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Report: #188478

Complaint Review: Aquila Corporation - Albert Lea Minnesota

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  • Aquila Corporation 2610 Y. H. Hanson Avenue Albert Lea, Minnesota U.S.A.

Aquila Corporation, Airpulse PK, Airpulse Cushions ripoff false claims fraud Albert Lea Minnesota

*REBUTTAL Owner of company: Unsubstantiated

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This company claims to make a wheelchair cushion designed to heal level 4 pressure skin ulcers. They claim that it relieves pressure to almost zero percent and at the same time stimulates circulation to the area.

Any disabled person who is suffering with a serious skin ulcer is usually in a desperate state and desperately looking for an alternative to flap surgery. Especially if flap surgery is out of the question all together.

We read all kinds of reviews prior to ordering. We now feel that those people writing the reviews were probably all relatives and/or friends of relatives. Their web site has also changed a couple of times since we ordered the product.

When we called the company to inquire they were as nice as pie and seemed to be your absolute best friend with good intentions to get you all healed up. So we ordered the Airpulse PK cushion and we got a defective product. The cushion would not fill up with air. The pump was pushing air through the cushion but the air was swishing out of the cushion at the same time. We have been around wheelchairs and all kinds of medical equipment for 30 years and therefore know a few things about how such things should operate. This cushion was not holding air!

We called them back and they basically told us that we were crazy and they have never had such a complaint before. They told us to ship it back and they would cover the cost and send us a new cushion. They provided us with a bogus account number and we ended up paying hundreds of dollars in the end when we started to receive courier bills in the mail from UPS.

Instead of checking the cushion over they sent us the same cushion with a different pump! Well the cushion still did not work because the problem was with the cushion not the pump as we had tried to tell them in the first place. Off the cushion goes again by courier back to them. Finally we received a cushion that would hold air. Now that we finally had one filling with air it did not seem to be as effective as their advertising said it would be.

Again we call them and they tell us to just use the settings the way they told us to and sit on the cushion. They assured us that we would have the wound healed in record time. So my paralyzed husband sat on the cushion faithfully for two days. During which we were trying to figure out how this cushion was supposed to do the things they claim.

It did not look the same as the one pictured on their web site. It had fewer air cells and these air cells looked much larger than the ones on the web site. It did not seem to be inflating and deflating intermittently in a checkerboard pattern relieving the pressure as they claimed. It would deflate in large areas causing those spots to bottom out and therefore a great deal of pressure in those areas! It would cause a significant rocking motion due to one side being inflated and the other deflated. This not only caused his wound to deteriorate quickly but also caused terrible back pain from the severe up and down motion on his hips. They however had us convinced that we were mistaken in our observations and that it was working perfectly. Perhaps his paralysis is preventing him from feeling exactly how wonderful it is working.

After two days there was such severe damage to the original level 4 wound that my husband ended up in the hospital clinging to life! We were actually preparing for a funeral when the doctors finally found an intravenous medication that was working somewhat but not perfectly. They sent him home and yet still unsure if his body would recover.

When he finally recovered and we got over the trauma of the event, we contacted Aquila. We told them what had happened and told them that we were sending the cushion back to them. They coldly told us that we did not send it back soon enough and they refused to accept the package.

In the end we spent thousands of dollars and wound up with hundreds of dollars of shipping which they were supposed to cover due to their incompetence

If you have their product and need to ship it back due to a defect make sure that you ask the courier company if the account number that they provided you with is a valid account. The courier company should be able to confirm that the number is valid and is assigned to this company.

The person answering the telephone at this company has the same last name as the person who owns the company. She was sugary on the phone and as soon as they had our money the owner of the company treated us like criminals. He was rude condescending and provided us with a phony tax# and a phony UPS acct #.

Peace
private
Canada

This report was posted on Ripoff Report on 04/25/2006 10:07 AM and is a permanent record located here: https://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/aquila-corporation/albert-lea-minnesota-56007/aquila-corporation-airpulse-pk-airpulse-cushions-ripoff-false-claims-fraud-albert-lea-mi-188478. The posting time indicated is Arizona local time. Arizona does not observe daylight savings so the post time may be Mountain or Pacific depending on the time of year. Ripoff Report has an exclusive license to this report. It may not be copied without the written permission of Ripoff Report. READ: Foreign websites steal our content

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REBUTTALS & REPLIES:
0Author
0Consumer
1Employee/Owner

#1 REBUTTAL Owner of company

Unsubstantiated

AUTHOR: Steve - (U.S.A.)

POSTED: Sunday, June 03, 2007

There are many issues brought up in this report that force me to question the validity of the report.

First, I question the validity of report because the complaintant uses what appears to be a false name. The name at the end of the report is Peace. No full name or real name, just Peace. I have checked our records and we have no customer named peace. There is no city or state listed either.

The next issue I want to address is where the person says that they believe our reviews were written by friends and relatives. This is not true. We do have a fair number of customer testimonials on our website and all were written by customers, not friends or relatives. We go a step further though realizing that consumers may question some testimonials we have published clinical reports written by surgeons, nurses, physical therapists and wound care nurses. All of these clinical reports have the name of the facility and the name of the medical professional that wrote them. This clinical evidence further substantiates our credibility.

The complaintant seems to have a problem with the fact that we update our website regularly. I can't imagine why that would indicate anything but our commitment to providing new and fresh information about our products. Our products are contantly improving and our website improves as well. This is simply good business practice.

The person says they received a defective cushion. They then say we told them they were crazy. If I found that one of my employees called a customer crazy they would be severly repremanded and possibly fired so I question this statement. Then they say we provided a bogus account number. This too is quite hard to believe. The carrier would be able to look up and verify our account number if it had been written down incorrectly by the customer. The carriers computers could verify this information very quickly and the correction made seamlessly.

They go on to say we shipped them a new cushion system using the same pad but the pad did not work. Here again I find it hard to believe because any cushion system going out the door is thoroughly checked for proper operation before it is shipped. Then they say they received another cushion and they say this cushion finally works.

Now they go on to say that the cushion does not look like the pad pictured on our website. We make many different size pads and because there are different dimensions they will look slightly different because they will have a different number of cells for the different sizes. We cannot possibly show a picture of every size of pad that we can make. The important thing is that they all work the same, with alternate cells inflating and deflating together. Our pad is very stable during the alternation just by virtue of the cell shape and configuration. Therapists have commented on the stability of the cushion.

This person says that the pad causes a significant rocking motion because one side is inflated and the other deflated and this is quite impossible since alternate cells are linked together. There is no side to side inflation and deflation and there never has been.

They go on to say that they contacted us to send the cushion back yet they don't say how long after they received the cushion that they made this call. We have a 30 day return policy so if the call had been made within 30 day of them receiving the cushion system, we would have honored the return. Our return policy is clearly stated in the owners manual.

We are the only company that I know of that offers a demo program too so that customers can try our cushion system for 15 days for a very reasonable fee to see for themselves that the cushion system is working for them. They can demo the cushion before they make a full purchase.

We have a 1 year warranty on our products and customers can purchase extended warranties beyond 1 year and renew as many times as they wish.


After reading this person's complaint, I question the validity of the entire complaint. The customer does not give a real name or location or date of purchase so it appears to me to be a malicious report aimed at discrediting our company. If this were in fact a real customer, I would like to have them contact me so that we could resolve the issue with them.

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