted one however. They keep asking me if the toilet is running when the fish tank noise comes on. Whatever. I think it’s fun.

Thank you, to my new subscribers. I’ve appreciated your kind comments. I hope you will enjoy my blog. Thanks for joining us on our Ruffing’s Facebook page too. Now that I have a new, working sewing machine that does some decorative things, I hope to have more projects to show soon. I certainly have some projects I need to get up online. Always lots to do.

Posted on April 22, 2010January 9, 2019 by Elizabeth Ruffing

Return of the Platinum 775

I made a great discovery yesterday. I unscrewed my presser foot ankle from my Viking Sarah sewing machine, and screwed it onto my new Kenmore 19233…and it fit! That means I can use all those Viking presser feet I’ve collected, on the Kenmore, which is a relief, since I’ve invested a lot in presser feet so far. And who wants to have two sets of everything anyway? Update: I also found out you can buy a spare Viking Accessory Ankle , if you want to leave your Viking ankle on your original machine.

Well, guess who came home today? My Viking Platinum 775, which has been MIA for almost six months now, showed up with the UPS man. I couldn’t help making a mental note of the “Keeping the World Sewing” logo on the side of the box. That hasn’t quite been my experience with it.

I was afraid to open the box, feeling sure there was going to still be something on it that didn’t work, after coming back from the second repairman, who is also the original seller, all the way from California. I turned it on, and it did a few basic stitches, sewing forwards instead of backwards, like it is supposed to. It had been sewing everything backwards before. Then I selected some more intricate, decorative stitches, and it still sewed the same few basic stitches! No decorative anything. No alphabet. The needle up/down button was still broken too. I wanted to cry.

I came back later, after typing a draft of a letter I thought I’d send but didn’t, and miraculously, it was willing to sew all the stitches on its menu. Perhaps it needed to warm up first. I stitched a sampler and it did fine. The needle up/down button was still broken, and the grit behind the panel was still there, things that I noticed after it came back from the first repairman.

The buttons and the panel had not been replaced, as the first repairman had told me they needed to be. Yet, here is the machine, sewing with those original parts. I did have to wait another 2 1/2 months for a different part to come from Viking though.

I’m not sure what to do about the remaining repairs that need to be done. I think the second repairman may have just missed my note about the additional repairs, since I had to write a second time in regard to them, after I got the machine back from the first repairman. But, I would have to ship the machine back to California for him to fix those things. I have no one I trust to go to here in North Carolina. I have to say, I’ve had a problem with everyone I contacted so far who is officially connected with the Viking company. Each of those people made insinuations about the seller of the machine, saying he must be doing something underhanded, but really, he’s been honorable so far, as far as I can tell. And he didn’t charge me anything. He honored his own warranty, even though the Viking company would not honor the warranty on their machine. I just had to pay to ship the machine to him.

On a brighter note, I made this red fleece “Hug Me! Slug” with my new Kenmore sewing machine. He’s on his way to the west coast to cheer up someone who has lost a dear friend. It’s nice to have a project to do that means something to someone else. That makes me feel good. I hope the new sewing machine and I will be great friends.

Posted on January 23, 2010June 7, 2019 by Elizabeth Ruffing — 32 Comments

Husqvarna Viking Platinum 775 sewing machine repair problems, the ongoing saga

Husqvarna Viking Platinum 775 sewing machine on my worktable

My Husqvarna Viking Platinum 775 sewing machine repair problems have continued.

As I said in my last post about my Husqvarna Viking Platinum 775 sewing machine repair ridiculousness, I hoped to have my machine back after more than two months of waiting for parts. At first, I meant I hoped to get it back repaired. Then I lowered my expectations, and hoped to get it back as it was when I brought it to the repair shop. Well…

Before I even touch on how tired I am of this entire process, or how frustrated I am with the Husqvarna Viking sewing machine business as a whole, I think I’ll just voice my suggestions for Husqvarna Viking that might help avoid all the problems I’ve had:

1) Sell the sewing machines directly from the Husqvarna Viking company.

Post them on the Husqvarna Viking web site with set prices that everyone can see.

Allow customers to purchase them online, directly from the Husqvarna Viking web site, or allow them to purchase sewing machines through dealers who take their orders, send them to the company, and have the machines sent directly to the customers from the company. That way, dealers can still get a commission, but there is no intrigue as to whether or not a warranty is valid or a dealer is authorized.

