ZooMed: Thumbs Up for Customer Service

[fire-eyes]

I have three snakes. I also live in the desert, thus low humidity is a problem. For each snake, I use a ZooMed unit that senses temperature and humidity, and each can be dialed in on its control. The control box has two outlets, one for heat and one for humidity. To the humidity side, I attach one of their ReptiFoggers.

The ReptiFoggers work great. The trick is to use distilled or filtered water, and not straight tap water. If you don't, depending on how nasty your water is (Las Vegas water has a lot of hard minerals), it will foul up the heating plate.

I have, however, had a few go bad. For the first one, I just bought a new one. Then I had another go bad, and yet another start acting up. I decided to try to figure out what was going on. I took apart the one that went fully bad. What I found was that there is a small fan inside the unit, and it blows air up through a small channel to an area just above where the water is heated. From there it exits out the tube and into wherever you direct it.

The problem is that these fans tend to fail. They either begin to bind up and slow down, which allows a small flow of humidified air, or fail completely, which results in no humidified air. In both of these situations, the entire unit itself can become damaged because it will happily run for eternity. Because the humidity in the cage doesn't rise enough, the control box keeps the ReptiFogger on.

I contacted ZooMeds customer support. I got into a discussion via email with Ashley. I explained the issue, and not expecting to actually get them, asked for at least three replacement fans. I was willing to pay for them, but I also added that while the units were out of warranty, this was an opportunity to please a current customer.

ZooMed shipped four fans to me without hesitation. They came with brief but adequate instructions. Pop the bottom off, unplug the existing fan, plug in the new one, stick it in its slot, you're done.

I did the fix on two units. The one with the completely stuck fan worked like a charm. Perhaps no surprise, being that this was my newest unit. The second unit, which had a partially hung fan, did not fare so well. While the fan works great, I am guessing that it spent too much time being on more than it used to, and still has problems. I believe this caused some sort of damage to its operation.

I'm not expecting them to replace that whole unit, but who knows, we'll see. I'm perfectly fine with buying another.

Kudos to Ashley and ZooMed customer service!

[fire-eyes]

I forgot to add: Ashley said that they know they have a QA problem with the fans. And that some last weeks while others last a year or more, and that they are investigating it.