I’ve bought a lemon and I want my money back…

It is, I think, worth mentioning that what I originally wanted, the Handicare Puma 6 powerchair,

but the dealership flatly refused to supply one, saying “Now, the Puma 6 is a chair we won’t allow an application on the scheme to go through, I’m afraid; Handicare are an awful company to deal with and, in the event you have a problem, they will take an age to supply us with parts, thus rendering you immobile. They are a company without character or compassion, Ron.”.

But, shouldn’t the decision on its acceptability or otherwise be mine, or Motability’s? And if they’re so bad, why do they sell them?

I know they’ve had problems with the seat elevation system on the Puma (it looks insanely complex),

but that’s of no consequence, as I just wanted the bog-standard version, with the long-range batteries and, really, any company that can’t make a basic, conventional powerchair that works would probably not remain in business. And the Puma 6 has protective shrouds over the motors, to keep out water, one reason I chose it. That and the 30-mile range. It’s not as fast as the Q6000 (6.2 mph), but it’s infinitely more usable.

I’m not trying to drop the dealership in the mire – the Q6000, with the uncharged-for seat lift and high-speed pack, should have been an excellent alternative to the Puma 6, but it’s not, it’s a liability because the design is so unsuitable for the British weather, and Pride should have spotted the ramp and caster problems and fixed them (but see below for further comments on the casters), as well as the lack of weather-proofing. But they didn’t, and I’m saddled with a chair that I can’t, for the most part, use. I think that the fitting of the seat lift mechanism necessitated the fitting of smaller batteries (makes sense), which would account for the crap range – if so, no-one bothered to mention it, even though the dealer was fully aware that range was a priority.

To complicate matters even further, when I removed a bolt to fit a tax disc holder recently, I found I couldn’t tighten it again as the hole had virtually no thread – all that held the bolt in place was a dollop of locking compound. Luckily, it’s not structurally vital, though it does make me wonder about the build quality overall, the more so as several minor bolts come loose every time it’s used which, as I said, is very little. This seems to be a common problem with Pride – the drive-wheel nuts of my Jazzy kept coming loose, even though they were Nyloc-style nuts – Pride’s solution to this was to pour in so much locking compound that the wheels were locked immovably onto their shafts – not much help with a puncture. This is why I haven’t sent this chair back to have the fastener problems fixed – they’d probably never move again.

I think I know why the bolts are so crap. I noticed, yesterday, that my seat creaked, and a check showed that the alternative bolt I used for the tax disc holder won’t tighten fully and feels very “soft”.  The two bolts in question hold the seat back to its sub-frame, on the left-hand side.

Until relatively recently Pride have always sold their products with Imperial fasteners, no matter that the rest of the world had gone metric (well, most of it), but a couple of  years ago Australia, insisted that they comply with everyone else and fit metric fasteners if they wanted to continue selling in the Australian market.

My chair has metric fasteners,  and I think the threads are fragile because Pride have just lazily re-tapped Imperial-threaded holes, instead of making components from scratch with metric threads, for the market outside of the US.

I have an engineering background, and I can think of no other reason why these threads should be so fragile, and I think it’s quite possible that every threaded component may be the same (bolts which attach to nuts are no problem, it’s where they screw into a threaded hole in a casting that it all goes pear-shaped). Frankly, if I’m right, that’s unacceptable – it would work well enough the first time, during assembly, where the torque could be closely controlled, and it would be fine until a bolt was removed, when Pride’s obsession with locking compound would cause the vestigial thread to tear out (why they don’t use locking washers is beyond me). And if I’m wrong their manufacturing standards, and quality control, must be abysmal.

Harking back to those poxy casters, Pride claim the Q6000 is fitted with spherical Omni-casters. If the casters were spherical, the problems I’ve complained of wouldn’t occur as they’d just ride over inequalities, but they’re not – they’re pretty badly-designed casters with useless hemispherical plastic shells bolted to them which, other than amplify the clattering noise caused by the absurdly hard tyres, do nothing. They don’t even rotate with the caster – they’re purely cosmetic and, to my mind, the brochure is a blatant misrepresentation of the actuality – a con, if you will.

And one final thing – the manual advises, in the event of a puncture, to set the chair “on blocks” to remove the wheel. As it weighs in at around 160kg/352lb, is there a anybody who’s not a weight-lifter who can do that? And where does one put the blocks? I’ve looked in vain for a safe jacking point that won’t cause damage – I can’t find one.

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** You can actually see the rear casters flipping sideways on stony ground in the video on the dealer’s website. When they do that on a rough pavement (we’re cursed with “heritage” Victorian pavements – old, worn, broken, limestone slabs with no two on the same level, and lethally slippery when wet), they snag on slab edges, almost to the point of bringing the chair to a halt (they do the same on concrete, of course, if it’s bad enough, but I mostly use the road – there’s just that one bad section where I have to use the pavement), and the only way to make safe progress is at a crawl (safe in that I won’t get tipped out – it still snags).

Even normal pavements are best avoided, as the rock-hard caster tyres provide no insulation from jolts. It’s amazingly clattery and noisy too, on anything less than a perfectly smooth road surface – sufficient to attract the attention of passers-by, never mind piss me off. Video here http://www.scootamart.com/mobility/powerchairs/index.html

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Update, September 7:- I used this post as the basis of a letter I faxed Route2Mobility, Motability’s scooter and powerchair arm, on August 28. This afternoon, I faxed them again, requesting a response. This is what I got – my replies comes after it (names and email addresses have been deleted):-

Thank you for your fax this is just to confirm they have all been received and as your issues relate to the unit these have been forwarded onto the dealer that supplied it you, Scoota mart (Preston) tel – 01772 721000 fax – 01772 252422

They have received them and they have just confirmed that you will be getting a call from them tomorrow to assist you.

Thank you for your time

_____________________________________________

M… M…
Customer Service Advisor

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Thanks, M….

However, there wasn’t a single point there with which the dealer can help me (apart from, perhaps, the rubbish threads). Can the dealer produce the missing 50% of the expected range, or make it usable in the rain, or make it go up a taxi ramp, or remedy anything else of which I complained?  No, of course not  – which is why I wrote to you about it.

This Pride Q 6000 problem is not a dealer-related issue – they can’t fix it because it’s not fixable; the defects are inherent in the design. The question of the Puma 6 is, I grant you, a dealer issue, but the priority is the chair I have.

The chair is, in so many ways, unsuitable for the purpose for which it was intended, in fact and in law, and I only need one thing – I need this useless chair gone, and that’s not a decision for the dealer. It’s yours.

By the way, I’ll not be talking to the dealer, but email is fine – my solicitor has advised me to have a written record of everything that transpires, just in case – and I do hope it doesn’t – it comes to litigation. And, no, that’s not a threat, I’m just explaining my position. I still have hopes of resolving this amicably, but time is important – I’m not willing to continue paying for a chair I can’t use.

Regards,

Ron…

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And there it remains for now. I can’t use the chair, by the way, even though it could be used for short trips because, having pronounced it unsuitable, it would be improper to use it. Anyway, it would probably bloody rain!

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