Hi Doug,
Like Roger, I have also been affected by the poor engineering and poor service form Re-E-Power. I ordered and paid over 50% deposit for an Epod back in June 2007, and it took until around April 2008 that the first parts began to appear. Not all the order was supplied to begin with - the missing part being the motor. To be fair to Kevin I did ask for some changes so the delay was at least partly due to it being different. By May I had all the parts and used it for half hour at which point it failed. I pulled it apart and found the brush holders had melted and the armature had burnt out. Kevin did honour the warranty and sent me another armature and new end bell including brushholders and brushes after about 7 weeks. The problems continued with controller over-heating, the prop he supplied being totally the wrong pitch and the main power cables coming into the motor totally shorting out. I rebuilt the motor using better insulation, and experimented with different props. Eventually when I found water entered past the main bearing seal my confidence was totally shot and I gave up the chase.
After discussing my situation on the Re-E-Power forum Kevin removed the link from his website to the forum. Until then it had been linked from his site as the "official re-e-power forum" despite it being set up by one of the Epod customers.
I then bought a Torqeedo Cruise 4 and am totally happy with it and the service I get from the Australian distributor. Here in Australia I know of three others who bought Epods, all who I've gotten to know because of these shenanigans. Each of them have catamarans, and all of whom have abandoned their Epods. And, incidently, all have bought Torqeedos. None of them ever received all the parts to begin with, and one of them never got enough parts to even run them.
I have spent about $4000 for the motor, and another $4000 related to installation and research and development for a total of $8000 for one Epod. The others each have twin Epods, and so between us all we'd have expended somewhere between $30,000 and $60,000 on the Epod journey. I quickly abandoned hope of getting any refund, and have put it down to the vicissitudes of life.
Despite all this my personal opinion is that Kevin started with the best of intentions, but inadequate engineering and meagre testing led to him having a cash flow crisis... eventually leading to this.
By the way, I happen to know of seven Epods, some not even used, that you could get for a giveaway price :)
Cheers
Chris
On Fri, Jan 1, 2010 at 3:15 PM, Doug Doughty <ponkapog2000@yahoo.com > wrote:
.
__._,_.___
.
__,_._,___
No comments:
Post a Comment