In March we purchased a Cal Spas spa from Persaud Spa Inc.in Oxnard CA. Our contract clearly states the spa is upgraded with Stainless Steel jets. After about a year I noticed the some jets were oxidizing and turning green. When a metal turns green that is a clear sign that it contains copper since copper oxide is green. Stainless steel is an alloy of steel and chromium, neither of which turn green when they oxidize a cheap stainless steel, if it oxidizes at all, will turn rust color but certainly not green. This is a clear indicator that the jets were made from chrome plated brass, not stainless steel as our contract stipulates.
I tried contacting the store in Oxnard where I bought the spa but they had shut down and I then contacted their Northridge store and requested that they honor our contract and send me stainless steel jets. They first said I had to come into the store in person with the defective jets so they could look at them. They refused to accept my verbal description over the phone that the jets had turned green and were therefore not stainless steel.
Strike one - why would I lie to them? To get 4 free jets sell them for a profit on E-Bay? I spend $8235 on a spa and I am going to try, 2 years later, to con them out of 4 jets???
The store where I bought the spa was 5 miles from my house in Oxnard compared to the Northridge store which is 51 miles from my house. After some arm twisting with the repair guy (his name is Rich) on the phone he grudgingly said he would look at them if I mailed them in rather than brought them in person. So I mailed them in and then called to confirm they got them and had confirmed they were not stainless steel. They then had the gall to simply straight out lie and insist that they were stainless steel and had turned green because of incorrect water chemistry in the spa. I was simply astounded! They had even more gall to then suggest I come to a class at the store to learn how to keep my stainless steel from turning green. Unbelievable! I have a motto which is never attribute to malice that which can be attributed to stupidity but in this case I can only conclude that Cal Spas and Persaud Spas is acting maliciously. No one could be that stupid, could they? Stainless steel corroding and turning green??? Come on!
I then tried to patiently explain to them that my spa had 50 jets all of which were in the same water and that only 4 of them had turned green the rest were in great shape and showed no oxidation of any kind which is what you would expect from stainless steel. He then proceeded to say he did not want to discuss it any more, that the jets were stainless steel and had turned green from incorrect water chemistry.
He did agree to send replacements, saying that even though they are not under warranty they would replace them. These will almost certainly be chrome plated brass, not stainless steel, and will suffer the same fate as the prior jets. And he had the gall to suggest that what was clearly a breach of contract on their part was not under warranty.
My guess is that they simply never made these particular jets in stainless steel, only chrome plated brass, which is why they are trying to insist that their chrome plated brass is stainless steel. They have no stainless steel jets to send me and they know that if they admit that they will be admitting that they are in breach of our purchase contract which clearly states stainless steel jets.
I offered to them to accept the chrome plated brass if they send me 5 complete sets which are enough for me to replace them every two years for 10 years. They refused to accept that offer which has left me little recourse but to expose their deceit.
A separate but related incident which further underscores that Cal Spas is definitely a company you do not want to do business with is the following. Last week the entire spa ceased working. The control panel LEDs would not even come on. Dead as a doornail. When I called for warranty repair I was told it would take them two weeks before they would come out and that they had a minimum $150 charge for all warranty repairs, even if they just had to replace a fuse. I was astounded! Two weeks delay and $150 to replace a fuse under warranty! Since I am an electrical engineer I decided I would not be held hostage by these crooks and their tyrannical $150 a visit warranty. I diagnosed the problem as a burned out transformer in the controllers power supply. Power supplies in general and transformers in particular are the most common points of failure in most electronic equipment. Any good engineer knows this. They were using what had to be the cheapest transformer I have ever seen made in china and horrible quality.
I called the manufacturer of the spa controller (its not made by cal spas but by Balboa Instruments) and was told the replacement transformer could be ordered for $55. What a ripoff! They could not have paid more than $2 for the cheap Chinese transformer they are using! I purchased a much higher quality transformer (made in Canada) from DigiKey (ROR redacted link) for $20, replaced the Chinese piece of crap, and now the spa is up and running again. So instead of paying $150 for a warranty repair and waiting for 2 weeks (or likely longer as they probably would not have come with the part in their truck) I fixed it myself for $20 in about 10 minutes. And I now have a high quality transformer which won't fail after only 2 years of use like theirs did.
Bottom line is
1) Cal Spas employees have repeatedly lied to me and are continuing to try to deceive me by saying that chrome plated brass is stainless steel
2) Cal Spas warranty is not a warranty at all since you have to pay $150 each and every time you try to use it.
3) Cal Spas quality is as bad as it gets. A $8235 spa failed completely because they used the cheapest $2 Chinese transformer possible.
I have one more motto which is Mistakes happen. It's how you respond after a mistake happens that sets you apart. Well judging from Cal Spas behavior to date they have clearly set themselves apart as untrustworthy liars with poor quality products and a useless warranty.
Chris
Oxnard, California
U.S.A.
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