Complaint Review: Quality Water Works - Arlington Heights Illinois

We were recently contacted by Quality Water Works and threatened with legal action unless we took this review down [we found out that the review can’t be removed].  However, since it has been about a year since our experience with the company, we are willing to write an update to conclude the account of our interactions with this company and clarify the issues if possible.   Although the correspondence began with an unpleasant threat, the tone of the conversation did improve from there, and the representative was able to inform us of some details that we were unaware of.

Positives:

1. After much argument and difficulty, we were in the end allowed to return the Rainsoft system.  Which regardless of how that came about, we were relieved to put this experience behind us and get a refund.

2. We were told that they do not train or sanction any sort of claim that iron content in water causes low sperm count.  Also I am told that their sales representative denies claiming this.  So it is good to know Quality Water Works does not endorse this false statistic and/or sales tactic.  I do not know why the salesman decided to go off the record and say this to us, but I have been assured that it is not backed by the company itself.

3. At the time of writing the review, my wife did not believe we were provided a copy of the sales agreement.  However, unbeknownst to her at the time, the papers were signed at my workplace and left there with me.  So we would also like to clear this misunderstanding up that Quality Water Works did not provide those documents.

4. Regarding our long wait time for our water to be tested after the initial installation; a representative was deployed initially to test our water in a timely manner.  Upon arriving at our house at the scheduled time, he knocked, and after receiving no answer called me to inform me he had arrived.  It was a workday for me, and my wife was at home which I relayed to him.  She was caring for our infant, heard the knock, but when she came down about 2-3 minutes later the representative had already left.  So I do not hold that situation against Quality Water Works either.  It was an unfortunate set of circumstances with my wife being occupied for a minute, myself being gone, and the representative leaving before she got to the door that resulted in us missing him.

5. Lastly, regarding the claims of salt usage, I have been informed by the representative that the systems are only installed with the tank at 1/3 capacity, since it is a 300 pound tank, and not feasible to carry that much salt for installation.  This then makes sense that the tank would run out in a little over a month with the claim of 3-4 refills needed per year [thus a full tank lasts 3-4 months].  We were not aware of this explanation at the time the review was written.  Also, as mentioned previously, the owner did offer an upgrade to a bigger salt tank in order to try to account for this difficulty.

Remaining Concerns:

1. I am wary of the three-day no questions asked return policy.  Three days does not seem like a sufficient period to truly test the system.  It took us at least that long just to run all of our hard water stored in the pipes and especially the hot water heater out and for the Rainsoft system to begin working, and to clear out the worst of the sediment in the pipes even after the water began to start being filtered.  What good is a 3 day return period when we were told by the sales representative that within a week we should be seeing fully filtered tap water from the system?

2. Although we were finally able to return the system, it was with much argument and dialogue.  Quality Water Works continually refused all of our requests to return the system.  Our return was only finally approved when we got a hold of Home Depot, who referred us to Quality Water Works in the first place, and explained our difficulties to them that we informed by Home Depot that they would help us to get our return approved. 

Regardless that the three-day period of automatic return was passed; I would’ve felt 1000% better about this company if they were willing to meet us halfway and just let us return the system after it was clear that it wasn’t what we wanted at all, and after we had multiple unfavorable interactions with the sales representative and the installer, whether the things the employees said and did were sanctioned by the company or not.   

3.The biggest difficulty we had with this whole experiences was the visit of the installer when we contacted QWW about our initial difficulties with water hardness.  We self-tested our water frequently, and the pH would vary from day to day.  Then, about a month in we started to have iron stains with increasing frequency, and the system read everything as “OK”.  Now, at some point we did run out of salt, and because the system still read “OK” we didn’t look in the tank, which was a mistake on our part.

However, when the installer came, he was dismissive of our problems, and reported everything as a user error because of the empty salt tank.  However, that doesn’t change the fact that the system still said salt levels were “OK” when the tank was empty.  We paid enough money that we expect the monitoring system to be accurate.  Also, we had varying pH levels even when the tank still had salt.  But this was dismissed as user error or us being mistaken because he came and saw an empty salt tank. 

In addition, there was the completely incorrect claim by him that we use way more water than the average household to explain the depleted salt and questions of why the salt .  When in actuality it would’ve cleared up our confusion perfectly to explain that the installation only came with 1/3^rd salt and the usage was right on track with the claims.  I think at this key point if the installer was understanding and willing to work with us instead of defensive and dismissive, our whole experience might have been different.  Clearly there is something off about the system to vary the pH and read salt tank full when it was empty, but this was never acknowledged or addressed.

