Bad Mag?

[not ecooper]

My dad bought a mag (7?8?) that I picked up in early January. Well, hubby put his hand in the sump today and was surprised to find a serious stray voltage (isn't the grounding probe, also in the sump, supposed to prevent that?) Well, as he unplugged things and dunked his hand again in order to locate the source...it was the Mag. (A little over nine months old.)

Is there any kind of warranty?

 

[Jeremy B.]

I can't remember what the Danner warranty is off the top of my head. I was thinking 6 months but I could be wrong. You can contact them @ (631) 234-5261 M-F 9-5 EST. If you need proof of purchase let me know and we could provide you with that.

 

[not ecooper]

Well that would be really crappy if it was. *eye roll* I'm thinking it wasn't a cheap pump for him to buy.

I know its under his name and everything because he bought it online and then I picked him up, its probably still in the computer.

 

[Jeremy B.]

I don't believe they go out any further than 6 months, but I'll be more than happy to check. Please email the name the order was placed under and I will look into it. jeremy@premiumaquatics.com

Thanks,
Jeremy

 

[jasonfrey]

Hi,

Here is the most recent warranty info i could find:
Danner Warranty
E.G. Danner Mfg. Inc will repair or replace any pump found to be defective as follows: Pump boy, cover and filter and accessories within three years of original purchase. Impeller and internal moving parts within one year of original purchase. This warranty does not cover any replaceable filtering material supplied with the filter as it is considered expendable. Damaged cutting or altering power cord voids any warranty consideration. For warranty repair return only the part that is defective to our Danner factory. Please include a dated proof of purchase and $5.00 for postage and handling. Damages or injuries resulting from negligence or misuse of the product are not covered by warranty. This warranty gives you specific legal rights. You may have other rights which vary from state to state.
Ship to:
Danner Mfg. Inc.
160 Oval Drive
Islandia, NY 11749

 

[not ecooper]

OK...so now I have to pay to ship this POS to them, and pay them to ship it back to me? Thats crap. So if its sending out stray voltage, which part do I send? And are they gonna "fix" the pump or send me a new one? I'll save my money. I'll just go somewhere and buy a real pump and sleep a little more soundly from now on.

I wish someone would have told me that the pumps were POS's, because my dad wouldn't have bought it. NOT very happy right now...shouldn't have flushed the dead copperband and sent THAT to them to asking how it died so suddenly at the same time I was getting stray voltage? (On a pump not even a year old?!)

So why didn't the grounding probe (that I also spent money on) absorb the stray voltage as I was lead to believe that it would? Was I sold a crappy grounding probe as well?

 

[Jeremy B.]

This is not our return/warranty policy, but Danner Mfg's policy. Every manufacturer handles their warranty differently, and this is how they choose to do so. Mag's are actually pretty good pumps, however things do happen, which is the same with anything you buy, wether it is a new car, or a pump for your aquarium.

You would need to send the entire pump to them. More than likely they will issue you a new unit, but I do not want to speak for them.

A grounding probe will work for small amounts of voltage going into the water, in which more than likely most MJ powerheads and other submersible pumps, as well as Mag's, put off into your system. This type of stray voltage is extremely small, and most times is not felt by us when we put our hands into the tank. This probe will prevent deformities, hole in the head, and other problems that fish would incur from prolonged stress of small amounts of stray voltage. However, when a substantial amount of voltage is put into a tank it is very common for a grounding probe to not ground it out. I have had my hands in a system that was having 40volts leaked into it, in which the system had not just one, but three grounding probes and I still got zapped fairly well.

Keep in mind that it is also highly recommended to use a GFI outlet that in most cases will trip when a pump goes defective. This is not always the case, and every defect is different, so sometimes even a GFI will not trip.

 

[not ecooper]

Thats just crap. So much for being taken care of. I'll just buy a new pump here in TH, because if anything happened to anything I bought here, they'd take it from me and hand me a new one for my trouble. And if I had a new car that started having problems covered by warranty at nine months old, I HIGHLY DOUBT the dealership would tell me to ship it back to Detroit to be worked on.

....not to mention at least apologize for the fact that my pump has caused all these problems, and most likely a dead fish (my favorite in the tank.) I really don't know if we're on a GFI, my husband does all of the electrical stuff.

Just send me the proof of purchase to my address in TH listed on my account info. I'll let Curt decide whether we send it back or just use it as a defensive device in case someone breaks into my house and I need something to hit him with....or just use it as a doorstop in the meantime.

 

[Jeremy B.]

