istill?

[bobs]

I was thinking about purchasing an Istill 250 but I have talked to some owners and they express disappointment in making their purchases. It seems its impossible to get the company to make good on their warranty. the equipment can have defective parts when they arrived and the company has not made good on replacements. can anyone else anyone else tell me if they also have experienced this if so, i gues i will have to look else where for a still.

Bob siefert

[Mash]

Go no further than Artisan Still Design, I own two.

[Roger]

I would think this is a perfect example of a scenario where a complaint is alleged against a regular poster, and it could well be addressed in a manner that would allow for a fair view of the actual events.

IStill - what's the scoop ?

[MG Thermal Consulting]

I recollect he has said he has around 400 stills in the US, is that right?

I can hardly believe he doesn't have a little more presence here to deal with such issues.

Bobs, hope you are able to straighten things out and let us know.

[Rmorenc]

He has said it was 450+ internationally. IStill is located in Europe and I think until recently Europe-Middle East-Asia has been his market. If you go to his website and blog they talk about two things around this post. 1) they just set up a help desk line and procedures around when/how to get parts or more SPP and 2) there have been cases where people don't know what they're doing and damage the equipment, but never has that happened when someone took 4 hours of his training. I thought the blog said that might now come with the i250s going forward to avoid this. Prior to this you had to reach Odin and workout what went wrong and a part replacement.

I think if you look at the combination of iStill pricing and automation then it makes sense to me that those product lend themselves to more .....ah.... entry level distillers (not exclusively, but disproportionately). I mean, his slogan is Distilling Made Easy (not full proof). So when someone burns up a heating element because they ran it without anything in the tank, it makes sense that it can void the warrantee. Even still, I know Odin to be reasonable and fair.

I think you should call Odin and see for yourself what's what. Maybe think through the costs of one, two or three of his products and some worse case scenario parts and compare that to the other offerings out there in terms of size, automation and training on the equipment. We'd love to hear more feedback I'm sure.

[MG Thermal Consulting]

If you're in an "industrial" market, selling equipment that is not as simple as a refrigerator, you come across this quite often.

Customers make assumptions on how to run equipment and so do manufacturers (you try to minimize this!!!!) and I have had my share of customers who were part of a large company that weren't educated enough when they installed their equipment.

What I'm getting at is that it should be easy for both parties to contact each other and cut off any issues at the bud.

Unfortunately, in this day and age with multinational distribution, there is not only difficulties with time differences but also societal differences.

I hope both parties resolve their differences, but there are frustrations somewhere involved that need educating, no?

[bobs]

It's my understanding from some owners he will not or cannot supply parts for his stills when he knows the parts are defective his warranty is worthless at this point personally he has a trust issues with those who already bought his still why would I want to go forward with buying something from him. Also I just looked at his face book page and he is promoting a new still now with gas burners I always was told never use a direct flame in a still as it ups the chance of an explosion

Bob siefert

[MG Thermal Consulting]

Bob,

If a manufacturer does not have a US sales office or distribution for parts, this comes up and should be a question before buying.

That being said, did you get other users names here in the US before purchasing? Maybe they can help if there are generic parts?

Mike

[Rmorenc]

Bob,

I'm actually a little confused. It sounds like you're not a customer, but are looking to gripe about a vendor ... who you're not a customer of. I think it's one thing to come on the board and solicit feedback, but to represent some nefarious voices of doubt and concern seems bad form.

I thought we were done with negative reviews on the board (which most disagreed with--including me)?? This isn't even a first hand complaint.

I think if you had this much unwavering doubt over this vendor that you should move on to another choice. I don't know why you have such hard feelings with a business you don't do business with.

Good luck.

[Edwin]

We want all of our clients to be happy about the stills they purchased at iStill. If anyone has a problem (or feels they have a problem), please send an email to "support@istillmail.com" so we can help you out.

Contrary to what is stated above, we do ship parts. That does not happen often, because we test each and every rig prior to packaging and shipping. But when something is broken (we have had some parts being damaged by transport), we ship new parts as soon as we can. We have even shipped new parts to people dry cooking their iStills, even though dry cooking is explicitely excluded from warantee. We even shipped new parts to people connecting iStills to damaging high voltages. Even though induction and dry cooking are excluded from warantee, so far we have been shipping new parts at our expense.

That's because we don't just want you to buy an iStill, we want you to have an iStill that works. Easy & Simple.

We have a support department that can be reached via email (support@istillmail.com) if there are any questions. And if the questions are very technical, we have a tech team that's three people strong and that's available for Skype calls.

If someone thinks he heared something from someone else about something not being okay, sorry, I cannot help there. I don't manage the grapevine. But in case of any real problem from a real client: mail us.

On iStill not being present in the USA ... yes, that is/was a problem. Why? Because of the radically different design approach iStill takes. We find - time and again - that people investing a day and a few bucks to travel over to the iStill Center in Europe, get a real head start.

In one day at our iStill Center a steep learning curve is achieved, allowing the buyer (and even the already experienced Master Distiller) to maximize the full potential of our rigs. And since the 10 K iStill 250 blows anything traditional under 200 K out of the water, that small investment is worth it. "Mandatory", I might add. Not wanting to be offensive, but most distilleries run what's basically 19th century technology. If you want to jump to 21st century technology, the training will provide you with the metaphorical ladder ...

Now, because we are dedicated to the North American market, we will bring the iStill experience closer to you. We will open the first iStill Showroom at the US East Coast in 2014. In fact, I am flying over in just 3 days to finalize our plans.

At the iStill Showroom, you can see our products and you can run our products. You can follow a training day. You can talk to the Master Distiller about how it is to run our equipment. You can make a very well informed decision about whether iStill is right for you or not, and you don't have to fly over to Europe any more.

We will open our second iStill Showroom on the US West Coast in 2015, by the way. A third iStill Showroom in the Mid West may follow. Not sure yet, though. And if so, not before the start of 2016.

I will refrain from further posting in this thread. If someone wants to get to know our products, please email us at "sales@istillmail.com" or fly over. Or wait a bit and fly to the East Coast. If anyone has a complaint or wants to order spare parts or claim warantee: we are here to help you out. "support@istillmail.com" is the emailaddress you need. If people want to continue a "I heared it through the grapevine" discussion on this forum, sorry, count me out. My team and I have work to do.

How come? Because we get in many, many orders. Most of which are follow-on orders, actually. People ordering a second iStill 250. Or a VISION for in their tasting hall, next to the iStill 250's they already have in their distilling hall. Or people buying our iStripper, because they are very happy with their iStill 250 and feel the iStripper allows them to step up production times 3 or 4.

I hope this means we actually do a few things quite right.

Edwin out.