Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Update (10/7/2018), it's now October, over two full months since I bought this thing. I am still waiting on Amazon to arrange pickup with a shipper. BUt wait there's more. no less than 6 contracts have been hired to pick this up by Amazon. Each time, something fails in the process. I sincerely hope that Amazon gets this out of my house so I can buy one that works. From Dick's. This is the last large purchase I will ever place with Amazon. I love the convenience of the company, but wow, over two months now. I just would not have believed something to have gone so wrong as this has. I expected better. Here's to hoping they pick it up by Christmas I guess. Review: I did my homework. Looked at the reviews. Felt good about my choice until… First off, I have to say Amazon and the service technicians did an amazing job from both the customer service and problem resolution side of things. I can’t speak highly enough about that part of the experience. The problem started however when the first installer left me with a beautiful shiny new treadmill… without testing it before leaving my home. There’s an argument that this is an oversight on my part which I fully accept. That aside, when I went to try it out, it powered up just fine. The console responded as expected, then I selected a running program and hit GO. Which is when the belt timidly moved about 1/4th of an inch and stopped. I was puzzled. Maybe I did it wrong? Mind you, I am a runner. I am very familiar with treadmill operations and I can read instructions fairly well. Still, I tried several more times and realized I had a mechanical failure on my hands. I texted the installer and his boss came back out. (Which was great customer service in my book so kudos there guys). He was just as stumped as I was so we called Nautilus together and opened a service ticket. We did some troubleshooting with them. This was difficult as they didn’t seem to know how to operate the maintenance mode for this specific model. It was like they were really guessing. It ended up that they made the blanket call to send out all new electrical cables. I waited for a week when they came. Then I waited another week for a service tech appointment. When he arrived and opened the package Nautilus sent he laughed. They sent half the electrical cables needed and, here’s the funny part, an unrelated item that helps to raise or lower the track. The track worked great! Well, he did what he could, still no dice. So back to Nautilus technical support. They decided to send out the rest of the electrical cables and a new controller board for the thing. We waited another week and a half for this. The same guy came out, who was also fantastic and totally competent in many treadmill devices. He affected the repairs and then gave me a grim negative nod. He ended up on the phone with Nautilus for about an hour of further troubleshooting. The end result was that they wanted to send out a new motor as a last ditch attempt to fix the device. No guarantees though. Well, at about a month with living with a new paper weight, I decided to call Amazon to explore my options for making a return of defective merchandise. They totally took care of me too. Now, while the return date is set for Sept 7th as I have a hiking trip scheduled for the next two weeks, at least I know that someone is coming to pick up the hardware at no expense to me (except all the time I had to arrange to be home for the original assembly, the repair attempts and now the pickup). In the end, and after talking with he repair guy who works on many brands. I don’t trust the quality of Nautilus equipment. The repair guy said that he gets a lot of calls like this for both Nautilus, Bowflex and, increasingly, Nordic Track. There was one brand he did say that he does not get calls for unless it’s something like a piece of damaged plastic molding due to shipping issues. That brand is called Sole. So once I get my refund processed I will be buying a Sole treadmill. Specifically the F80 or F85 as I run. He said the lower models are good for walking and light runners. He also said that Sole motors last a lifetime. I am disappointed in the whole experience, hence the single star rating, but I am impressed with Amazon, the people I worked with and the fact that I got a good lead out of the process. I hope this review helps someone avoid the same experience I had in the future.