Royal exclusiv will not warranty their products in Canada
 

After 2 months of headache with these guys I think everyone should know this before buying their expensive products.

Proline aquatics no longer deals with royal exclusiv.

As a result there is no warranty support. It's also not possible to get any parts locally in Canada.

I contacted royal exclusiv directly to get an impeller for a red dragon pump. The impeller is 188 euros and then they quoted me 100 euros for shipping to Canada.

This is by far the worst service I've ever encountered in the reef hobby. Especially for such a "premium" product.

Just thought people should know before paying thousand plus dollars on a bubble king skimmer

Marko D ya lots of people are screwed WRt the Vertex skimmers unfortunately did you contact Jeremy on RC at premium aquatics I just posted a thread on Grizz WRT a skimmer. PM me what you are looking for and I can pull some magic for ya. ok

its not the BK that has the problem its Vertex wont warranty their pumps now, cause they don't have anything to back it up with.

I contacted premium aquatics and they told me they can only order a pallet at a time so my impeller would cost 400 to ship

shoot me your number I will call you ok pm me

Vertex and royal exclusive are different companies no?

Proline and Royal exclusive were merged together to make the great vertex body and Red Dragon pumps

I would want to say until I hear a answer from Jeremy that you would be **** out of luck.:cry: but that is my opinion If they are not going to warrant the pumps. due to a mis hap in the company. not to worry if for some reason that your pumps goes belly up and you can't get a replacement.

you can always use a Bubble Blaster pump as a back up. they are pretty much the same pump in certain area's now im now saying they are exactly the same but you can hook them up as u would with the RD pump.


folks have been doing this on RC for a while now.

Are you saying that proline is no longer supporting vertex? Or just the skimmers with Rd pumps are not supported?

Little confused here

I think someone will eventually pick up the BK distribution chain in Canada. Proline dropping them really sucks as they were really good for warranty and support but I assume this a temporary set back. From what I understand they've dropped other products in the past due to sole distribution conflicts so this may be a similar situation meaning something is in the works.

It should be known that RE and Vertex are NOT the same company.

nor are vertex and proline. vertex is their own seperate entity... they used re pumps. proline distributed both vertex and re.

Bingo

was his name o

But bubble king are a royal exclusiv product, right?

I like my bk skimmer (4years old) but I have had to replace a few parts along the way so i hope this is something temporary

Yes.
I have an email that I sent in earlier today to a fellow I know in RE. As soon as I hear something I'll share what I know.

So I've paid premium priced skimmer and my warranty is useless now? Well I feel robbed here. :sad:

I wouldn't say that. Lets not jump to any conclusions before we know some facts.

It was more like a question...but I hope you have good news for BK owners. :mrgreen:

you should not make statements such as this. I really don't think you have any inside info about what has happen with the two companies.

from my understanding is proline has a invested interest in vertex but that does not mean they own the company! there for vertex is not going anywhere, so warranty of any kind in the vertex line up should not a problem.


from my understand RE aka bubble king will be going the a direct to customer model and there for no distribution is needed, that is just what i have heard but no real info on this either. i myself think if this happens most stores will be dropping this line as the same thing happen when euro-reef did this.

As for warranty on bubble king i would hope a company like RE would not have an issue fixing or replacing product, i just can't see why they would not do this! i know i just had a pump replace by them within two months for a customer so i am not sure what the story is with your unit but i would go back to the store you bought this from and have them fight it out for you.


best of luck this this Dave

Torsten emailed me and told me to contact either Aquarium Specialty or Premium Aquatics for all my BK needs.

He said "We had cancel the relationship with ProLine. We don´t have an exclusive distributor in future anymore.". So I assume I will be able to buy my replacement parts from either of those stores.

Just my assumption though.

Well Dave maybe you should do some reading like go on Reef Central before stating what you just said and its all over Reef central ,but you as a vendor and your knowledge knew that right:lol:.

so before telling me that I should not make statements go on RC and look under Premium aquatics

will it is true that i haven't been on reef central for quiet a while but what i know is not some hear say from a public forum, now i also can't say for sure if it was bs blown up my a!! or not:redface: time will tell

what i do know it the vertex alpha skimmer design was bought from RE and was produce under the vertex brand and the new omega skimmer has more similarities with the new coralvue skimmer than any bubble king that i have seen. I also have heard the the manufacturing of the vertex skimmers have been moved to a new plant and will be up and running soon.


and again i will say again, proline has an invested interest in vertex, inventory and parts are still available for order, so i will ask again why would anyone buying vertex product would be screwed?


like i said before, i am not 100% sure if RE is going direct to customer but it is not hard to figure out what RE intent is, just go to their web site and look for the parts store.

FYI for everyone. I have an actual RE skimmer, a BK mini180. And my pump recently died. Well as you all know, no one in n. America can help so I email RE directly. Couple emails later, they are going to send me a new motor block + impeller. Which is awesome cuz it's only the motor block that's dead.

So I think warranty service for BK products are still great.