Emily, you are NOT listening to a thing that I have said. I apologize that this has happened, but YOU are responsible for taking care of the warranty on the pump. If I replace the pump I do not get credit for the unit that I have replaced, so I am now out the money for the pump. What part of the post that Jason put up directly from Danner did you not understand.....?

"For warranty repair return only the part that is defective to our Danner factory. Please include a dated proof of purchase and $5.00 for postage and handling."

Again, this is not our policy, but Danner MFG's. If a product we sell will let us do the return for the customer, we do it!!! It is much easier for the customer this way, however there are certain products in which we CAN NOT do the warranty on, not because we do not want to, but because the company mandates this.

I am sorry all of this is not want you want to hear, but I do not know what else I can do. We have been more than accomodating to you every time you have been in town and wanted to stop by when we are closed for walk-ins, and have tried to help you out each time we possibly could.

For further assistance on this you need to call me at 317-895-9005, as I will no longer go back and forth in a public forum about it.

 

[luger]

mag pumps are good pumps.ive been running 3 of them for 5yrs with no problems.Danner stands behind them 100% as do other companies with there products.Shipping is always the customers responsibility with just about any product out there.

 

[MATTT]

This is just a question,

What if I purchase a mag drive pump and it has a strade voltage the first day I received the pump. Do I have to send it back to the factory with a $5.00 postage to get it fix or get a new one from a place which I ordered it from ? I had a mag 9.5 and it has the same problem, I did not get it from Premium Aquatic but some other on line vendor. I was told to send it to the factory. I did not think that was right, the brand new pump was defected when I bought it and have to send it to the factory to get it fix. It should be replace with a brand new one and the dealer can deal with the factory. I am talking about a brand new pump not the one that have been running for a week or a few months.

Thanks,

Mattt.

 

[Jeremy B.]

By Danner's policy, not the store you have purchased it from, it is the customer's responsibility to send the defective pump back. This does not matter wether the pump has been used for 1 hour or 10 months. I agree, and if you note above I mentioned this, it would be easier for the store to deal with rather than the customer. However this is not the case.

 

[not ecooper]

Then maybe we should just stop buying mag pumps because Danner sucks?

 

[jasonfrey]

Dealing with warranty issues is a problem for the dealer and the customer. It's especially bad when it's a new item and you have problems. We feel bad when ever one of our customers is not only put out of there time but money. We often have taken a loss on warranty items because we'll take something back and the factory refused to fix the problem. Often they will blame the problem on customer abuse etc. We also get many dishonest returns where there really was abuse and it's not a covered.

We have warranty issues with many manufactures and when manufactures do not take care of customers on a regular basis, we will drop there product line. We have done this one many items. We also will recommend some products over others because of there better warranty and/or customer service on warranty items. So we do keep this information in mind.

In the case of Mag, they have very few problems and although they make the customer ship there item back on there dime, they have rarely rejected a claim. If you compare there warranty to some of the other products, it's really a decent warranty other then this point. Take rio for example, you get 180 days on there standard line up and you still have to ship back direct to the factory. Many of the new import items that are coming to the market only have 30 day warranty.

We would love to offer a better warranty on all of the aquarium products, but it's just not possible. If you take this Mag9 problem. This pump above was used for 9 months of service. We made less then 10 dollars profit on this purchase. Just exchanging for a new one, even if we were to get reimbursed we would loose money.

Now if we had that nice 200 and 300% markup like an average retail store has, you can take a loose on a pump, but most likely even a LFS is not going to take something back past 30 days, often not at all if it's been used. Even talking about other markets, look at how so many places like BestBuy and Compusa try to sell you extended warranty insurance to overide the manufacture warranty.

Mail order business is slim markup, average markup is 20% or less above cost. Then take your returns, defects, shipping damages, chargebacks, etc and you'll see mail order companies barely get by.

The manufactures are often really small operations as well. I believe Danner is pretty large company, but you would be surprised how many of aquarium manufactures are one or two person operations. You have to keep in mind, saltwater is about 1-3% of the total aquarium business. So our little community is actually quite small.

Thanks for reading (listening)

jason

 

[not ecooper]

Do what Inland does and charge $20 for "lightly used" MH bulbs that don't even fire. That'll pay the bills. (True story, I just got suckered into that one this weekend when I thought the bulb was bad, come to find out when hubby opened the ballast the darned thing had blownup on one side.....oh well, I bought it used and cheap so you never know what will happen next. Even on the good side that IS working, bulb didn't fire.....and it was marked 14k on the box but 6.5k on the bulb.)


Its just a good week to sell and the freaking aquariums and get out of the hobby.