Pro grow warranty and repairs performance from hydroponicshut.com

Hi

I just thought I would share my experiences with you guys regarding the warranty and repair of my pro grow 550W panel from hydroponicshut.com.

About 2 months ago I noticed a surge or drop off of power to the light, I got in touch with Ben at hydrohut and waited without exaggeration about a month before I emailed him again with a more ratty attitude at which point he responded to me then.

I explained the problem and he said that I could either send it to his repair centre in the UK or I could replace the power supplies myself, knowing that nothing gets sent next day these days I decided to try to replace the power packs myself, Ben said they would arrive at mine within days, it took 16 days to arrive from Bath in Somerset, if you were in the UK you would realise how long that seems to have taken.

Upon opening the package there were no instructions (which Ben said would be included) as to which and where to replace, none of the power units were marked so how was I to know which was which, plus there were no wires attached to the new power packs.

I decided to use the wires from the old power packs and struggled to make them fit due to shortened length now. Fitted them all and turned her on to realise that she was lighting up wrong, this meant that I had guessed wrong, I had no other choice but to guess as there was no distinguishing features on any of the power units.

So I called Ben to complain that there were no instructions as were supposed to and that there were no wires with the new power supplies and that I had now tried in vain to fix the unit, I was told to send it to an address which was their UK based repairs centre, I sent it straight away with next day delivery, that was last week Monday. By wednesday I had not heard from Giles the UK based technician according to Ben in the States so emailed him, only on Friday did I get a response saying that I had sent it to the wrong address, ( Remember this is the address I got from Ben) so Giles had to send it on to the actual technician.

Fast forward a few days where I was waiting for a time frame on the fixing of my unit and still nothing, till Wednesday this week where I sent pissy emails to both Giles and Ben complaining of the lack of communication and sticking to their warranty policy of less than a week for small things like power supply replacements.

Yesterday after firing another email asking for a "whatthehell" is going on here and where is my panel I got a email saying here is a tracking number, your unit will be with you tomorrow.

I've tracked it and also called parcelforce to verify the postage and found out it is being sent 3 days delivery. This means it will get back to me on Tuesday the 20th of March and I sent it in on the 5th of March.

I wanted to share my experience of this with others who are constantly trying to weigh up which is the best brand of LED panel to go for, here are my thoughts..........

1. PRO GROW panels do the job, I have had just as good crops in a 4x4 with a 600hps as with my 550 LED.........EVEN WITHOUT THE CREE DIODES THEY LIED SO MUCH ABOUT, GIVE ME A BREAK, THEY DIDNT KNOW?? BEN IS LYING!!

2. That part of your warranty where they say they will "credit card cross ship" to cover panels sent off for repair...in an email from Ben he stated very clearly that he was never going to do that for an overseas customer, think about that before buying UK guys!!

3. The repair was so all over the place that it took much longer than it should have, they are not a very professional set up.

Overall I am happy with the growing performance of my unit, with or without cree but as for repairs and warranties with PRO GROW....BUYER BEWARE AND BE AWARE THAT ALL IS NOT AS IT SEEMS...

I am still waiting to get my unit back, before this whole debacle I was going to replace another grow rooms HID for the PRO GROW panels but now they can kiss my ass.

This is my experience with them, it may not be yours but it is important that you see all sides of the coin.

what up newworld , long time no see sorry to hear about the mishaps of sending your light away / trying to fix it seems ben short comings dont stop with his lies about his diodes .... oh well. couldnt really pick up if your from the uk or not ... dont matter either way thought i would throw ya the link for the company im doing a grow for right now viparled.com they are based out of somerset and they pride themselves on their warranties check em out if ya get the chance some good people over there.

curly604 said:

what up newworld , long time no see sorry to hear about the mishaps of sending your light away / trying to fix it seems ben short comings dont stop with his lies about his diodes .... oh well. couldnt really pick up if your from the uk or not ... dont matter either way thought i would throw ya the link for the company im doing a grow for right now viparled.com they are based out of somerset and they pride themselves on their warranties check em out if ya get the chance some good people over there.

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Hi mate, yeah Uk based. I have been waiting to get inda gros 420's for a while now, I think they are better used with the LED's but I'll check out this viper lot.

Keep well.

right forgot to mention there in somerset and saw you posted something about that above

and actually i had a journal up and going but this data loss we just had screwed me gotta start again

curly604 said:

and actually i had a journal up and going but this data loss we just had screwed me gotta start again

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So is this link in your sig to the lights from viper?

it is now yes the lights i got from VIPAR

UPDATE: So for the record I still do not have the panel back, but I wanted to add more infromation to the warranty pile of hydroponicshut.com.

I got a scathing email from Ben telling me that I am lucky they actually stood by their warranty and fixed my panel to a workable manner considering I had "butchered" the wires from the old power supplies....

He even had the arrogance to tell me I should have informed him of this yet in the email he responds to has all of this full explained to him not 5cm below his screen!!!

I informed him that perhaps if he had sent the replacement power supplies that were clearly labelled including instructions like he PROMISED he would do then perhaps things would be different.

I would like to add that a power supply unit usually has wires going in and wires going out, it had receiving wires but no wires to connect to the diodes.

Bottom line is I was initially encouraged to do my own repairs but was only given half of what I needed to do the job, no clearly labelled power units, no instructions, no wires nothing and now they complain.

Overall my experience with hydroponics hut gets worse and worse.

