Ask yourself "is the guarantee too good to be true"

Please take note: there are only a few rogue traders who are operating as described below.
The majority of sewing machine dealers in the UK are very genuine, and trade honestly. If you have concerns about buying online, and in particular after-sales service and guarantees, but you know of a good dealer that's near to you, then really, you should consider buying from your local dealer - use him or loose him as they say.
Tell him about the machine you are after and see if he can match the offer or price.

Now read on

In our opinion, the free servicing offer smacks of being
"too good to be true"

And remember that not all of the monkeys live in a zoo!

Let's say, for example, the offer is being touted on a machine that costs around £200.
This would mean the dealer will hope to make around £50 - £60 profit on the sale.
Now let's say he's offered to do this free service with free collection and return for the next 10 years, it only takes a simple sum to arrive at the following conclusion:
Collect & Return carriage will cost him at least £10 - £20.
Now remember, he's offered to do this for the next 10 years - so:
10 x £15 = £150:
Plus, he's got to pay someone to do the service work every year, so if you add that into the equation, then after 10 years he'll be well and truly out of pocket.

So unless manufacturers are actually giving him their machines for free, or his courier does the collection and return at no charge and his service engineer works without pay, then the more machines he sells along those lines, the more money he looses.

The most probable catch (so that he gets more cash out of you) will be that after a year or two, he's going to try and sell you another new machine.

Once he's got your machine in for its so called "free service" you will then be given some cock & bull story that the machine needs replacement parts that are not covered by the guarantee; "oh yes and there's going to be a nice big bill".
Or he may try saying the machine needs a part that's going to take months to get in.
Another good yarn is to say that the machine was damaged in transit and it's now the customer's responsibility.
He'll tell you that he's willing to help you out by offering you X amount of cash for your 2 year old machine, but only if you buy (and now here's the sting) a certain model that's on special offer.
This new machine he's now pushing at you will be very cheaply made, but will have a huge profit margin to recoup the money he's offering for the machine originally taken for "free service"

This sort of thing was common practice by some unscrupulous sewing machine companies in the 1960s and early 70s, unfortunately, it is still being bandied around today.
However, in those days the cowboys employed high pressure salesmen posing as "in-home service engineers".
The customer (or mark) was played, just like a big fish.
First we have the "bait":
Customer answers local paper ad, which says "sewing machines serviced at home for only 10 shillings and six pence" (about £10 in today's money)
At first the customer feels content that she's got a great offer and the machine is being serviced and looked after.
Then comes what is known in angling terms as "mouthing the bait"
This is when she's told about the problem with the very expensive (imaginary) part that's needed (usually a none existent gear, but today we often here it's a timing belt)
Next, comes the "strike" (hooking the fish) when the bogus engineer offers a tidy sum for her old machine if she's willing to trade it in against the one that he just happens to have on his van.
The machine on his van, by the way, was always very cheaply made but grossly overpriced. He would then get the customer's old machine for a song, which he could later put in the showroom as a quality used model.
But if the machine just given in was already in good nick, then he stood a fair chance of selling it on at his next house call.
If the customer decided to go ahead with the unknowingly bogus repair, instead of the trade-in, then the salesman was still quids-in.

If after reading the above, you still feel that the "free service" guarantee offer is genuine, then may we wish you well and hope you have the best of luck! And we certainly hope we'll never have to say "told you so"