RainSoft

To Whom It May Concern,

I am submitting this formal complaint regarding RainSofts sales practices and customer treatment, which I believe were deceptive, misleading, and specifically targeted toward me as a senior citizen.

In 2022, I paid $10,195.00 for a RainSoft system after being assured by the sales representative that I had to obtain a Home Depot credit card in order to qualify for the deal. I later learned that this information was false and misleading. I was pressured into opening credit I did not want or need based on inaccurate representations made during the sales presentation.

Additionally, I was explicitly told that annual maintenance would cost $90.00 per year. This was a major factor in my decision to move forward, as I live solely on a Social Security check and must carefully manage my expenses. I have since learned that the actual service costs are $235.00 for the first 30 minutes and $90.00 for every additional 30 minutes, not including the cost of parts. These charges are completely unaffordable for someone on a fixed income and were never clearly or honestly disclosed at the time of sale.

Had I been given accurate information regarding financing requirements and true maintenance costs, I would never have agreed to this purchase.

I strongly feel that I was targeted because of my age and pressured into a contract using misleading statements and incomplete disclosures. This type of conduct is especially troubling when directed at seniors, who are often more vulnerable to high-pressure sales tactics and complex financial agreements.

I am requesting that this matter be reviewed immediately and that appropriate corrective action be taken. Senior citizens deserve transparency, honesty, and ethical treatmentnot deception and financial harm.

This complaint is being documented due to the seriousness of the misrepresentation and the financial hardship it has caused.

Sincerely,

Diane DeVore

Tried calling because my tank broke and water was pouring everywhere. Got no response and had to almost call plumber to fix it . Would not recommend rainsoft or they should have a 24/7 support staff after hours to guide customers for emergent issuses

I was trying to get an appointment for someone out to come out and service my system. I did not get an appointment.

I gave my card number and they said it was denied and I know it has more than five dollars on it to set up an appointment if thats what the fee is for an appointment, but I will still need to make an appointment if I can get someone to set up an appointment for me otherwise I dont know how to get in touch with you because theres no one coming on the telephone line. its all computer chat.

I've been a longtime customer of this organization. Recently, I had a representative come to the house for my yearly service on my water Rainsoft system.

I was informed that the control board on the system had to be change because it was not responding to the commands. I informed the technician that this would be the 3rd or 4th time the board would need to be replaced. I informed him I was going to call the service department about this ongoing problem that was causing me more money.

I called the service department who gave me a name and telephone number of a person I needed to call. Once I called the number, I spoke with a rep who said they would deliver the message, and I should receive a call with by the end of the day or the following day.

Approximately 20 minutes later, the tech called me telling me that the person I was to speak to was upset and got on him for giving me her information and wanted to know why he gave me her name and contact info and who was I.

I informed him that the information came from the service department.

To this day, I'm to receive a call from anyone. This is the epidemy of poor customer service and relationship.

I just want to get this drywall saw back to its owner, the installer. I need to know if it was a local contractor or a RainSoft installer, and who it was.

Because of the high cost of their parts plus labor and the poor customer service of the company installer personnel in previous services, I decided to replace the under-sink filters myself. My surprise was when I started looking for the filters.

I found that the only place to get them was/is in RS or Home Depot, and the filter cost alone is superior to an entirely new piece of equipment from other brands with more stages! Then I decided to replace the entire system with a new iSpring RCC7 with 2 more stages (5 total vs. 3 of RS), getting a better filtration, saving $130 today, and getting the peace of mind that the next filter replacement will be a LOT more inexpensive. The life span of the filters is identical in iSpring vs.

RS. There are other good brands, too.

I purchased a home in July of 2022. When I finally moved in September of 2022, the first thing I wanted to address was the rainsoft system that was inside the home and wasnt working.

It was on bypass and I had no knowledge of the history of this system. I called rainsoft headquarters and explained the situation to them, they put me in touch with a dealer of the product. Mr. Cerrone Dupree Washington, the owner of Safe Water Solutions based out of Newburgh NY.

He called me within a day or 2, came out tested the water and I signed and paid for a system that was dependent on if he could rebuild the EC4 head. It was an additional $1,300 for a new tank if the head couldnt be repaired, which of course it couldnt. So I paid $7500.00 for all brand new equipment and a drinking system. The one piece of equipment that was not replaced or even addressed was the brine tank.

I have lived on city water my entire life and purchased my first home with well water. I thought I reached out to a company that had been doing this flawlessly for years and had a great reputation. Ive lived by you get what you pay for even though it was expensive, my health and well being is very important to me. Its rated a 10 out of 10 on rainsofts sales pitch to me that I have on email from the dealer.

