I have never taken any of my Janomes in for cleaning or maintenance. I clean them myself. I also ordered maintenance manuals for all of them. I also take my machines and put them on a towel on a table and take the bottom off to clean and sometime grease with Janome approved grease in areas shown I the manuals, they only thing I do after each project is to put a drop of machine oil on the wick in the center of the bobbin holder. I would take my machines in for technical/computer issues, but never have had a problem with my Janomes.