We not only do ministry in the form of Whole Bible Christianity with a website, books, articles and videos, we also have an aquaponics greenhouse. If you don’t know, aquaponics is a combination of aquaculture (raising water critters) and hydroponics (growing without soil). The water critters we raise are a type of fish called tilapia, which probably are similar to the fish caught by Peter, James and John.
One of the suppliers we’ve used and decided not to use anymore is the Greenhouse Megastore. The reason is we had poor warranty support for some shade cloth we bought from them about four years ago. Shade cloth goes over the top of a greenhouse to keep some of the sun out and control heat better. According to the website, the cloth has an eight year warranty. This is a manufacturer’s warranty, a fact which they didn’t mention when we made the purchase. Their own warranty is a year, which you don’t see unless you go all the way down to the bottom and find the link.
Well, four of the cloths are showing damage from the sun, and we contacted Greenhouse Megastore about it. First, they didn’t get the email, which we found out after waiting patiently for a few weeks. Then, we sent the order numbers, dates and pictures they requested and still had to email again after waiting patiently for weeks. The support person was gracious enough to offer a 50% refund on two of the cloths, because to our surprise they wanted to pro-rate the warranty, which wasn’t spelled out anywhere we could see. They also said if we wanted to get any better deal we’d have to send samples in to Green Tek, the manufacturer, to be tested. As if the fabric needed to be tested to see it was dissolving because of sunlight.
All this was a typical run-around you only expect from shady companies not intending to stand behind what they sell. I decided to search around the web for pricing and life-expectancy, and to my surprise I found that shade cloth of the type we thought we purchased should last at least 7 to 10 years, with an upper end of 15 or more years. I also found that the Greenhouse Megastore pricing was almost double what others were asking. So I wanted to warn anyone who was thinking of buying from the Greenhouse Megastore or Green Tek to be wary and look around more. In our experience these companies are selling inferior products (at least the shade cloth) for very high prices with no warranty coverage.
Shalom
Bruce