There is no wondering if a machine has been tampered with or refurbished. There is no room for price gouging. It’s a cut-and-dried transaction. Staples does it. You can go in to Staples, look at a desk, have someone there order it for you, and it comes to your house. Easy.

2) Post the complete warranty conditions on the Viking web site.

Be clear about what customers need to do to address any issues, and how they go about doing that.

3) Allow customers to have the option to send machines in for repair, directly to the company, where they have people specifically trained to work on their machines.

Post set prices for cleaning, repair, and servicing directly on the Viking web site, with instructions on how to send your machine to them.

Again, there is no room for price gouging, and there is no burden on the customer to ascertain if their local repair person/Viking dealer is honest or qualified to repair their machine.

Allow customers to go to dealers for repair if they choose, but give them the option to mail their machines directly to the company, if they choose.

I think that would solve a lot of the problems with this company that I have been through so far.

At any rate, I got my Husqvarna Viking Platinum 775 sewing machine back, and it’s in worse shape since it took a trip to the local authorized Viking dealer’s repair shop.

I was afraid this would be the case, but I didn’t want to say that in my last post, because I was holding onto the hope that it wouldn’t be true.

I have no choice now, but to report this to the original seller who agreed to fix my machine. He is in CA and I am in NC, on the opposite coast. He has his own warranty on the machine, for defective parts. I think the parts would have been covered, but now the waters have been muddied, because the dealer in NC took my machine apart to look at it. I’m hoping the original seller will still replace the parts.

I had a choice of going to one of two local authorized dealers, who were within a reasonable driving distance from me. I had misgivings about one of them, when I tried to buy a sewing machine. At the time, she had a half-off sale on all her discontinued models, and I asked to try one. Then I noticed another sewing machine, the same model I have now, the Husqvarna Viking Platinum 775 sewing machine, that hadn’t been marked with a price.

She told me she had completely forgotten about that one, since no one ever looked at it. Everyone who came in wanted the newer models instead. It was an older, discontinued, used floor model, but once she saw I was interested in it, she refused to sell it to me for half off, even though all her discontinued models were half off. She decided to stick close to he price point of the other fancier model, that came new in the box, that I had looked at, assuming, I guess, that that was how much she could get me to spend. That really turned me off.

I liked that model though, and after calling the other local dealer to find out they didn’t have it, I found it online instead, brand new. I really liked the sewing machine. It had all the features I wanted and I loved the stitch quality. I ordered it from CA. I sewed with it for some time, with no problems. Then it started stitching backwards, and having irregular stitches.

So, I went to the only other local authorized dealer for repair. As I said before, the price for repair more than doubled, without anyone notifying me, over the course of the two plus months I waited to get it back. I left out of my last post that, in the time between the dealer/repairman telling me were were already “up to $700” and his agreeing not to charge me, there was a lot of negotiating. My dad stepped in to deal with that. I felt like I was being taken advantage of, and I was.

The NC dealer I went to also told me he thought the machine had been worked on before, that it had major damage, and that, “Whatever gremlins got in there must have had a party.” It’s all been very confusing and upsetting. I personally don’t believe in gremlins, and even if I did, I can’t imagine how they’d get inside the machine.

I used my eBay-bought copy of the service manual to get into service mode to check the clock on how much use the machine had had, in case it really was a well-disguised used machine. There have been only 33 hours and 12 minutes that it’s been on at all, and only 11 hours and 53 minutes that it’s actually sewed. I did most of my sewing on my other machine, and saved this one for detailing.

I also unplugged it between use, and kept it on a surge protector. There have been a lot of insinuations by the Viking company and their dealer, about my machine and the person who sold it to me, but I don’t know who to believe. Right now, I’m wishing I had just sent it to the original seller to fix in the first place. It hasn’t been repaired, and no one I’ve dealt with so far has behaved in a businesslike manner.

This has all been much more complicated than necessary and I still have no idea how this is going to go. Contrary to what Husqvarna Viking has been pushing at me, I don’t wish that I had bought my machine from one of the local dealers. I feel like I would have just paid more for the machine and received the same poor service I’ve gotten so far.

Husqvarna Viking used to be a good company, from what I’ve heard, and although I really liked my machine while it was still working, I’m very disgusted with the company.

I hope to be able to just get back to my sewing, on my older Sarah, my other Husqvarna Viking sewing machine, without having to think about this nonsense every day. It’s been very distracting and disheartening, not just for myself but for my family. Since we work together, there have been projects piling up that haven’t been gotten to because of this.