Principles for Sale » Home Equipment

RainSoft Claims

A.B. — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 05:57:56 +0000

I know they say a sales person will say anything to make a sale, but I heard some pretty lofty claims from the RainSoft sales rep.

I’ve been able to verify firsthand (unfortunately) that what he said about their installers was definitely not true.

Based on that, I’m assuming that much of what he said was, to put it plainly, bullshit. I’ve looked into some of these claims online, but have not yet found anything close to definitive.

Here are some of his claims:

– Bill Gates uses a RainSoft system in his house.
– Culligan of India uses RainSoft at their office.
– Aquafina (owned by Pepsi) is filtered using RainSoft.
– The White House uses RainSoft.
– Home Depot picked RainSoft from over 600 other companies.

The lying sales rep made a bunch of other claims as well, but I can’t remember them all. Now, perhaps the above statements are true, but we’ve already been very underwhelmed with the system itself. As I previously wrote, the installer was completely incompetent, not the factory trained pro of which the sales rep assured me.

What makes this all the more upsetting is that Home Depot, what I consider a reputable company, has been silent. When I went to the Home Depot in search of a water softener, they offered me a free “water test”. This “water test” turned out to be a very long sales pitch in our home and a confirmation that our water is hard. (Duh.)

Aside from the $7,000 bill from Home Depot, they’ve been silent. I’ve been to the Home Depot three times since the disastrous install and they’ve simply washed their hands of responsibility. Bye bye Home Depot. There are plenty of other places to shop.

But I digress… Anyone know about the above claims?

Fake RainSoft Letters

A.B. — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 22:34:28 +0000

I guess this post falls under the category of “duh”, but I really would like anyone researching a RainSoft system to know that the RainSoft letters website is either entirely fake or massively censored. The local RainSoft dealer’s sales rep told me to check out the site when I was thinking about getting the system. He claimed the site was unfiltered. I mean, it’s obvious that this is not really going to be the case. It is, after all, a RainSoft site. The only company I’ve seen which has recently publicly denigrated itself is Domino’s Pizza, and even then, it’s because of a product relaunch.

I went through the process of filling out a letter form on the RainSoft letters site. I used no foul language, but did express how horrible the installation went and how disappointed we were. It’s a shame that I didn’t copy the letter, because I am sure it will never see the light of day on the RainSoft letters website. I used my real name and provided an email address. An email response would be nice, but I doubt I’ll get one.

I did a quick search of the site and found that they haven’t even included one slightly negative letter. When you think about it, this is kind of dumb. People are just not that gullible.

The water filtration business seems to be one of the least transparent out there. I just felt it was my responsibility to point out the obvious by stating the RainSoft letters site is fake and misleading.

UPDATE: I forgot to mention in my post that the phony letters are not just up on rainsoft-letters.com. Here, a partial list of sites where RainSoft is posting fake letters:

letters.rainsoftofmaryland.com/
letters.rainsoftofnewjersey.com/
www.rainsoftnefl.com/customerreaction.asp

They have been posting stuff to blogs as well. When I have more information, I’ll update.

Of Manuals and Misspellings

A.B. — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 21:23:24 +0000

In my previous post, I briefly mentioned the nightmare resulting from having my local RainSoft dealer install a whole house filtration system. Now that the system is unfortunately a part of our house, I’m trying to work out the nuts and bolts as we slowly return to normalcy.

As such, I’ve looked at the slim Owner’s Manuals that came with the system. Here are some highlights:

On page 7 of the Owner’s Manual for the “TC-M Conditioner Series Water Treatment System” (Rev: A 06/09) we find,

“If water contains iron, manganese or hydrogen sulfide, a seperate iron removal system is suggested to be installed prior to the conditioner.”

Aside from the awful sentence structure, they misspelled the word, “separate”. This, my friends, is a word that a spell checker easily finds.

A couple paragraphs later on the same page, we have:

“Dain lines over 50 feet long, may need to be increased in size to allow the proper flow.”

That’s right, “Dain lines”. Again, not a word, and something a spell checker would easily find. The comma placement is also wrong.

Is this nitpicky? Perhaps. I don’t go looking for these things, but typically when you find mistakes in manuals they are ones which are not picked up by spell checkers. You know the company put extra minimal effort into a manual when they misspell words like “drain” and “separate”.

I have experience translating and proofreading manuals and, while tedious to write and correct, manuals are important. Many customers do actually read manuals and it reflects poorly on a product or service when the manual is half-assed.

I have not yet read all of the wonderful literature accompanying our new RainSoft system. I just hope they put more care into making their products than they do in their installations and manuals.

You Down With AB1953?

A.B. — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 05:36:31 +0000

I realize I’ve reached a new low low in terms of lame titles, but wanted to briefly discuss Assembly Bill 1953. Beginning in 2010, the bill requires all potable water pipes and fixtures to be lead free*. Oh yes, the lovely asterisk. I stumbled upon this little doozy while hunched over at my local Home Depot looking for new aerators for every faucet in my house.

