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I have a Marineland Penguin 150 Biowheel filter and about a week ago, it began intermittently making a terrible noise from the impeller. I cleaned the impeller and the filter itself thoroughly, checked the impeller for any visible defects, and the problem continues. Fortunately, it does not appear to affect the water flow and, as I said, it only happens intermittently (which seems really weird to me). Still, at worst, it could eventually stop working altogether and, at best, it's a huge annoyance.
Well, I just got off the phone with Marineland support. I'm sure most of you are familiar with United Pet Group and that Marineland is one of their brands. I've been generally impressed with their products and, especially, their support, but what happened utterly surprised me.
The lady I spoke to was very professional and polite - this was not the surprise. I was basically asking for advice for what I could do to fix it, being perfectly willing to buy a part if needed. She asked how long I'd had it and I couldn't remember exactly and told her, "a few months or something like that." She immediately began putting in an order to send me a new impeller. After, she gave me advice on a couple of things to try on the new impeller (the most promising to me is soaking it in vinegar for about an hour).
Now, I know an impeller isn't expensive and it may not seem like a big deal. But in my experience in the IT industry, no matter how good a company is, you'd damn well better prove you're really a customer and that you're entitled to support if you're going to get anything from them - and you're going to pay for shipping, buddy, makes no difference what the part is. A customer of mine once bought a product that had proprietary screws - proprietary screws! - and when I needed one for a repair, they wanted ten bucks for it. I said "screw you" and went MacGuyver on it. (It was close to ten years ago and I'm betting it's still held together with whatever the hell I shoved in there - don't remember what it was.)
Anyway, a company that does business like this gives me a warm-fuzzy, giggly, lollipops and rainbows feeling and I'm even more likely to look for their products than I was before.
Just wanted to share that.
Well, I just got off the phone with Marineland support. I'm sure most of you are familiar with United Pet Group and that Marineland is one of their brands. I've been generally impressed with their products and, especially, their support, but what happened utterly surprised me.
The lady I spoke to was very professional and polite - this was not the surprise. I was basically asking for advice for what I could do to fix it, being perfectly willing to buy a part if needed. She asked how long I'd had it and I couldn't remember exactly and told her, "a few months or something like that." She immediately began putting in an order to send me a new impeller. After, she gave me advice on a couple of things to try on the new impeller (the most promising to me is soaking it in vinegar for about an hour).
Now, I know an impeller isn't expensive and it may not seem like a big deal. But in my experience in the IT industry, no matter how good a company is, you'd damn well better prove you're really a customer and that you're entitled to support if you're going to get anything from them - and you're going to pay for shipping, buddy, makes no difference what the part is. A customer of mine once bought a product that had proprietary screws - proprietary screws! - and when I needed one for a repair, they wanted ten bucks for it. I said "screw you" and went MacGuyver on it. (It was close to ten years ago and I'm betting it's still held together with whatever the hell I shoved in there - don't remember what it was.)
Anyway, a company that does business like this gives me a warm-fuzzy, giggly, lollipops and rainbows feeling and I'm even more likely to look for their products than I was before.
Just wanted to share that.
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