Bad experience with PurePower of Canada


This is my first post here in a long time, and I seriously considered not writing it, but the situation I'm about to relate to you has reached a crisis point, and I feel like I have little choice now but to call a manufacturer out in public for shockingly substandard customer service.

The company in question is Canadian firm PurePower, maker of an acclaimed line of AC power regenerators. I've owned their APS 1050 for several years now, and until recently it functioned flawlessly and made a decent improvement to my system's sonics. However, at the very beginning of June, a power surge blew out the input side of the unit and made it nonfunctional. (Interestingly, my other regenerator, a Chinese-made Dussun, escaped unscathed.)

I called PurePower and spoke to a gentleman named Damian. He gave me a repair quote over the phone and told me to send the unit in. It arrived at PP's Niagara Falls facility on 6/11/15. Damian said it would be a quick repair and would be back to me within a week.

Real long story short, by the middle of July, I had yet to receive my unit back. PP stopped answering my phone calls and emails and repeated requests for a tracking number. Damian's story had changed any number of times over the month PP had my 1050. First he said, "It's going out tomorrow" (that was around the 16th-17th of June), then "It has gone out" (he told me that a couple of times), and then "It's at UPS" (his penultimate lie). Having finally exhausted my patience, I threatened to take this whole thing public and consider legal action if I didn't get a straight answer. Only then, less than half an hour before my deadline to him, did Damian return my call. He said that the company had been on vacation for the past two weeks (though this wasn't reflected on their answering machine or their email, and he even admitted he had been in the office several times during the break). He said the unit was fixed and would go out Tuesday, July 21. Again, he promised me a tracking number.

As of today, July 31, I still have not received my 1050, and the company again is not returning emails. In fact, even more disturbing, their phone number is now out of service. What bothers me most of all, they cashed my check three weeks ago, and I have NOTHING to show for my expenditure. I'll stop short of calling it outright theft, but it sure feels like it.

I am now afraid that I won't see my unit again anytime soon, if ever. It's hard for me to tell if this whole saga is the result of PurePower's utter incompetence or something more malevolent. But, whatever it is, I feel seriously taken advantage of. As I've said, it wouldn't be quite as much of an issue had they not already cashed my check, but the fact that I did my part and paid them and they've completely reneged on theirs--and now refuse to answer inquiries . . . well, that pisses me off. And it won't stand. That's why I've taken to forums like this one to warn fellow audiophiles about PurePower's antics. After doing some research online, it seems that I'm hardly the only one to complain about their customer service in the last few years.

I hate to resort to a post like this, but the audiophile public deserves to know when a manufacturer clearly doesn't do right by its customers. And this, to me, is a case in point. With any luck, this situation will be resolved in my favor and I'll get my 1050 back, but until then, I'm damn well going to let my voice be heard. By its shoddy behavior, PurePower has forced my hand.

P.S. If anyone can suggest any consumer-rights organizations I can contact, I'd appreciate it. I've already reached out to the Ontario Ministry of Consumer Services, but have yet to hear back from them.
hooper

Showing 1 response by purepoweraps

The situation reported has been presented unfairly we believe and includes completely false information regarding PurePower.
 
We were working to solve a problem with a PurePower installation in California for over a year providing multiple replacement units and various solutions which were not effective.
 
All three units provided him functioned perfectly on initial build and later on return inspection.
 
After over a year, the customer finally disclosed that he had a solar installation with inverters attached to his home, generating high harmonics. Had we known he had a solar install, we would have had a solution almost immediately instead of trying to find a fix something that wasn’t broken.
 
There was no claim that the PurePower units did not provide perfect and isolated regenerated AC, or that the desired performance improvement of the connected components was not met, but the problem with the off grid solar power caused loud harmonic buzzing in our input filter circuits at a level we have never before heard.
 
Regardless, we will ensure that the customer receives full restitution as warranted. We did not refuse to refund his purchase price at any time. We simply promised to accept his return - after a full year - resell that unit to another customer and provide a full refund the minute it is sold. We feel that is eminently fair for a custom built and configured product.
 
(The unit in question, a lightly used PurePower Gold 3000 model with lithium battery pack and gold/silver power path and internal wiring is available for $5995 - compared to its MSRP of $10,700) 

On the matter of “The Real” PurePower:
 
- PurePower began in 2003 with 100% North American parts, manufacturing and assembly with 1st Gen models.
- In 2006 we outsourced some board production to Taipei for the 2nd Gen models with the remainder of production and assembly in Canada.
- We slowly increased outsourcing of parts over the next 5 years until most of the unit was produced and assembled overseas.
- In 2011 our primary supplier attempted an outrageous brand and product theft. This is fully documented in the court papers made available on our web site and was resolved completely in our favor (against the ProPower people) by the 6th Circuit in Florida with an award of $650,000. This award remains entirely outstanding. We maintain no relation with the former sub-supplier in any way and they remain under permanent court injunction.
- 2012 was occupied with the above legal issues, and a full year of design of our 3rd Gen “Plus” models as well as bringing all production and assembly back to Canada.
- A long and difficult period of recovery ensued. The disruption to the company caused by the attempted hijacking of our brand and products were severe with years of lingering effects.
- 2017 through this year saw our development and release of the new 4th Gen. PurePower Gold product line – also with North American production and assembly in our Canada facility.
 
PurePower makes great AC regeneration products. We believe we deal in good faith and try to provide good and timely service to our dealers and customers. In this case we went well beyond normal support and incurred significant expenses, that it turns out were unnecessary.