Where ppl are getting screw is a Vertex product that has the RD pumps. Now Vertex have no access to RD pump/parts for warranty replacement.

:suspicious:

Okay, let's clear some things up:

1. RE is moving to a direct sales model. Some of you may recall EuroReef did this a while back. It wrecked their business model. Why did they do it? Who knows, but it was BS.

Unfortunately, there is nothing Proline, nor Vertex for that matter, can do about this. When a small company (RE) decides they want to change the direction of their business, there is no board or committee to recommend against toxic actions. It's sad and it f**ks a lot of us, but it's happening.

2. Vertex has moved manufacture of the entire Alpha line to their own factories in Germany. There will be a slight lull as they retool everything, but all molds and designs are owned by Vertex and were previously commissioned to RE for assembly.

3. The pumps will be available once retooling is done. RE pumps are not magical. They're an Askoll motorblock with some well thought out custom components, components that should be readily/easily engineered by a competent firm. I may be going out on a limb here, but I feel (given my affinity) that Vertex is a competent firm.

4. The rest of what you get on the forums is hearsay.

Edit: Dave is right - Parts for Alpha skimmers are still readily available. In the future, they will no longer bear the Red Dragon moniker. That is all.

As an added bonus, removing the commissioned manufacturer will open a few doors for the sake of making improvements and/or price reductions, especially on parts.

Perhaps this is a really naive question, but I know nothing about retail or supply chains: Why is a direct to customer model considered bad? Why would that make stores drop a line of products?

Because customers/stores don't want to go through the nightmare of international shipping and customs. A distributor is there in this sort of scenario to:

A. Make bulk purchases, thereby reducing/mitigating these overhead expenses.

B. Localize the product.

C. Increase the visibility of the product.

Let's get something straight, RE does not have the manpower, knowledge or finesse to turn BK into an international brand. That is something that others did through hard work, directed market planning and salesmanship.

ooooooh, yah when you put it that way I'd probably stop carrying the product as well (if I had a store). Wouldn't that also mean that any individuals who wanted to buy product 'direct' (as in, online) would also have to pay crazy international shipping fees?

Bingo!

This is not true, at no point in time did I tell you that the impeller would be $400 to ship and that we can only order in pallet quantity. I was trying to help you with warranty, however I needed to get the impeller assembly back from you to do so. You told me that Proline held onto the impeller and then threw it away, so there is no way for me to get it back.

Moving forward, I offered to get the impeller for you at our cost since we couldn't do warranty from Proline throwing your impeller in the trash. Here is the copy of the email that I sent to you....


On 2013-06-27, at 9:27 AM, Jeremy Brower <jeremy@premiumaquatics.com> wrote:

I apologize, I'm just trying to help out here and this is the first I'm in the loop on it. Replacement cost of the impeller would be $170 (this is $35 below our retail on it). Shipping via USPS would be the cheapest to you, and probably around $15 - $20. If you let me know immediately I can probably still get this added to our parts order that is leaving Germany either tomorrow or Monday, and will be here in about 10 days.

Thanks,
Jeremy Brower
PremiumAquatics.com
6050 E Hanna Ave #4
Indianapolis, IN 46203
317-895-9005
317-895-9395 fax

Again, I apologize we couldn't help anymore with warranty, but without the item in question for warranty there really is nothing we can do, I'm sorry.

Furthermore, we actually have motorblocks and impellers in stock currently from Royal-Exclusiv that they gave us for warranty purposes, free of charge to us. Anyone who has a warranty issue with an original invoice from purchase is more than welcome to contact me for help with this.

I really don't think it's really anyone elses business to know what happened with the relationship between Royal-Exclusiv and Proline, or Royal-Exclusiv and Vertex. That's between those companies only, and their business, and the info should not be privy to anyone outside of those entities as long as customer are being supported with warranty on all product lines, which they still are.

Thanks, Jeremy, for clear up the Situation...

best regards to Canada... Klaus Jansen

Wait so let me get this straight;

MarkoD lied about pricing, service, time span and then got onto the soap box to troll you??!

This guys my favorite, please don't ban him again Netflix is far to pricey.

This happened before I directly contacted you. I got a reply from customerservice@premiumaquatics.com that said:

"We would not be able to have it shipped direct to you. we would have to have it shipped to us 1st the estimated shipping cost would be around $400. We suggest that you contact Royal Exclusiv website. They may be able to ship it direct and help save you on the cost.

Thanks:)"

Wait... You followed their advice... got a better price... and still tried to drag their name through the mud?

I spoke with Jeremy directly after this thread was made. And he did indeed try and help me.

I also tried to deal directly with RE. Maybe they can explain why it costs 100 euros to ship an impeller and why they only accept wire transfer (not PayPal or any credit card)

"Hello Marko,

the shipping cost will not be cheap. Place your order, then we could calculate the shipping cost.
Will be round about 100€.

Sorry we only accept payment in advance via wire-transfer.
Best

Mit freundlichen Grüßen"

Ok, my apologies then. I will ask around here and find out who you received this info from, but it certainly is not true. Again, sorry the misinformation that you received from us.