Chlorine/Fluoride In Water

Chlorine effectively destroys bacteria and algae and fluoride is good for your teeth, but while chlorine alone is relatively harmless, it reacts with minerals and chemicals in your water to create cancer causing agents. And ingesting fluoride is simply ridiculous. Why would anyone want to drink a poison? Why are these chemicals added to our water anyway?

Well, the chlorine is there for good reason and because it’s easy to remove just before you ingest it, chlorine for killing bacteria and fungus is a good idea. But I cannot come up with a good reason for fluoride in our water at all. Fortunately, for whatever reasons it’s added to your water, both can be removed with reverse osmosis. Actually, chlorine can be neutralize with a simple carbon filter, but fluoride requires at least reverse osmosis.

You can test for chlorine levels in your water with a simple water test kit. You can neutralize the chlorine completely with a whole-house carbon filtration system available here.

Understanding

Okay, I think I understand now. I’ve been exposed to the type of water treatment equipment we’ve been selling for over five years now and I’ve known nothing else until recently. Now I think I understand why people are haggling over a few bucks here and there and the reasons are two fold.

First, there is a great deal of hype out on the Internet in general. Go look at eBay for one. Most of the sellers there with eBay Stores have spent a great deal of time and effort writing copy to use over and over and over again to sell their products. When I look at the two water treatment equipment people there, I notice that their descriptions or copy for different items is for the most part the same for each product they sell. They also hype up the description as well. Because the copy reads like a used car salesman running an auction, I can see where customers would get the impression that this equipment can be haggled over just like a used car.

Secondly, there is the junk out there for comparison. Now, I can’t and won’t mention any brand names, but I was working on a system for a friend of mine this weekend. The equipment was purchased before I got into the business so it was of a brand that Water Value will never carry. Anyway, it needed some cleaning and I thought that would take care of the problem but I was wrong. Once we tried to initiate a regeneration cycle, the problem was obvious. The control valve was not only broken but non-repairable. What I mean by non-repairable is that it would cost more to buy and replace the parts than it would to throw it away and get a new one. And on top of all that, the replacement parts were unavailable. The company this softener was manufactured by would not sell them to me because I was not trained on their product. Of that, I’m proud. This control valve was the sorriest excuse for an automatic valve I’ve ever imagined. Like I said, I will not mention the company but they are huge.

My point is, the equipment we train on, sell and support is obviously designed to last much longer than the controller I was exposed to this weekend. Check out our weekly article at Water Weekly.

Price Match

I had a good one today. A customer asked if we “price match” our competition. Quite frankly, I didn’t think we had but 3 or 4 good competitors. Come to find out the competitor was one of the good ones. I checked out his pricing for the same system we were selling and he was indeed $50 less. First of all I had to ask myself, does anyone really believe that we mark these things up $50?! I mean, look at the prices.

So I had to investigate. I had to use my anonymous email account to contact them which I’ve done in the past with satisfying results but still, things change. Anyway, it turns out there is no brine grid with this system or no safety overflow assembly. It was also lacking a few other things. I added them up and they nearly came to $50 so I guess I can’t match that price. The decision was made years ago that we were not going to short our customers the extras that add value to the product.

A New Web Site

We’re working on a new web site right now. I’d post the URL but there’s really nothing there just yet. This one will also be a water treatment equipment site but it will focus more on single products and the customer’s relation to them than the current one. It will feature less talk and more “show”. In other words, less words. It will be mostly pictures and even video which demonstrates the product rather than describe it. The theory is that if someone types “reverse osmosis filter” into a search box, they are looking for a “reverse osmosis filter” not a sales pitch.

There’s a short article on a customer’s experience with a water quality problem he had. Some of his equipment was purchased from us but he still had rust coming out of his bathroom faucets while the rest of the house was fine. Instead of blaming the equipment, he thought it through and came up with a clever solution. Read about it on Water Value’s home blog. Very refreshing.

Phone Idea

I had an idea today. We have 4 dedicated phone lines here with at least 2 operators. There are times when people can’t get through yet they do not want to leave a message. I have been reading about these fax services that you pay a monthly fee to and they accept your faxes and send them to you in email format. If I could free up the fax line, we could have up to 4 operators answering phones all at the same time. That would almost guarantee getting through the first time.

Now, can anyone recommend a reliable email fax service? I don’t want e-fax because I know someone that had them and had a hard time terminating the service. Read more about this at our home blog.