Thought I'd throw my 2 cents in about Master's Pellet Stove out of Bowie, MD.
I got an Enviro Empress insert purchased and installed in our fireplace about five years ago using Masters. They were very helpful over the phone and the stove was installed with liner for around 4.5k (as I recall). The install was fine and they took a pic of our family's smiling faces which they then posted on their webpage:
http://www.masterspelletstoves.com/
When I started it up during the 2nd year we got tons of smoke that came out of the fireplace. I called Masters and they indicated that couldn't come for two or three weeks. Then, for the scheduled appointment, they didn't show up at all. I called them again and they showed up two weeks later.
The owner of Masters (who as I recall his name was Mark) showed up. Messed around with the stove for about 30 minutes and couldn't get it to stop smoking. He then said I needed to call a chimney guy as it was a chimney issue, not the pellet stove and took off.
I later found out the reason for the smoking was that the liner became disconnected from the chimney cap (which most likely occurred when I was emptying out the "T connection") and was due to shotty install. I then reconnected the liner to the cap added additional heat resistant glue and bolts to secure it. They hasn't been a problem with the liner disconnecting from the cap since.
I haven't had any issues with the stove, but never called Masters back again following that experience and now use a local service to do my maintenance. One of the selling points of Masters was that they claimed they had a strong maintenance support with their customers.
20/20 hindsight, I should have stuck with a more local distributor. I'm about 45 miles from their location (90 miles round trip) so its possible that they weren't thrilled with the commute it took for service. Personally, the Masters service was decent for the install but terrible for the service (which I think is very important for the longevity of a pellet stove).
I probably should have created this thread a while back, but forgot about the forum and am only now becoming active in it again.
Thanks,
smithmal
I got an Enviro Empress insert purchased and installed in our fireplace about five years ago using Masters. They were very helpful over the phone and the stove was installed with liner for around 4.5k (as I recall). The install was fine and they took a pic of our family's smiling faces which they then posted on their webpage:
http://www.masterspelletstoves.com/
When I started it up during the 2nd year we got tons of smoke that came out of the fireplace. I called Masters and they indicated that couldn't come for two or three weeks. Then, for the scheduled appointment, they didn't show up at all. I called them again and they showed up two weeks later.
The owner of Masters (who as I recall his name was Mark) showed up. Messed around with the stove for about 30 minutes and couldn't get it to stop smoking. He then said I needed to call a chimney guy as it was a chimney issue, not the pellet stove and took off.
I later found out the reason for the smoking was that the liner became disconnected from the chimney cap (which most likely occurred when I was emptying out the "T connection") and was due to shotty install. I then reconnected the liner to the cap added additional heat resistant glue and bolts to secure it. They hasn't been a problem with the liner disconnecting from the cap since.
I haven't had any issues with the stove, but never called Masters back again following that experience and now use a local service to do my maintenance. One of the selling points of Masters was that they claimed they had a strong maintenance support with their customers.
20/20 hindsight, I should have stuck with a more local distributor. I'm about 45 miles from their location (90 miles round trip) so its possible that they weren't thrilled with the commute it took for service. Personally, the Masters service was decent for the install but terrible for the service (which I think is very important for the longevity of a pellet stove).
I probably should have created this thread a while back, but forgot about the forum and am only now becoming active in it again.
Thanks,
smithmal
