Onzen Problems

[RJD]

All, as most of everyone here my new Artic Spa with Onzen was delivered and low and behold 4 days later getting cloudy and became unusable. After repeated calls over the Holidays I finally got a Technician on the phone. As I am "Mechanically Inclined" I was able to get enough information from the Tech and discovered the following;

There are 2 Electric Leads that come out of the Onzen Unit. One plugs into the main power distribution center where the electricity is connected. The other travels to the Electrode Unit that actually produces the Chlorine from the Salt. Apparently the assembly line workers are to blame here. At the end of that line there are 2 leads White and Black. If you put a DC Volt meter across the leads when the unit is on it should read 12 V DC. If not the power pack is dead. The ends of these leads are Female Spade Connectors with a protective plastic cover over it. On the Electrode packs are the Male Spade Connectors. The issue for me and as per the Tech, MANY others is that when they assembled the plugs rather than properly connecting the spade connectors the nit wits put the Male end in between the plastic covering and the Female end making a poor, or in my case non existent connection. To add to the issue the Male ends were covered with the red sealer that they use on the pipes. After some scraping and sanding on the connectors my unit is now making MAD chlorine, too much actually with the damn thing turned all the way down.

Hope this helps....

I'd give them an F for customer support my unit has a leak for a month now and I cannot get them here for crap and the unit is not more than 60 days old.....

Next time I buy a Hot Springs Spa.....

[villaora]

Oh Dear - I am in the UK and attach an e-mail I have just sent to Arctic Spa UK. Its pretty self explanatory - but I have deleted the name of of the supplier of the tub, as although they have been useless- I think the main probelm seems to be Artic Spas general customer support . Onzen seems to be a very new thing for the Uk - unlike state-side where its obvious you have had it available for a while. If someone can explain why the key pad for the UK and the US/Canada are different I would love to know ? :

Two weeks ago I took delivery, via XXXXXXXXXXX of my second Arctic Spa Kodiak Legend SE ( the first one packed up after 7 years - hence this time I bought a model with a 10 year guarantee).

I bought the most current model available , with aquatremor and the Onzen system.

It was installed with no problem- but rather disappointingly - not turned on - thus XXXXX did not fill it and get it running and check all was well- but I knew the basics and thought I would be able to do this myself . However I was also left with no sea salt to activate the Onzen system and the brochures and literature that they left seem to be generic for your general range - and don't cover many of the things that my newer model has:

"lastingscent" - This dial is on my hot tub. But not in your brochure. It took me three phone calls to your head office for you to acknowledge that this even exists. My dealership told me that i just added fragrance to the water- whilst initially you told me to look for a small hole to pour the fragrance into. Finally the service guy at your head office ( scottish guy who is very helpful) told me how to unscrew and uncover the bottle and wick that is inside the actual dial .

" Onzen" - I finally tracked down the sea salt and have tried to get it working. But nothing. The scottish guy talked me through putting it in a 6 hour hour cycle - but even after that I am left with a tub of murky water with no sanitisation levels.

The "onzen user manual" is like the overall "users manual" . Useless. It basically tells me how to use my "north american touchpad". Which I dont have. It also tells me how to check for the ozone being produced - by checking the blue light on my ozone generator. But there are no lights of any colour on my ozone generator . Or I can set the filtration cycle to "FD0".Guess what ? I dont seem to have that facility either.

I am getting bubbles out of the 'ozone output' - which the brochure tells me means I AM getting ozone. But your service guy tells me bubbles would come out of here anyway even if I wasn't getting Ozone.. I am inclined to believe him.

As I have said, I have had one of these before- so I have some basic idea about what I need to do etc and I realise that once I have this resolved , I will be able to enjoy the tub. However ,if this was my first tub , I would be asking for my money back. I am sure a Spa should help you relax. Not drive you mad.

Please send around an engineer with another tub of sea salt and fix it. You get it working. I did not spend GBP 13k ( so that's 23k in Total now) to take delivery of a tub and then to go through some kind of NVQ Spa engineer course - nor to waste my weekend -getting very wound up , with the kids moaning about why they cant get in the tub - nor my wife moaning - as she will do - that she may have to stay in for 8 hours waiting for your engineer to turn up.

[Tom]

Oh Dear - I am in the UK and attach an e-mail I have just sent to Arctic Spa UK.

The chief of Arctic's UK division is aware of the situation and is working for a resolution. "We have been speaking/emailing since Thursday when we were made aware," he said.

[4serendipity]

Hi There,

I feel compelled to chime in here. Threads like this are probably read by thousands of people and it would be an injustice for readers to believe this is true of Arctic Spas.

I am a concete pool and hot tub builder in Canada. I own and operate two businesses in this capacity, one in Ontario and one in Vancouver. I have a working relationship with Arctic Spas so you may think that my opinion is biased, but consider that I work with Arctic Spas because of the service team and after sales support. I have sold thousands of acrylic spas, of almost every make and description in the past to my clients. The level of service that my customers get from Arctic is hands down, night and day better than any other spa manufacturer or dealer I have worked with. They are actually listed as one of the best managed companies in Canada.

As an award winning builder in this industry with over 2 generations and many decades of experience, I can easily say that you can not have a bad reputation for after sales service and still be acclaimed for best in the Country management of the company.

Someone needed to say it. Arctic takes a lot of heat and exposure for the simple reason that they are #1 in virtually every capacity when it comes to acylic hot tubs. My concrete hot tubs are still superior, but I will give arctic a close second =)

If you are on the fence about buying an Arctic Spa, and live in either Ontario or Vancouver, PM me or call me at 1-888-818-POOL

I hope this information is helpful.

S.