I just found out January of 2024, that the bribes tank has not been working at all. I myself had to call tech support and trouble shoot with them on the phone to realize that I should be able to push a broom through the salt or pour a little bit of hot water on it to break it up. I currently have a 2 foot or 3 foot solid block of salt sitting in my tank, and never touching the water that is supposed to flush and clean out my tanks. All of this, comes after September of 2023 after my annual servicing appointment of the equipment where the the service tech breaks the pipe as soon as it comes from my well and doesnt tell me.

I will paste that review I left on here at the end. After having a plumbing company that has been in business for 100+ years come out and test the water, they determined that the system isnt working, I have email proof from them about all of this. Straight from Google, this is what happens if the salt isnt working correctly in the system, The beads rely on the brine solution to replenish them with sodium and restore their charge. Without the sodium ions, the resin beads will not remove any of the water hardness minerals as they flow through the water softener's tank.May 3, 2023.

My reports from the plumbing company show that there is hard water inside of my brand new hot water heater that I purchased in January of 2023. My water quality has gotten worse, I have bacterial growing inside my hot water heater. I have been hung up on by customer service, I have been blocked by the dealer, and the regional manager or any kind of manager has yet to speak to me. Somehow an inexperienced salesman, was able to set equipment at my house and it never worked.

This has caused me to have emotional distress, relive bad time times in my life, inhibited me from running my business and now makes me worry that I was consuming and bathing and brushing my teeth with water that wasnt being treated at all. All of the beads are now compromised from over a year of not being cleaned correctly. Even more so I want my money back because after a year of the system not working, what can someone tell me? Im sorry?

I yelled at customer service and the dealer yes, but I had proof is wasnt working, and they took the dealers word for gold. We will find out tomorrow morning when I speak to customer service after the findings of my own troubleshooting with tech support. I cannot wait to take a video of whoever sees the major salt block that hasnt gone down since it has been installed and serviced. A lot of people should lose their job over this, once the truth comes out.

The dealer lied and fudged his own water tests, because it is impossible when for over a year that salt has been sitting there and never went down. I have been giving my animals this water as well. $7500 to make my water situation worse. The complaint with NYS attorney generals office has been submitted and there is an investigation taking place.

This is my review left on the dealer:

I am the very unlucky customer number 1.

On the annual service of my equipment Alex came to my house to replace the whole house filter with one that is sized correctly for my house. (This should have been done on install so I didnt have to change filters every month) In doing so he had to shut the water off to my house. In doing so, he forced it and broke the pipe to my well T connection. He was at my house for 6 hours on something simple.

Alex is a great talker and probably a good installer, but he didnt tell me when it happened. I have pictures of the valves before and after, before they were both straight, afterwards the one that was spewing out water was the one on a 45 degree angle. Right at that moment I lost all water pressure to my home. This happened around September 21st.

My RO system wasnt working correctly because there was no pressure in my house. Cerrone, Vito and Chris took multiple trips up to my house replacing parts and pieces of the well T connection instead of just replacing the entire T, when they had the entire T with them. By doing this they created a major blockage to my entire home, which is all pex and pex manifolds. I had to call another plumbing company by Cerrones request, Auchinachie Plumbing (which is a phenomenal company) to diagnose why I dont have any pressure.

Immediately upon their arrival on November 3rd they said the entire well T should be replaced and because of my pressure going over the rated PSI, it punctured *** in my pressure tank. Vito, Cerrones licensed plumber couldnt even figure out the problem and both him and Cerrone were blaming it on the well, and corroded, deteriorating pipes. After Auchinachie plumbing gave me a $2200 invoice to make the repairs, Cerrone didnt want to pay that bill and he took it upon himself to make the repairs when I didnt even want him touching anything else at this point. November 6th, they replaced the damage they created, but I am still having banging pipes throughout my house.

I had to have Auchinachie plumbing come back out to test the water, both at the well and inside the home. I have hard water inside a brand new hot water heater and the acid neutralizer is not working. The Ro system is still having issues. I tried calling rainsoft and after months of dealing with this, I definitely raised my voice and screamed at a few people.

Now rainsoft is telling me there is nothing that they can do. My only option is to work with the dealer Mr. Cerrone Washington, who is avoiding me, not responding, telling me to come after him in court and that hes not worried about it. I literally have a system that stopped working within a year and he is refusing to give me my money back and take the system out of my house.

As a Marine Combat Veteran who experienced no running water or electricity in a combat zone, I deserve to have clean fresh water that I paid for in my home. I already reached out to the NYS Attorney Generals office and filed a complaint. If youre a veteran I would never hire this company, they will fight you tooth and nail on everything, blame their mess ups on everything else and take no responsibility. While the water was barely trickling out of my kitchen sink and no water out of my showers upstairs, Cerrone, someone who isnt a veteran, let alone a combat vet told me, You were in the military, come on, you can wash up in the sink.

