List Price: $145.95
Sale Price: $78.99
Today's Bonus: 46% Off
I ordered the first unit back in the middle of July from one of my pond suppliers. I already have had a smaller P-21 for several years, which has been trouble free, but only holds enough food for about 3 days. I thought the P-7000 would be the ticket for my up coming vacation in September, since it has a capacity for at least 4 5 weeks. More than enough for a two week getaway.
The unit appears to be well made.
I noticed programming of the 1st unit somewhat difficult with the key entry. Holding a button down for a fraction of a second too long resulted in skipping to the next phase, or freezing up. In order to correct, you have to wait a full minute or more to allow the display to return to clock mode. Once it was programmed for both an early morning feeding, as well as an evening feeding, I monitored it every day. I wanted to make sure of proper function with plenty of time before vacation, just in case.
The unit COMPLETELY SKIPPED the PM feedings from the beginning. After about a week it started intermittently feeding in the PM, and intermittently skipping the AM feeding. I am an electronics geek, and know that the problem is within the main board, probably a bad micro chip. I called the company, and tried a few programming work-a-rounds to no avail to of all of the issues. I then shipped it back at a cost of about $20 for a replacement. I received the replacement in about 10 days after shipping UPS. They had to receive the first one before sending the 2nd one. I enclosed a detailed letter of exactly what the issues were, and requested a tested unit, since time was drawing near for vacation, and I wanted time to monitor it.
The 2nd unit was also difficult to program. It started out feeding in the AM and PM. After 4 days, there were a few missed PM feedings. After another 2 days, the display would lock up, and feeding indicator pointer was frozen for about 3 days. It then started working fine for about 2 weeks. As Murphy's Law dictates, the unit totally froze the morning of my departure. I had to have someone feed my fish. The indicators show that feedings are being made, but the motor will not activate, not even in a demand mode for extra feeding. I reported the initial problems the day after receiving the unit. Their customer service rep said she would call me back, I am still waiting. I am now on vacation writing this review. I don't know what they will do once I contact them upon my return. My feeling is that they have a whole batch of defective chips in their boards. The units are manufactured for them elsewhere, so I don't know what the outcome may be. My advice is to avoid the product until they iron out the problems. BTW in the several telephone conversations that I had with customer service, they mentioned that the unit was new in the marketplace, as if it were an excuse. Don't they test things any more ?????? I am a businessman for 42 years, and I understand manufacturing. Even when you make a change, you test the changes (at least I do).
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