Unfortunately, Hayward did me wrong bigtime!
I called in to Hayward support to troubleshoot this issue between the communication fault between the Ecostar pump and the Omnilogic. After doing a little bit of troubleshooting with me on the phone, in front of my equipment, they determined that the Ecostar I have is incompatible with my Omnilogic. Weird huh??
What they tell you everywhere is that the Omnilogic will control up to a whopping 8 Ecostar pumps. But what they DON'T tell you anywhere, even in their troubleshooting guide, is that the Omnilogic won't communicate with Ecostar pumps made prior to 2015! Well that sucks now doesn't it??
The Omnilogic was launched somewhere between the end of 2014 - beginning 2015. And being that most pool builds are done during the spring-summer season, 2015 spring-summer would be the first for the Omnilogic's. And its not unheard of that most pool distributors/PB's have all sorts of equipment leftover from last year (2014). So how can Hayward make a such a FALSE statement that their Omnilogic's are compatible with up to 8x Ecostar pumps without stating that the requirement is that the pump should be manufactured this year 2015? False advertising if you ask me!!
Also, how could Hayward not think about this and make these Omnilogic's backwards compatible or at the least have a workaround for people who have these Ecostars from prior years?? I called tons of distributors/resellers, authorized warranty reps, PB's, etc... and NONE of them, not even one, knew about this issue. How could Hayward even launch/deploy this item without giving adequate training, information, and/or heads-up on these units.
Now, I'm stuck having to buy another part to fix this issue that costs upwards of $900 just to get the communication between the pump and the Omnilogic!!!! And Hayward will not even do anything to make this right. WHAT!!?!?! This is nonsense!
Hayward dropped the ball big time and has left us early adopters out to dry. Way to go Hayward!!!! Lesson learned.
This seriously impacts Hayward's potential customers. Especially those who are shopping around for PB's to build their pools. Since most PB's stick with one pool manufacturer for their builds. Had I known this from the get go, it might have swayed my decision on choosing a particular pool builder and/or, more so, a pool equipment manufacturer.
You live and learn...
THANKS HAYWARD!
