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
Richard,

"functioned perfectly on initial build and later on return inspection."

Readers only have to go back to my earlier posting on 7/20/2018 at 12:55pm to know what you said is total lie.


On May 23, 2017, at 3:31 PM, Richard Janzen <richard@purepoweraps.com> wrote:

Hi Charles,

We have found that an entire batch of 3000 motheboards have noisy output filter circuits.


And in your email dated August 2017


On Aug 22, 2017, at 12:47 PM, Richard Janzen <richard@purepoweraps.com> wrote:

Hi Charles,

Sorry for our excessively long delay. Let me explain what we have been up to. Its a long email, but hopfully worth the read.

As you already know, the model 3000 120 volt unit shipped to you suffered from an excessively noisy cap and coil in the output filter.

We unfortunately shipped 2 units with this problem.

I attach a photo of the offending cap and coil

We pot the coils in a special epoxy to prevent coil movement and keeps the coil silent.

We cover the capacitor in a sound absorbing clay material that is very effective in soaking up high frequency noise.

For three years this treatment has kept our filter boards nice and quiet.

Then we received a new batch of boards from our supplier and didn’t suspect a thing until you and the other customer plugged in your amplifiers.

Since then we have been trying to resolve this seemingly simple issue.

We did find an alternative capacitor - an oil filled cap - that is completely silent.

The unit with the new cap was tested by our dealer, and he decided it was quiet enough for normal audio listening. He shipped the unit back to the customer - who says he is perfectly happy and cannot hear any audible sound.

However, in your case we think we need perfection. It was not as quiet as it shoudl be. We needed a completely silent coil as well.

We did find an alternate supplier, who promised us that he could build us a perfect silent coil, but the timeline, and price were a problem.

So we decided instead to wait for the new PurePower Gold introduction.


Main take away from your email are:

1. shipped to you suffered from an excessively noisy cap and coil in the output filter.

2. and didn’t suspect a thing until you and the other customer plugged in your amplifiers.

Readers, please note especially the statement "YOU AND THE OTHER customer ..."

Your claim that my solar setup is responsible for your unit to buzz is purely YOUR conjecture (and frankly, I don’t believe that b.s, but that is beside the point).

Basically ...
  • your product does not perform or work well under customer’s environment

  • customer had your equipment for a total of about 10+ minutes before they were boxed and shipped back to you

  • you had every opportunity to tell me that you don’t think you guys can make it work and I would be fine with that (and would have great respect for you as a person and as a business man

  • you made me wait for 15 months then come back and told me you are, sort of speaking, doing me a favor by accepting my return after over a year

  • you claim you did not ’refuse’ to refund, but your not refunding me for nearly 3 months by now constitutes a refusal to refund me my money. You had no ground to claim that just because you don’t have the money that I have to wait for you to sell your next unit before I can get my money
I would like to further explain why I don’t believe Richard’s claim that solar power was to blame.


Before I shipped the 3rd unit (the ’new’ PurePower+ 3000 Gold) back to you, I had already received the PS Audio DirectStream P20.

I plugged the PurePower to the PS Audio P20 (i.e., PurePower getting its AC from the PS Audio), and the PurePower buzzed just as badly as when it was plugged in directly to a 20-amp dedicated wall outlet.
I’m sorry to hear about their poor customer service of late. I’ve corresponded with both Richard and Damien about 3 years ago. Both were very proactive with prompt correspondence—even on weekends. After further reflection, I declined to obtain the tech as it appeared the battery packs had a limited lifespan. Those are the most costly aspects of their power conditioner tech.
Post removed 
WARNING about Purepower: If you just read in Audiogone the truth is very apparent and I do not need to go into it. Last year I had 2 of their units in for repairs and after many months of all the same type of BS, and getting nowhere, I finally reached them by phone. I told them I was interested in a 3000 unit, the most expensive. They said they could ship me one "right now". I said that sounded good, but I needed my 1500 and my 2000 back first and then they could have my money for the new one. I got both back within a week, after paying more for the Tariff !
Yes, I played them. Yes I feel crappy for resorting to this lie to get back my units, but nothing else worked for over a year. I now have both units which I will never use and I can't sell them because I will not subject anyone else to Purepower. Thinking about dropping them at the dump.
I will read any comments here, especially any from those two weasels in Canada. I take that back.... I was unfair to the weasels, sorry.