The situation was actually a bit funny because Home Depot had gotten me in this mess to begin with. They’ve coupled with a local RainSoft dealer and hidden their DIY water softeners way in a back corner somewhere. Long story short, I made the horrible mistake of having RainSoft/Home Depot install a whole house water filtration system. It has been a total nightmare with such highlights as soldering flux firing out of my kitchen faucet, several bathfuls of black water, a tub which required lengthy cleaning sessions to partially remove black/brown residue, ongoing cleanup of wherever the incompetent RainSoft installer worked. I have much much more to say on this topic, but will have to write about it another time. Oh RainSoft, you have had not heard the last of me.

But I digress…. So there I was in Home Depot trying to buy five aerators. Their selection was pretty sparse (perhaps because of the upcoming law), but I managed to find a Neoperl product which seemed to fit the bill. And there it was in big capital letters: “LEAD FREE*”. This perplexed me a great deal given that a few millimeters above this claim stood: “Ultra low lead”.

I tried to wrap my head around “LEAD FREE*” vs. “Ultra low lead”. How could something lead free have ultra low lead? On the back they described the asterisk in flowery, blooming English: “*AB 1953 compliant less than 0.2% lead.” Wouldn’t you love if everything was described this way? “Traffic ticket you drive too fast.” “Delicious food ate at fancy restaurant.” And so on…

Now having looked into the Assembly Bill a bit, it appears the powers that be are redefining the meaning of lead free. In other words, they are lowering the value considered lead free. After doing a little research, I found that the legal limit for lead in related products used to be 8%. To me, .2% doesn’t seem that low, and 8% seems incredibly high. Given all the really scary stuff written about lead (and I have a two-year-old, people!), I would kind of prefer lead free to mean 0% lead. Is it that hard to make a metal product that contains no lead?

To further my confusion, another, simpler model of aerator, also made by Neoperl, states “LEAD FREE*”, but not “Ultra low lead”. So, does this mean this one is pushing the 0.2% lead content?

Now, I know what you’re saying: “Dude, why didn’t you just buy an aerator from another company claiming 0% lead?” There were none. Home Depot (or “The Home Depot” as I think they like being called now) only had these in stock.

If anyone has a suggestion for eco-friendly aerators without any lead (no asterisk), feel free to comment. Even though they say “there is no safe level of lead”, I guess AB 1953 is a step in the right direction. If it were me, and I know this would probably cause minor economic mayhem or piss off the lead lobby, I would just take a hatchet to it and make lead free actually lead free. 0%. Done.

P.S. Please also comment if you have more RainSoft horror stories.

Seventh Generation’s “Great Law”

A.B. — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 02:21:26 +0000

If you look at a number of Seventh Generation products or at their website, you’ll see the following lofty saying:

“In our every deliberation we must consider the impact of our decisions on the next seven generations.”

This is a certainly a clever way of explaining their strange name, but every time I’ve read that, there has been something that bothered me.

I think I finally figured it out. Isn’t “every deliberation” a “decision”? Why not just write, “We must consider the impact of our every decision on the next seven generations.”? I suppose it doesn’t quite sound as prophetic, but I think it makes more sense and skips the verbiage. It might even reduce packaging thus lowering their environmental footprint. Am I wrong here?

A New Light Bulb

A.B. — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 06:18:39 +0000

There is no question that the traditional incandescent light bulb is on its way out. As a result of its inefficiency, bans have been placed in effect for 2010 in the European Union and Australia. There have been talks of terminating their use here in California. Incandescent’s death blow, perhaps, was delivered by Leonardo DiCaprio, in his Gore-ian envirogasm, “The 11th Hour”. Well, not really, but once you’ve got celebs using their high profiles to press an issue, you’ve generally got the public’s ear.

A lot of us, however, have not warmed to the cool, twisty glow of compact fluorescent “energy saver” bulbs. I, for one, do not like the idea of releasing toxic mercury if I accidentally break a bulb. I know it’s a minuscule amount of mercury, but with a baby in the house and a high dose of clumsiness, it’s kind of a deal breaker. That’s not to say that I don’t use or condone the use of compact fluorescents, but I’m really hoping for a better solution.

Perhaps one will soon be available on store shelves. The November issue of “Photonics Spectra” introduces what might be a knight in luminescent armor. (Sorry, I tried. They call it, “…a new bulb on the block.”) A company based in Seattle known as Vu1 Corporation has created a new technology they call Electron Stimulated Luminescence (ESL). ESL is a phosphor coating which glows upon being stimulated by accelerated electrons. The bulbs are made of standard glass, look similar to old-fashioned incandescents, and don’t contain mercury. At a price point of around $12 a bulb, they cost less then LED-based lighting. In addition, the bulbs have the same lifetime rating as compact fluorescents and their color can be adjusted.

Vu1 Corp. will be officially launching this bulb on April 22, 2009. More information on this new technology is available on their website. Oh, and if Vu1 wants to hook me up with some free bulbs, they can contact me here.