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
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Hi Charles,

I'll call this afternoon.

I am having a problem with your refund, not of your making, that makes it necessary to resell your unit to generate your refund. I would normaly simply make the payment out of general revenue but we had a large and critical cash problem in May because a payment from a middle east customer failed as a result of Trump's rejection of the nuclear agreement and the sanctioning of some Middle East banks. We didn't expect to be victims of the US administration - but it seems there are unexpected conequences to politics. The amount was large enough to upset our finances - but I expect it to be overcome by the end of June.

I though I had a customer in San Diego all lined up for your unit - but he delayed an so did another sale in Boston. I should have it resolved soon. I have two other pending sales for 3000s. I'm just trying to upgrade them to Lithium and Furutech options.

We do not have a credit card facility so I have no way to create a credit on you credit card. The original charge was made on a PayPal account of another company who ran occasional charges on our behalf as a favour. As a manufacturer we do not normally offer a credit card payment option.

 So I am sending a cheque.

Your unit arrived and was checked out.

We ran it wirh various loads from 25% to 100%.

I just want you to know it operates absolutely silently.

The other units we received back from you were sold as demo units are behaved normally at other high end audio customers.

So we have to make the asumption that some anomaly in your house AC is the culprit - probably contained in the 5% harmonic distortion shown in your scope image.

This is the one and only case of noise in the PurePower power supply caused by the incoming power we have ever seen in 10 years of delivering PurePower regenerators.

It is also peculiar that harmonic distortion should cause noise in our coils. We have installed hundreds of regenerators in homes with very high harmonic distortion - some over 10% - and the only result is that the PurePower totally removes the distortion. So there is something very specific about your case - perhaps it is an unusual frequency.

We are working with a coll manufacturer to design coils that will remain silent - even with a resonating frequency - but it would help greatly if we truly understood what is lurking in your incoming AC.

It is also true that if your utility power contains high distortion it should be a cause for concern in your home in general. You may use a regenerator to fix the audio system - but other equipment througout your home is at risk of overheating and early failure.

I'd be happy to ship our power quality analyser together with our cheque for a quick analysis of the utility power. It is capable of revealing the problem in more detail.

check never came of course.  Every call it's some different story/excuse why he cannot refund me, and the same delay tactics

Hi Charles,

This week we have sent out invoices for our first major set of orders for the new Gold products to dealers and distributors in Russia, France, Czech Republic, the Middle East, the UK, South Africa, the Carribean, Singapore and the US.

We have a pretty strong order list and are ready to begin shipments - so we are watching our Bank of America inbox in anticipation of transfers.

I have no control over their timing - but there are enough of them that we are hopeful for a quick influx and a return to normal revenue.

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