To whom it may concern,
I am the owner of 3 Pentair Aquatics Quiet One pumps. I have been extremely happy with the ease of installation and performance of these pumps, but the longevity of their operation is severely lacking.
After about 3-4 months of use, each pump that I own failed to restart after a water change. I chalked the first two instances up as coincidence, because the impellers were stuck. I thought that it might have something to do with my water parameters. It wasn't until the third incident that I became unhappy.
About 3 months ago I purchased a QuietOne 9000. When I installed it, I found out that it is the opposite of quiet. No big deal, it's a powerful pump. I put up with the noise and vibration for the 3 months that it was in use. Today, it seized. Luckily I was in my fish room working on another tank so I found the issue. (The fish I could have lost have a much higher value than the pump). I removed the pump from the filter (it's submerged for this application) and took the impeller housing off of the motor. I found that the ceramic shaft had been broken in half. I thought that something might have been stuck around the impeller so I looked for physical damage, but found none. It took some effort, but I got the impeller out of the motor housing. I noticed that the ceramic bearing was fused to the ceramic shaft, which must be the reason that the shaft is broken.
What I have experienced is a bit strange. I have much less expensive pumps that have been running much longer than your product. The Quiet One pumps that I have purchased have had a 100% failure rate in less than a year. Typically I don't complain, but this is completely unacceptable. My pumps were all purchased within a close time frame. Is there a chance you had a bad run off of the production line?
The worst part of this situation is that I'm going to have to apologize to the numerous people that I've recommended your pump to. I have multiple posts on
www.monsterfishkeepers.com where I suggest that people use your pumps. Do I tell the 110,000 members in our network that your pumps are unreliable and not worth the risk to valuable fish, or will I have the opportunity to tell them that your customer service cared and resolved the issue. I hope that there is a known problem that has been rectified, and I hope I have the opportunity to continue the use of the pumps that I've purchased.
Thank you for your time!
