In a country like ours, on one side we have people struggling to get drinking water and on the other side we have Kent RO Filter systems.
Here is the story...
During our initial transition(moved from US) we were ordering bottled water. It was smooth, call the store near our apartment and it would be there in half an hour. It was 40 RS for each refill. When we had guests, we were ordering one every day. Only pain with this approach was the bottle delivered did not have tap, so we had to empty it into another one with tap. It took two people to do this work.
That is when we thought of using a system like Kent. Sent an SMS for demo, only the corporate office gave a call. After that there was no call from local office. So I called the local office directly, the sales rep was prompt enough to show up for demo at the time specified.
I was expecting a big filter system that he would demo with. He just had a brochure, one electrode kit and TDS meter. I think google can answer better about TDS than me. So I will skip this explanation. During the demo, he showed us how high the TDS is in Cauvery and Bore water. He mentioned that TDS in Bottled water is around 80 and it should be less than 50. After checking, we found out that it was 27. Any way, I was not trying to compare that with Bottled water.
Cauvery was around 180 and Bore was 160. Then he showed us the impurities in both of these. After seeing that, we decided to go for this system and what a mistake that was.
Though I told the rep that I will order it a week later, he was insisting on giving some advance and booking it. He even mentioned that it might take time to get if we order it later. I said "it was not a problem we can wait".
I called up the rep the following week and his answer was "I will be there in another hour sir". This is the same person who told it will take a while if we order later. Any way, he got the system and did the installation. Very clean installation. Very good planning on what goes where. I was impressed. Then after installation I saw 2 pipes, one that passes the water to the filtering section and another that removes the inpure water. This came as a surprise. We were about to ask him what will we do with that water. He left one end into the sink and connected the other to the system. I said to my wife "what a waste of water". Rep tells me that we can use this water for washing, plants and cleaning. So, now we have another job of filling the water and storing for other purpose. I asked how much water can be expected like this and he says "For every glass of pure water, there will be 2 glasses of impure water". My next question to him was "How did the government allow these to be sold here?". He just smiled. Like every thing else this is one more thing.
We then measured and comparison results were 1:3. For each glass of pure water, there are 3 glass of impure water. Now we had to decide what all we want to clean with so much of water. We still haven’t figured out the complete plan. Ohh the maintenance part of it, we have to empty the tank(8 litre) every 2 weeks. It is a bit tough job to empty it. Over that without any usage it continuosly drips. When we called, they say nothing much can be done about that.
Customer service is as expected, not much after sales support. Takes few calls and some yelling to get the rep here.
Please ask for full demo. Not a brochure or electrode demo.
If you ask me, I wouldn’t recommend this to any one. Manage with the bottled water and filters that don’t waste so much of water.