DW2500 UPDATE!!

Man, that's a real shame. Really stinks to see a company drop the ball that hard.

And on top of that, it really stinks to see such a poor design. I wonder what was going through that engineers head when he designed that.

Yeah tell me about it. Doing simple static analysis on the stove would have shown the huge stresses those welds would see.

I hate to put the dealer on the spot here, but I would suggest that the dealer should consider taking the stove back and then dealing with the manufacturer on the issue.

In general, this would NOT be the rule, as most situations such as this are settled in a reasonable way. But if the stove is relatively new and not fixable, I think this is covered under basic UCC commercial codes....they sold a item that was not able to be used for the purpose they sold it to you for.

As a dealer, I had one experience with a similar situations and here is what happened. The first line of catalytic stoves - the Concorde Catalytic, had some out with a freestanding stove...had a few problems, but worked well and both I and the customers were generally happy (this is about 1984!) - so then they come out with a fireplace insert and I order a number of them. Payment was required up front with a letter of credit. The units came in and were defective in a number of ways and could not be sold or fixed. The bank would not help - they paid the manufacturer off once he proved I received the shipment. The manufacturer would do nothing to fix the situation (in fact, they closed up shop soon after)....

Bottom line was that I ended up eating $20,000. worth of these things...only being able to strip them for the cats and the glass and a door or two. In the end, after moving them around a few times, I had to bring the bodies to the scrapyard.

Sounds like the dealer is being pretty nice with offering the profit - but the dealer could take the unit back, spend $100 to get it rewelded, and then sell it for 60% or so of the new price - and they would not end taking too much of a bath...especially if they continued to do business with VC (in which case, they would probably received almost full reimbursement immediately).

I'm really unhappy to see that VC has not stepped up to the plate here. It makes one wonder is they don't have a BIG problem and are planning to see how they must handle it legally, etc. - because if is was a simple problem they would simply make one phone call to BAC and you would be taken care of.

A big difference in VC from the days that I handled them is that we dealt 100% direct with the factory and usually long-term VC employees in VT. Now they sell through a number of distributors and do not maintain similar (and personal) relationships with dealers.

easy for me to say, as Im not involved, but as the dealer, Id take the stove back and demand satisfaction from the distributor. If I didnt get it, I'd then go ahead and deduct the cost value of the stove from my next invoice from the distributor. Let the distributor fight it out with CFM for the obviously defective and poorly-designed unit. Now that I think of it, this could be part of the problem. If there are ALOT of these units, or CFM is now realizing theyve got a real issue on their hands, they may be playing their hand close, to avoid the losses they might incur otherwise. Have there been many of these other than the two I read about here? I dont sell CFM units, so havent heard.

15 days ago I sent this letter to BAC they never replied but thought they would take care of it

John Recently cracked support welds have appeared ion the forum concerning the Dutchwest 2500 insert. One happens to be in your distributorship area in Long island NY. According to the dealer Guaranteed Chimney, he has had no response from his distributor

IT seems that one regular posted pictures of his broken welds and his distributor and dealer swapped it out, then Wxman noticed the same cracked welds on his unit and posted the pictures. So far he has had little response to addressing the issue. If you need more info, I will forward the post that contained the discussions and pictures . It is possible there is a design flaw and a support issue with these inserts

The dealer offering his profit on the stove is a much more substantial "contribution" than CFM refunding your money, the dealer seems to be doing OK.

I had to make a stink about stress cracks in the framework of a tractor front end loader to an international company about a year ago. I found it was very effective to acquire the email addresses of half a dozen of the top technical, warranty, engineering, and customer relations staff at the manufacturing company and write a very complete and polite letter detailing the problem and risks with photos. I sent that letter to the company contacts and posted it to a forum such as this. It didn't take long to get results and this was after the dealer had exhausted his options.

CFM had already put a bad taste in my mouth with the glowing stove emails so this jsut puts another nail in the coffin.

I'm rooting for you wxman, do what you can.

I've got 8 or 10 of these things out there. Where are the cracks, so when we start sweeping this summer we can take a look. I didn't think we would ever sale one of these, on most of them the liner and labor where more than the stove. Shane

Its pretty obvious when you look at it Shane. I believe there were pictures somewhere posted, but the shroud which surrounds the stove on the sides evidently also supports the weight of the stove. This shroud is welded to the stove body with a few short tack welds at best. These welds are cracked and allowing the stove to become lose in this shroud and fall to the hearth.