What a week this was.
Where do I start?
About ten days ago, our pool pump quit working after a heavy rainstorm. I say heavy, but the accumulation was less than an inch. It’s just that we got it all in an hour or so. We also got a ton of lightning and several power glitches during the storm.
In the morning, our pump wasn’t working; the GFCI had tripped.
That wasn’t unusual. We’d seen it happen a few times in the last year. It didn’t reset properly either, but that also wasn’t unusual. We left it unplugged and waited for it to dry out.
After a few days, it still wasn’t working.
We tried plugging the pump into a different circuit, in case there was a bigger problem. It still didn’t work. Then we tried plugging an older pump with a GFCI plug into the pool circuit. It worked just fine.
Well, crap.
That’s what warranties are for, though, right?
Monday night, Diana jumped online, hit the Intex website, filled out the customer service form, and we waited.
Tuesday morning, I got 2 emails from Intex. One was “an email confirmation to acknowledge you that we have received your inquiry.” Cool.
Less than ten minutes later, another one arrived, saying they needed a photo of the pump and proof of purchase to proceed.
I got another email the next morning saying, “We’re following up on our previous email regarding your request. We would like to confirm whether you still need assistance with your warranty claim or replacement.”
I thought it was just a little pushy, since this one arrived less than 12 hours after the last one, but whatever. I sent the photo and a PDF of our Amazon order.
A few hours later, they’d approved the claim. Cool deal.
Then it got weird.
You Want What?
The claim approval looked…odd.
“To proceed with the replacement, a refundable deposit of $399.99 is required. This represents the full replacement value and serves as a temporary warehouse fulfillment authorization. It is not a warranty fee or replacement charge.
The full $399.99 will be refunded after the replacement has been successfully delivered, in accordance with the applicable refund process.”
Say what?
You want a deposit for the new pump? That didn’t really make sense. It sounded like they were going to want me to return the old pump and wanted the deposit until that happened. It’s not common, but I’ve heard of places doing that. Call it a caution flag.
I told them to go ahead but asked why they needed a deposit and how long it would be held.
“Don’t worry,” they said. The deposit would be refunded automatically 1-2 business days after delivery of the replacement part.
Then it got really weird.
They wanted me to use Remitly to make the deposit.
Not a credit card form on the Intex website. They wanted me to use a third-party transfer service.
Now, Remitly is a legitimate service. They’ve been around for fifteen years. They’re not unlike Moneygram, Western Union, or even PayPal.
But Intex is a huge company. They sell stuff through dealers, but they also sell directly from their website. They can process credit cards just fine themselves.
And there’s absolutely no reason to ask me to send money to someone in the Philippines using a Gcash ID.
Red flag. Huge red flag.
Then I took a closer look at the email address. The display name indeed said “Intex Corp.” But when I clicked the address, it showed up as “intexcorp.shop@gmail.com.”
Yeah, no.
Intex Recreation Corp is a multinational company with multiple domains. They have no reason at all to use a Gmail address. And non-corporate email addresses are one of the biggest indicators of fraudulent activity.
Reddit to the rescue. I jumped over to /r/AboveGroundPools to verify my suspicions—I’d already decided we weren’t going forward with sending any money—and I was right. Some had started thread the day before, titled, “Scammers have compromised the Intex warranty/ticketing system. DO NOT pay a “refundable deposit”!”
Sigh. We’d lost two days to this scam, though fortunately no money. But what to do about the pool?
Temporary Fix
About midway through last season, we set up a 10-foot easy-set type pool, the kind with the inflatable ring. It came with a 300 GPH pump, which was fine for that pool. We aren’t using the pool this year, so the pump is just gathering dust in the garage.
Could we make it work in place of the 2,650 GPH pump on our system? It wouldn’t be ideal, but at least it would circulate the water. We could add chlorine as needed; we just needed to move the water. After just five or so days, we were already seeing signs of algae growth. That’s a bad thing.
We looked at the spare hoses we had and cobbled a couple of connections together. The Intex pool had two outflows to the pump and one inflow to the pool. We used one of those outflows to go to the little pump and used the other for inflow back to the pool.
Back in business. Sort of. At 300 gallons per hour, that little pump would turn the pool over in…51 hours. 2 days, 3 hours, and some change.
In contrast, the pump that came with the pool was rated at 2,650 GPH, which could turn the pool over in just under six hours, all while converting the salt in the pool water into chlorine.
Meanwhile, Back at Intex
I called them this time, since the Reddit thread said the hackers were diverting all traffic from the contact form. The first thing I said to the CSR was that the web form was compromised. It took me about five minutes to explain what I meant. He put me on hold for a few minutes, then came back and we got down to the business of my warranty claim.
The only thing they asked for that the hackers didn’t was proof of delivery, and that was a problem. The pool arrived in two boxes weighing almost 650 pounds. The seller had to use a third-part carrier, and Amazon didn’t have that information.
But the seller still had the carrier info along with a tracking number.
Off I trotted to R+L’s website. Turns out you can’t use a tracking number after delivery (or maybe after over a year). So I called, explained things to the CSR, and a few minutes later, she’d emailed me PDFs of both the long and short bills. Sweet!
Called Intex again to let them know I had proof of delivery. They needed my email to send me an upload link. I did cringe just a little bit, but he told me the email address it’d be coming from, so that made me feel a little better. Then he read me a script about how Intex would never ask for a deposit and to never send money for a warranty claim. I smiled at that, feeling good about them alerting people.
Then I waited for the email. And waited. And waited. Left for an hour to run an errand. Still no email. Called them back to verify the email. Turns out he’d entered boemueller instead of bobmueller.
Sigh. It’s never easy.
Intex told me it’d take up to ten business days to get the new pump to us.
Another Temporary Fix
We weren’t thrilled with the idea of the little pump. It was not even really letting us keep our heads above water, as it were.
I looked locally, but none of the pool supply stores really have anything to do with above-ground pools below a certain price point, like Intex, Bestway, and Coleman. Craigslist didn’t have anything close, nor did eBay. But FB Marketplace showed me an Intex 2500 GPH pump with four cartridge filters for just $60, just about an hour away. Diana and I looked at each other and nodded. I traded messages with the seller and took off to Grove. We’ll get it set up Sunday and go from there.
Elseread
I did have a few minutes here and there to read a few things online.
The Texas Tribune reported that Texas Governor Abbott has blocked state agencies from spending money on Flock cameras. Apparently the Motor Vehicle Crime Prevention Authority has taken a fee authorized by the legislature to combat catalytic converter theft and used it to help fund Flock cameras statewide.
Reason reports that Surveillance Camera Saboteurs Are Getting Government Officials’ Attention, noting that a Florida department is putting up decoy cameras.
Tempe, Arizona has cancelled its contract with Flock. I like the comments the mayor and city council made.
Thanks for reading. Feel free to share a thought in the comments. Sign up for my infrequent newsletter here. Find some of my other writing at The Good Men Project, too. Subscribe to the blog via the link in the right sidebar or follow it on Mastodon. You can also add my RSS feed to your favorite reader.
Share your thoughts!