Weed Eater FLSST25 FeatherLite 17-Inch 25cc 2-Cycle Gas Powered Straight Shaft String Trimmer

This unit only lasted me 3 years which isnt too bad considering I bought it at a pretty good price when it was on sale. Problems I had often were starting the unit, lots of vibration, and it's pretty heavy. I went ahead and bought a Hitachi and man was it a big difference.

Overall it was good while it lasted.

Featherlite SST 25 Weed Trimmer: Avoid this product and any PoulanPro or Husqvarna product unless you enjoy hassles and want to be ignored by customer service. My brand new trimmer would only run for about a minute before cutting off. A call to the 800 number never yielded a live customer service rep and did not address this particular problem. Multiple queries to the website went unanswered for almost three weeks despite a `guarantee' to respond within 24 hours. When they did finally respond, it turns out the carburetor needed adjustment and I would need to bring it to an authorized dealer and pay to have it done myself. The address of the closest dealer turned out to be a private residence. Additional contact through the website went unanswered despite another `guarantee' of response. The engine now runs but the string feeder often gets jammed and needs to be manually advanced. Do yourself a favor and buy a different brand.

I purchased a Weed Eater Featherlite gas trimmer model FL20C in Oct. 2009 It seemed to work fine the one time I used it, except it vibrated quite a bit. Early this spring I got it out and started it up. It wouldn't shift gears. I called the store I purchased it from and was referred to a phone number from Weed Eater. I called that phone number and was given another phone number. Every rep I talked to couldn't believe I wanted to fix a 70 dollar trimmer. Hey I only got to use it once! Weed eater finally referred me to their service partner. I took it down and again, the service rep was incredulous that I actually was asking them to fix a cheapo trimmer. Since fixing it would cost more than replacing it, I asked for a replacement. All of a sudden they weren't set up to fix Weed Eater brand. I went home, made several more phone calls, talked to incredulous reps, and finally got a message on my answer machine that said that I could bring it into the original service partner if I would wait a few days. Weird thing was that only after I said I would review them online did I get a response. There's power in the web! Poulan owns Weedeater now so I hope they read this message.

I bought this trimmer at WalMart to replace an old Featherlite I used for about ten years with nary a problem. Not so with this thing --- I carefully mixed the gas and (supplied) oil and went to work in my 1/3 acre suburban yard. The first thing I noticed was the full choke/half choke/run lever was "squirrely" in that it just sort of floated smoothly between settings instead of snapping into place at each stop like my old trimmer; OK, so I did get it started but then had a heck of a time keeping it running at anything but full throttle. As soon as I decreased the speed of the unit, say to half throttle, the engine lost power and sputtered to a stop; it did this repeatedly over an hour's time. And forget moving from place to place in the yard with the thing running at idle --- it won't simply idle (my old one had no problem doing so), but instead stops running altogether.

I also had major problems inserting new .065 line into the notches (the instuctions say notches, not notch, for this single-line trimmer); I lift weights, but all my strength couldn't force the line into the notch(es). Frustrated with the poorly-written instructions and the difficulty keeping the machine running, I submitted questions to the online help address and was promised via return e-mail that I would receive answers within 24 hours. Eight days later I hadn't heard anything so I called the 1-800 number on the machine owners manual and proceeded to get a major runaround from a rude female employee who said, "You've got the wrong number --- this is an independent parts line." I asked her how that could be, having called the number in the manual, but she didn't care about my predicament. I finally did get a return e-mail, nine days (not 24 hours) later that simply told me to go visit service shops in my area to fix the problems. RIGHT! Like I'm going to waste my time doing that for a brand new machine.

I'm going back to WalMart right after I finish writing this and hope I can get my $$$ back to put on a better machine (different brand).

My girlfriend has had this trimmer for 2 years, and it started giving her trouble right out of the box. She said she thought it was just her inexperience, but that wasn't it.

As many other said..it's difficult to start, and runs terribly. The string is a huge pain to keep feeding and re-spool, and it won't stay running unless you run it full throttle, which is incredibly noisy. It also started smoking this season. And at this time, the shaft won't spin. That's happened several times as well.

She's gonna look for a new trimmer asap. We might just set this thing on fire soon.

I'd give it 0 stars if I could. This trimmer doesn't have a single redeeming quality.