DW2500 UPDATE!!

[jqgs214]

No good news to report. I had a lengthy conversation with my dealer last night. He has had absolutely no response from BAC Sales (his distributor) regarding my stove. Tomorrow I will be calling consumer affairs to report my problem. My dealer is going to be named as a co-complaintent. He is 100% behind me on this decision. When I ordered my stove they sent the gold trim instead of the silver. After a month of waitng for the right parts my dealer got CHARGED for the correct parts even after sending the the old parts back. He has another warranty issuue on another stove that he has gotten no response for and he is being sued and will subrogate BAC sales if the issue is not resolved. At this point I want nothing to do with VC ever again. I want my money back. I dont want a replacement stove. I've tried to pursue this the gentlemenly way and through the proper channels but I'm done, frustrated and plain just pissed off now. I know Tendencies is upset about the resolution of his replacement also. If a replacement is all I will get then it will be on the trading block immediately. I will not put an (in my eyes) unsafe stove in my home. My dealer went as far as to offer his profit on the stove to me because of this situation. He is as frustrated as I am and more than likely will no longer be dealing with CFM as a manufacturer.

Thanks for listening, I promised an update and needed to vent!

Glen

 

[BrotherBart]

That is an absolute bummer. But in many ways I am glad somebody didn't trundle a replacement out there. Seeing the design of that stove scared the heck out of me. Been being quiet since so many had weighed in before.

Just remember that your fight is with CFM. They are the ones that made it and gave the warranty. Don't even mess with the distributor. You and the dealer's fight is with CFM. And take real good care of the pictures you have taken. You will need them.

And for all reading this, remember that same stove is sold as the Century Hearth insert as well as the Dutchwest.

 

[jqgs214]

Dont need to take good care of my pic BB, Still got the stove sitting in my fireplace!! I'll just take 12dozen more! On the note of whose fight it is, my dealer said he must go through the distributor first. But seeing that there is no response there I know I'm heading..... for CFM.

 

[Corie]

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.

 

[jqgs214]

Corie,

Yes it is a shame but I would say they are more of a Bill Buckner type company. They didnt drop the ball, they couldn't because the are too damn old and slow to even touch it.

 

[BrotherBart]

Corie,

Yes it is a shame but I would say they are more of a Bill Buckner type company. They didnt drop the ball, they couldn't because the are too damn old and slow to even touch it.

Old and slow would be more of a BrotherBart type thing.

 

[jqgs214]

Hey, BB Bill Buckner, both 2b's hmmm interesting. . . . . but off topic!

 

[begreen]

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.

Drop the ball, they dropped the stove on this one, right on the hearth. I wouldn't be surprised if their sales dropped correspondingly as well. It seems pretty short-sighted.

It's hard to understand what the designers were thinking when it would have been cheap and easy to add a couple bottom support rails to carry the weight.

 

[Corie]

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

 

[webbie]

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.

 

[BrotherBart]

I am willing to bet that CFM/VC hasn't been told a word about the problem by the distributor. The only way I think they would know about it was if they in fact have somebody watching the Forum.

Of course I am also willing to bet several bob that if the two stoves here crapped out that a bunch of them have. This isn't a new design as best I can determine.

 

[BrotherBart]

wxman, if you wish to jack up the Cohen clan at BAC here are the phone numbers. They seem proud to publish them on the web along with all sorts of bragging about their dealer support.

(broken link removed to http://www.bacsales.com/webpages/contacts.html)

 

[HarryBack]

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.

 

[elkimmeg]

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

 

[jqgs214]

Well, the contact at Comsumer safety (thanks tendencies) is out until Monday May 7th so CFM and BAC just bought themselves another week. Hope they are reading this thread. Fits gonna hit the shan soon.

 

[Highbeam]

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.

 

[SSPENCE]

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

 

[Corie]

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.

 

[jqgs214]

yep that covers it, do a search for dw2500 and it will pop up!

 

[jqgs214]

FINALLY My dealer heard back from Nyrelle at BAC Sales. Her response was . . . . . wait for it. . . . . ummmm I'm sorry but we had a computer failure can you please resend all of the correspondence That was Friday morning. Dealer resent all the info and guess what. . . . wait for it . . . . .. NO RESPONSE! I have emailed the comsumer safety administration. The contact is out until tomorrow. Hopefully he can light a fire you know where!

 

[jqgs214]

Things are looking up - cant share the details yet but will keep all of you posted.

 

[BrotherBart]

Things are looking up - cant share the details yet but will keep all of you posted.

Typical weather man. "Will we have nice weather tomorrow? Stay tuned after these few hundred commercials to find out."

 

[jqgs214]

 

[jqgs214]

Ok,

So heres the scoop. Yesterday I circumvented the system and emailed the higher ups at BAC Sales. Within an hour they had replied to me and the regional sales rep called me on the phone. They apologized for the lack of response from the warranty department and have been scheduled to come look at the stove. They have indicated that they will take the stove back and give me credit toward purchasing any brand insert that they sell. Those include VC (not going there),Pacific Energy and napolean among some others I havent heard of but my be worth looking at. As soon as I get this one out and remeasure the fireplace dimensions I will post them here and ask for reccomendations. If you guys feel that I cant go wrong with either brand then I will go buy what the wife likes best

 

[begreen]

I don't think you'll go wrong with either brand WX, though I am a bit more partial to PE, more due to familiarity. Glad to here you are getting this resolved finally.