Conclusion:

So, in summary, I would like to say that although we had a negative with Quality Water Works, they did possess some degree of cooperative spirit in order to finally enable a return, even though they were unwilling to do so before Home Depot got involved.  Also, there was the offer of a tank upgrade, and the owner was capable of professional dialogue in the end to explain some of the points of conflict from their side.  Many of the worst parts of our experience were with representatives of the company, and on some level the company itself can’t help when employees might not be acting in full support of company policy and values.

I can’t say I would recommend doing business with this company, but I am at least hopeful that maybe we just had a particularly bad experience with them, and others will be able to have a better one.  

Thank you for your response.

I realize I may have been unclear with some of my complaints--the salt issue for one. The salt tank must have run out about 1-2 months into our purchase and we began to have hard water problems (we were waiting for the guy to come back out and re-test out water) after three months I tested it myself and found issues. After three months we should have been prepared to fill the salt tank, but I check the system every week or so to see if everything is "OK" and it said we had salt still. The salt alarm was not turned off. The machine's computer said my salt tank level was 2.0 (about 1/3 full) but it was empty when I physically checked. That was why the alarm didn't go off--the computer did not realize the salt tank was empty and thus did not notify us. 

We had a repair person come over and look at it, but all he did was look at the system read out that showed everything was "OK" and said there was no problem and the machine was functioning perfectly. I objected but he said my problems were user error (like I set the salt level wrong or turned the alarm off). I told him I didn't touch the settings after he installed the machine, and if there was an error in set up it may have been by him. He was defensive and said that was not the case, he set it up perfectly.

The Rain Soft machine also calculates water usage and salt useage. The salesperson said with our hardness we would go through about 3-4 tanks of salt per year. But the computer says we will need to fill our salt tank every month--about 5 bags of salt per month. That was what our previous home residence water softener took--a traditional salt softener. This was supposed to be "salt-free" and save us money in salt, per the salespersons description. But that turned out to be false.

There were many promises the salesperson gave us that have turned out to be false. He said we sould have no more iron stains, but I still get them on my plates and clothes. He said this machine would repair the damage of build up in our water pipes (completely unfounded). He used other tactics as well, bringing up iron causing low sperm count, and (at the time we were drinking bottled water) that bottled water was no different than city water. He said bottled water was "the next city over's city water). 

The installer told me we use "WAY more" water than the average familiy of 4. He said normally families go through what we do in a day, in one week. We use 200 gallons per day on average. The average family of 4 uses 400 per day (per the EPA). This was his explaination as to wy we go through so much salt. But it was misleading to tell me that. The boss asked me to upgrade to a larger machine at no cost for this reason--but after being lied to and having the capabilities of this machine exaggerated to me, I am not interested and was to return the product that is not performing as advertised/pitched by the salesperson.

I realize a contract was signed, but it was under the pretense that these calims the salesperson made of the capabilities of this machine were true. And they are not. With the machines malfunction, I was treated poorly by the service man, who failed to take my concern about the salt alarm into consideration. His official report said the issue was hard water and the problem was user error. There was nothing included about the salt alarm at all and it was not checked in any way. 

I am not "defaming" anyone, just explaining what my experience was. I do feel I was treated poorly and the capabilities of this machine were greatly exaggerated to me to get me to purchase. I AM interested in a whole house filtration system, but not froma company who will lie and exaggerate their products capabilities to get people to buy. And not from a company that will not address my concerns about a defective/malfunctioning part in the system.

 NOTHING runs 100% perfect. There will ALWAYS be one or two issues that arise. Are YOU having difficulty with BASIC math?? 3-4 times a year would mean YOU have to put more salt in roughly every 3-4 months. Firstly are YOU SURE your husband just didnt turn off the salt alarm and just FORGET to tell YOU?? As for the contract, since YOUR HUSBAND signed it, what gives YOU the idea that YOU are required to have your own copy?? Its HIS signature and NOT yours. So YOU are the third person in all of this. Im sure YOUR HUSBAND read it and signed it after FULLY reading and understanding WHAT he was signing. Right?? That would include what would be needed to do a return. Since YOU are outside the terms of doing a return, the ONLY course of action YOU have is to either pay it and get out from under it or just dont pay and let it effect YOUR credit. Pretty simple really. A CONTRACT was signed. YOU cannot NOW demand MORE out of them AFTER the term of return has expired. Then YOU post defamation ONLINE!!!! YOU have NOT been ripped off. Its ALWAYS the first recourse of the American Consumer, its NEVER directly YOUR fault. So YOU take to the web and attempt internet blackmail because someone told you once that IF you post your disatisfaction online that YOU would FORCE them into giving YOU your way. It no longer works like this and companies have NOW taken to SUEING those people who use the web for defamation.