Again take this as my experience and not reflective of what you may encounter just a revealling of both sides of the coin..

newworldicon said:

UPDATE: So for the record I still do not have the panel back, but I wanted to add more infromation to the warranty pile of hydroponicshut.com.

I got a scathing email from Ben telling me that I am lucky they actually stood by their warranty and fixed my panel to a workable manner considering I had "butchered" the wires from the old power supplies....

He even had the arrogance to tell me I should have informed him of this yet in the email he responds to has all of this full explained to him not 5cm below his screen!!!

I informed him that perhaps if he had sent the replacement power supplies that were clearly labelled including instructions like he PROMISED he would do then perhaps things would be different.

I would like to add that a power supply unit usually has wires going in and wires going out, it had receiving wires but no wires to connect to the diodes.

Bottom line is I was initially encouraged to do my own repairs but was only given half of what I needed to do the job, no clearly labelled power units, no instructions, no wires nothing and now they complain.

Overall my experience with hydroponics hut gets worse and worse.

Again take this as my experience and not reflective of what you may encounter just a revealling of both sides of the coin..

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Stop dealing with Ben's bullshit and ask for a refund.

JamesBong007 said:

Stop dealing with Ben's bullshit and ask for a refund.

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He refuses a refund and I am not going to bother to insist on it, the unit works, the warranty does not.

Thanks for posting this. I own a 180 from HHUT, purchased off eBay for a really low price one time when Ben was trying to move them fast. This was back when I still assumed they were CREE. I've had no problems with the panel and it works great. However I do plan to keep a very close eye on it with a meter for any drop off. At the end of the day I recommended no one give this company a dime. At this point even if the units are great, it shouldn't matter. Once again Ben has been showed to be a liar, and just as shady as the rest. Do not reward him for misleading people.

This story is another disappointing report for HH. :/

Oh well live and learn right? I guess until the led market gets more professional i would stick to cfls and hps.

there are some professional companies out there unfortuantly alot less than the ones that lie

This is too bad.

I'm responsible for bragging on my Pro-Grow 260 and I know a couple of people who then purchased the lights, so far so good though.

My light looks different from what they have pictured on their web site now. Maybe they have cheapened the product, I don't know, I do know I HATE having to mess with warranties, much less crappy warranties.

Wouldn't you know it, hours of research and I decide to go with a Pro-Grow 180. Just pulled the purchasing trigger less than 30 mins ago and saw this thread just now. *Crossing fingers*

HH is really going down the shitter. For some reason I still want to buy one of there panels. There cheap and people say they work, But its to bad they lie about the gear and to bad there customer service is trash. If anyone wants to sale they panels send me a PM. Willing to take it off your hands

Oh and curley, Your pretty hyped on your viper but its obvious its just an eshine light. Sorry dude

Well, I have to be honest. I have had the complete OPPOSITE experience with HH and Ben. I've ordered a PG180 and a PG550. Before I ordered anything, he answered many of my questions in a timely and polite manner. Since ordering, everything has shipped very quickly. I recently had a power supply go on my PG180, only the blue spectrum was powering up. I had it in constant use for about 6 months. I emailed him as soon as it happened and got an email back within about 4 hours. He offered two options - credit cross ship or I send it back for repairs. I told him I needed 3 days for the funds, he said that was fine. 3 days goes by and I let him know I am ordering before it happens. He confirms it within the hour and gets it out for shipping that afternoon along with my tracking number. It should arrive within 3-5 days.

Personally, I have had NO negative experiences. Both lights are performing very well, beyond my expectations. The PG550 is about to be put together with all my lights for a flower room of ~750W of LED. Blackstar 180, PG550 and the PG180. I did ask Ben about the LEDs being Cree etc... here is his reponse copy + pasted:

Hey XXXXX,

There are no legal issues we have with Cree as we were completely misled by our manufacturer for which we have all the evidence in the world to back up our position. It´s the only reason we have stayed open at this point as we have nothing to hide.

Please understand it is nearly impossible for us to proceed with litigation against this manufacturer due to the expense involved with international prosecution. It´s beyond frustrating for us as we built our reputation on providing results and providing quality in all terms of our business.

Nearly every post which disparages our company was placed there by competitors who are unwilling to sell our level of product as the margins we take are much, much smaller.

The chips for which we have been able to obtain proof of are Bridgelux and Epistar.

Thanks very much for the support of our company. We are only trying to advance this industry while not screwing our customers over on pricing unlike others in this industry.


Ben

Daemonn789 said:

The chips for which we have been able to obtain proof of are Bridgelux and Epistar.

Thanks very much for the support of our company. We are only trying to advance this industry while not screwing our customers over on pricing unlike others in this industry.

Ben

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This made me laugh, hard. Ben's a shithead. I haven't seen Epistar or Bridgelux chips in PG's. Wheres the proof? Trying to advance the industry....lol

It's hard taking you seriously too when your first post on RIU is a few paragraphs backing HH. Also considering the fact that HH filter their reviews on their website. Every review posted is only a review with nothing but positive things to say about HH. They're scared of posting some real feedback about their products. I think the whole companies just another joke reseller/redistributor.

knnthc93 said:

Oh and curley, Your pretty hyped on your viper but its obvious its just an eshine light. Sorry dude

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srry DUDE but the only thing im hyped on is you being wrong, these are not eshine lights might look similar but welcome to the led industry brosif , and this coming from a guy that has read shit about HH but still wants to buy their panel ..... hahahahah aight bud have fun with that.