Compupool SWG - Stay away! (with pictures)

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restoman

restoman

Well-known member
Dec 24, 2010
211
Murrieta, CA
Gents, almost a year ago exactly my original Hayward T-CELL-15 SWG went south on me (only showing 1600 for the salt and not generating) so I had to find a replacement. It was almost 9 years old so I got a good life out of it.

Unfortunately, I went cheap and got a Compupool GRC/LM generic replacement off of ebay for $250 (see below). I figured what the heck, it came with a 5 year warranty so how could I go wrong, right?

WRONG!

Last Friday, on my weekly equipment check, I found the control panel displaying "HOT" for the salt level. Not only that, but the temperature was reading 144 degrees! Since the pool wasn't boiling, I knew that probably wasn't right! (The ACTUAL temperature was 67 degrees.) So, to verify it was the SWG and not the control panel, I put my original Hayward back on to see what the control panel would say with that one. Sure enough, it said 1600 and NOT "hot", so I knew right off my 1 year old Compupool SWG had gone bad on me.

Now here's where the fun begins.

I emailed the ebay seller I got the SWG from and he replied on Saturday that it did appear to be a defective SWG, and he would have someone named Bri call me on Monday to run some tests and then ship me out a new one if the tests came back negative. So far, so good.

Monday comes and goes and no call from Bri, so I emailed the seller and reminded him about my defective SWG. No reply. Tuesday comes and goes and again, no call from Bri so again, I emailed the seller to remind him (or her), and again, no reply. So at this point I'm starting to get this sick feeling that I've been lead down the primrose path. Sure enough, after logging back into ebay Tuesday night, I found that the ebay seller I got the cell from has cancelled all his auctions and changed his location from Duluth, Georgia to Knoxville, Tennessee! So now I'm fairly certain I've been lead down the primrose path, so I start looking to contact the manufacturer, Compupool. I give them a call and a recording answers that says Compupool USA has gone out of business and to contact the parent company in Australia! Now I KNOW I've been lead down the primrose path, but not to give up quite yet, I call Compupool Australia and speak to Leonie in customer service. She says that because I got the SWG off of ebay, they won't honor the warranty. How typical.

So basically, buying a Compupool SWG on ebay, even WITH the 5 year warranty is completely useless and my advise to anyone reading this is to STAY AWAY from Compupool. At least their SWG's.

Now off to the pool store to buy a HAYWARD T-CELL-15 SWG for $700 and a REAL brick and mortar 3 year warranty!

Ed



 
Sorry to hear your troubles.

Have you tried to contact eBay? I would think that this would be considered an item that is not as described (not honoring stated warranty). There's nothing to lose with asking.
 
Yeah, I called ebay (their phone number is 866-540-3229 if anyone is interested), but was on hold in the queue for almost 45 minutes, so I gave up. I'll try again later, but I have a feeling from reading through all their "hints", that after 30 days they can't do anything.

Ed
 
That particular ebay seller used a picture of my cell in his listing in early 2016 , then shipped you a CompuPool cell. He was also affiliated with saltpoolstore.com in Atlanta, GA who during the summer of 2016 started selling Platinum Edition generic cells (gray/clear) for a variety of systems. If you check the BBB and/or several scam ripoff report websites you will find hundred of complaints for non-delivery of cells, failure to honor warranty, or failure to refund buyers once they returned cells. He was also going by saltpoolwholesale.com which recently went offline.

In regards to that 5 year warranty claim...we were told that it is really a 5 yr pro-rated warranty. So it's interesting that CompuPool - Australia told you that no items purchased on eBay will have warranties honored. A new customer had ordered the 40K Platinum Edition AquaRite generic cell (gray/clear) for $269 from bargainshopper and a GRC/AUCL arrived (blue/clear) from Australia with Salt Pool Store's name on it as well as their phone number which turned out to be CompuPool's Apopka, FL warehouse that was recently closed down. Bargainshopper claimed that he was in Knoxville, TN and the product was shipped from there. When told it came from Australia, he then claimed the cell normally comes from Chicago, which is another eBay seller of the same product who shares the same cloned website. When returning the product for refund, the delivery address is Duluth, GA. So far no refund. I won't disclose the guy's name in this forum but will if you contact me.

We have no idea if anyone has received a gray Platinum Edition cell which is a really a CompuPool which eBay sellers deny when asked. The 5 year pro-rated warranty is also a red flag.

Chlorinator Pro
 
Chlorinator Pro, you hit the nail on the head!

To update my grisly story, I went back on ebay yesterday morning and started looking for more examples of that generic cell and found ANOTHER SELLER WITH THE SAME PICTURE (and a $289 price). I noticed that this seller is in Albany Georgia, which is fairly close to Duluth Georgia, so on a whim I sent him an email stating that I never received a call from "Bri". Note that this ISN'T the same seller ID as what I originally purchased the cell from (see the paperwork above), and had been emailing, but I had a hunch.

A few hours later I got a reply email from him (or her) stating that he (or she) would have Bri contact me immediately!! This confirmed my hunch that the two sellers were indeed the same! After all, how many "Bri's" could there be!

And to my surprise, Bri DID call me and said she would send me an email "off ebay" so I could send her pictures of the errors on the display, and then send me a replacement cell and a UPS tag to ship the defective one back to them. This was on 03-29-17 around 10:00AM my time (west coast), and as of 03-30-17 6:30AM my time, no email. However, it's only been a day, so I'm willing to wait and see what happens today. If no email from Bri today, I'll be calling her up tomorrow. (I have her number on my cell phone!) Oh, and by the way, she said the same thing as what others have been told. It's a pro-rated warranty with the first year being free, and the second year being 30% of the full purchase price.

I have a feeling I'm being strung along and nothing will ever gell, especially with all the horror stories I've been reading about this cell, but you never know. I may get lucky and be "one of the few" instead of my normal "one of the many"!

And even if I DO get a replacement, I would imagine this one won't last either, so I'm still going to get the Hayward T-CELL-15 from a brick and mortar store. It comes with a 3 year warranty and I'm SURE they'll honor it should it fail in that time.

Stay tuned for further updates...

Ed
 
There are also reputable online stores. Many folks at TFP, myself included, have purchased items from Sunplay and INYO Pools. Also, Pool Supply World is great too.
 
There are also reputable online stores. Many folks at TFP, myself included, have purchased items from Sunplay and INYO Pools. Also, Pool Supply World is great too.
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Yep. I just purchased the Hayward T-CELL 15 from Pool Supply World. They had it for under $400! Thanks for the info.

And by the way, I just called Bri and got a recording that stated her voice mail hasn't been set up (and then hung up), so I think we all know the outcome of this.

Ed
 

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I tried to merge these two threads and screwed up this post and can't repair it. If you read it carefully, it still makes sense. I'm sorry, Ed.

restoman said:
If you've been following along on my thread regarding a REPLACEMENT SWG I got, you'll know that my original Hayward T-Cell 15 SWG died a year ago after almost 9 years of service with a false salt reading of 1600. My question is, can these be repaired? I've been reading up and found a few threads on it, but nothing specific to a low salt reading (unless I missed it). I'd like to use it as an emergency spare if possible, so can a low salt reading cell be repaired?

Thanks
Ed
Click to expand...


mas985 said:
The plates in the cell are what wear out but they are probably over 99% of the cost too. So it really doesn't make sense to replace them although there are companies that do it with cut rate cells but you already tried that.
Click to expand...


restoman said:
Thanks Mark. That's what I was afraid of.

Ed
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