This will take a minute but please bear with me. My last boat had a Minn Kota PD40 Trolling Motor which though underpowered for the job performed very well. Over the years I owned it I had to replace the control pedal twice, once just before I sold it in '09. Motors, both turning and thrust worked perfectly after all the years and use in salt water which it wasn't designed for. At about $100 each it kind of rubbed me the wrong way but not storing it inside and lots of use I just replaced and moved on. In about '11, tax time, I bought my current PDV2 Riptide SP, with auto pilot and co-Pilot. Rather pricey(for my budget) but I looked forward to years of use, So it was all good. A while back, maybe spring, I noticed the left steer function of the pedal was stubborn to engage but would work. In colder weather it was even more stubborn and almost impossible to keep the boat in shape to fish and I was tweaked. Years down the road and a design change and the pedal still doesn't go the distance. I hear of little problems from others with these motors. So I was looking at replacing yet another pedal at my expense and that just rubbed me the wrong way. I sent an email to MK and got a generic response, which was no surprise to me. I responded with yet further explanation of my dis-satisfaction and condition of the pedal, which is lightly used and hardly scratched. Less than an hour after the second email I received a call from Brenda in customer service at MK. We spoke of my problem and the condition of the pedal, and the history of the last motor. In the first email response I was told that sand and dirt and twigs cause catastrophic wear to the circuit board controlling the motors functions. I mentioned this statement to her and told her that in my case this wear didn't apply. At this point She said that in this case she would set me up with a free replacement through a Fedex exchange. I was sent a label that was in an email and forwarded that to the Fedex office that I would be using. The next morning (that was Wednesday) I dropped package at the Fedex office where they printed and applied the label, and sent MK the tracking number of my inbound pedal and they then released the shipment of the new pedal to me. It was on my doorstep when I came home today. Beginning to end this whole affair took just over 3 days and I can fish in the morning. I can't say how happy I am that some companies still value their customers and don't spend all their resources side stepping the business that needs to be done. Thumbs up Minn Kota, I'm a happy boy!!