Meanwhile Im running a business too and need to shower and wash clothes. All things I couldnt do for over a month. Rainsoft doesnt care about the situation and neither does Cerrone, which is why Im not taking the cleanest showers that I should be taking because of a faulty system that I paid for and now everyone is running away and refusing to give me my money back. I spent, Halloween, Thanksgiving and soon to be Christmas dealing with this nightmare when I shouldnt be dealing with any of this at all.

How you charge someone $7500 for a system that doesnt work and then stop responding is crazy.

I will be pursuing legal action. Do not hire this company or use rainsoft products, they dont work.

Our basement is flooded the water softener is unplugged & still pouring water out of it. We have no one to call.

I don't like the way the water is, specially when I'm showered it's so slipped and left dirt in the toilet bowls and since the air conditioner never stops working even on auto. I really don't like it on my ski that's why I unplugged the the tanks outside

No pressure getting my RO water into the refrigerator and counter faucet Been Been a customer for over 12 years

Water line came a loose under the sink and water ran out rapidly I turned system off for now to see if it can be repaired

On 10/02/2021 we had an in-home water quality demonstration with Ray Pauchek. We were very impressed with his knowledge of the areas water quality and the capability of your systems.

Using less soaps and detergents along with not having to use rinse aids in the dishwasher is exciting! We readily agreed to a treatment system and were advised that you guys would come back out to retest the water after installation. I started gathering all the laundry soaps, scent boosters, fabric softeners and dishwasher rinse aids to give away.

We were also sold on your CleanStart system and immensely excited by the technology! Ray explained how you really only need to use the rinse cycle on the machine for optimal cleaning, that he has not used laundry detergent or fabric softener in years and that clean clothes shouldnt smell like laundry soap or fabric softener if they were truly clean.

Understanding the concept of NOTHING left behind in the fabric after washing was eye opening and we told everyone we knew about it.

Installation of both systems was a rough day. The installer advised that the sales consultant (Ray, Im assuming) did not advise the distance from the water meter correctly and that they would have to leave and come back after they finished another scheduled job. They were out front, in the dark, digging a trench until nearly 11pm that night.

I started noticing that the dishes were soaking wet after the heated dry cycle ended in the dishwasher and contacted our home builder because it is a brand new home, with brand new appliances. They opened a ticket with Samsung and we were advised that the dry cycle does not work without using a rinse aid in the dishwasher so now Ive gone out and purchased more Jet Dry, since we obviously need it.

I started noticing that some of our clothes smelled funny kind of like sweat, kind of musty, kind of like when you leave them in the washer for days before putting them in the dryer.

I did a deep clean/sanitize cycle on the washing machine. I released the drain on the bottom of the machine and scrubbed it out. I bought a special washing machine cleaning kit. I became neurotic about the time clothes sat in the washer before being transferred to the dryer.

All of these things I tried over time and through the holidays and vacations and life in general, to no avail. I then figured Id have the conversation with Ray (or someone else) when he came back to retest the water for quality. That never happened.

I reached out with my concerns on 1/4/22 (holidays are over, family has all flown back to where they live, husband is recovered from surgery, oldest daughters wedding is over and life has settled down). The person who answered the phone said Hello, like I was calling her personal phone, no business name, not how can I help you, just hello.

She set up an appointment to have a technician check the CleanStart and to perform the retest on the water.

I was not able to be here when the technician came out but my husband and adult daughter were. The technician checked the CleanStart and advised that even though the sales pitch is that you no longer have to use laundry soap, him and his boss advise that you still use it to get your clothes clean. He advised that he would have his boss or someone reach out to me to further explain and left the house without testing the water.

Now, Im upset. No one has called me.

Im using the (diluted) super concentrated laundry soap in my washing machine and my clothes still smell. Im purchasing scent booster products and my clothes still smell. Im switching to a quick wash cycle in the washer and then a full normal cycle in the washer and my clothes still smell. The only way to get rid of the smell is to run the washer with hot water effectively bypassing your CleanStart product.

So who lied?

Did Ray lie about the CleanStart system in his own home? Did the company lie about how this system is so great that even Marriott hotels use it? Surely, the whole sales pitch (as your technician called it) cant be a lie, can it? THE MONEY-SAVING, ECO-FRIENDLY, DETERGENT-LESS LAUNDRY SOLUTION on the cover of your pamphlet cant all be untrue, can it?

Is anyone ever going to come back to retest the water?

Is someone going to come out and fix this CleanStart to make it operate as advertised or is someone going to refund our money and come pick this thing up?

Now, I am not going to say Im one of those customers that screams Im going to tell everyone I know about it about this bad experience BUT your company is well aware of word of mouth, which is why you have such a robust Rainsoft Ambassador Program. Six units within three years = 100% reimbursement of all equipment is a pretty good referral program but I highly doubt the eight homes under construction on my street alone will be getting the sales pitch from me.