Hi
I just thought I would share my experiences with you guys regarding the warranty and repair of my pro grow 550W panel from hydroponicshut.com.
About 2 months ago I noticed a surge or drop off of power to the light, I got in touch with Ben at hydrohut and waited without exaggeration about a month before I emailed him again with a more ratty attitude at which point he responded to me then.
I explained the problem and he said that I could either send it to his repair centre in the UK or I could replace the power supplies myself, knowing that nothing gets sent next day these days I decided to try to replace the power packs myself, Ben said they would arrive at mine within days, it took 16 days to arrive from Bath in Somerset, if you were in the UK you would realise how long that seems to have taken.
Upon opening the package there were no instructions (which Ben said would be included) as to which and where to replace, none of the power units were marked so how was I to know which was which, plus there were no wires attached to the new power packs.
I decided to use the wires from the old power packs and struggled to make them fit due to shortened length now. Fitted them all and turned her on to realise that she was lighting up wrong, this meant that I had guessed wrong, I had no other choice but to guess as there was no distinguishing features on any of the power units.
So I called Ben to complain that there were no instructions as were supposed to and that there were no wires with the new power supplies and that I had now tried in vain to fix the unit, I was told to send it to an address which was their UK based repairs centre, I sent it straight away with next day delivery, that was last week Monday. By wednesday I had not heard from Giles the UK based technician according to Ben in the States so emailed him, only on Friday did I get a response saying that I had sent it to the wrong address, ( Remember this is the address I got from Ben) so Giles had to send it on to the actual technician.
Fast forward a few days where I was waiting for a time frame on the fixing of my unit and still nothing, till Wednesday this week where I sent pissy emails to both Giles and Ben complaining of the lack of communication and sticking to their warranty policy of less than a week for small things like power supply replacements.
Yesterday after firing another email asking for a "whatthehell" is going on here and where is my panel I got a email saying here is a tracking number, your unit will be with you tomorrow.
I've tracked it and also called parcelforce to verify the postage and found out it is being sent 3 days delivery. This means it will get back to me on Tuesday the 20th of March and I sent it in on the 5th of March.
I wanted to share my experience of this with others who are constantly trying to weigh up which is the best brand of LED panel to go for, here are my thoughts..........
1. PRO GROW panels do the job, I have had just as good crops in a 4x4 with a 600hps as with my 550 LED.........EVEN WITHOUT THE CREE DIODES THEY LIED SO MUCH ABOUT, GIVE ME A BREAK, THEY DIDNT KNOW?? BEN IS LYING!!
2. That part of your warranty where they say they will "credit card cross ship" to cover panels sent off for repair...in an email from Ben he stated very clearly that he was never going to do that for an overseas customer, think about that before buying UK guys!!
3. The repair was so all over the place that it took much longer than it should have, they are not a very professional set up.
Overall I am happy with the growing performance of my unit, with or without cree but as for repairs and warranties with PRO GROW....BUYER BEWARE AND BE AWARE THAT ALL IS NOT AS IT SEEMS...
I am still waiting to get my unit back, before this whole debacle I was going to replace another grow rooms HID for the PRO GROW panels but now they can kiss my ass.
This is my experience with them, it may not be yours but it is important that you see all sides of the coin.
