If John Deere is sending a tech, you've encountered something that could never be just a simple menu button. You've found a major flaw that they need to investigate in detail. John Deere would never send a tech for routine troubleshooting/repairs. That falls on the local dealership franchises. Their employees are not John Deere employees.
No, sadly not. John Deere is very anti right to repair, and they will do anything to make you call up an authorized tech.
There are authorized dealers who are not John Deere directly, but they are completely subservient to John Deere (they have to be otherwise they will not get access to the software tooling required to fix equipment), the semantic difference to a farmer is inconsequential, you will be overcharged[1] and scalped because the consequences of not paying is a multi-million-dollar heap of scrap because you cannot fix it yourself.
There are no independent tools to work on this equipment because selling a license to a 3rd party software would be in breach 1201 of the DMCA
John Deere's whole business model has been built around being the most repairable — ensuring that you can get the parts when you need them, not days or weeks later. I own farm equipment from all the major brands and I've been burned by that before. Deere is undeniably the winner in repairability.
They are quite protective of their intellectual property, that is true. Although what tech company isn't? I remember the time I wanted to see the service manual and it took a wink and a nod to get the service tech to decrypt it for me.
But, I mean, he did it, so... The fun thing about employees is that they are real people who don't really care what some nebulous figurehead in a far away place has to say. Especially when those employees don't work for Deere in the first place. I have no idea where you got that bizarre idea. You should step foot on a farm sometime.
"I remember the time I wanted to see the service manual, and it took a wink and a nod to get the service tech to decrypt it for me."
Boeing and Airbus are incredibly protective of intellectual property for both safety reasons and protecting the process. They still provide repair manuals.
There are hundreds of sensors on modern John Deere tractors they REQUIRE the entire firmware to its respective module because they are locked to your serial number, that means you could buy two identical tractors and swap a part between them and both tractors would cease to operate correctly because the module rejects the non-programmed sensor, this is unacceptable.
Now you might say well John Deere has rights to protect its own IP to which I absolutely agree, and I also agree they have the right to protect themselves from liability arisen from say someone installing an aftermarket sensor. Why not make a disclaimer appear saying "This equipment is fitted with a non-certified aftermarket part) rather than making it completely useless "contact dealer" is not a valid diagnostic message.
Let's say you wanted to hack your tractor to install an aftermarket sensor, well now you have to break the digital lock (encrypted payload files) that is installed by John Deere congratulations that's actually against the law even if you own the equipment.
This isn't about emissions or safety or anything else it's about shitty rent-seeking behavior that directly disenfranchises everyone.
When you purchase something, you should be able to own it.
There was a time where John deere themselves provided various models workshop manuals online but times changed to where they got really precious. I think their parts breakdown for all of their tractor models as of 5 years ago was still online.
Some years ago I was stunned to read (tractor forum) a US based farmer lamenting even though JD parts used, they'd had a third party service their tractor, and verified via diagnostics ... and basically had to wait for a JD tech to travel out and unlock their tractor so it could work. I'd assume that's the sort of behaviour that did John Deere in - travel and unlocking fees ffs.
I used to like JD, I've got one though 70s vintage.
