One Family’s Awful Experience with ZONTOS
At the recommendation of a friend —someone who reps (or, should I say, USED to rep) for Zontos— I spent almost $4000 on a device designed to provide assimilable hydrogen from water. But things didn’t work out so well for us— with a bad experience that lasted over 3 years. What follows is what happened to us with both Zontos as a company and their flagship “Z3” machine.
Zontos has pretty refined marketing, claiming their hydrogen water machines’ “revolutionary technology… leads the industry.”It’s a bold claim, but things went VERY poorly for us, with a machine that had a lot of problems… nothing like what we expected— at times, it didn’t work at all! I hope others will find some of the following factual/documented specifics helpful.
1) Our first issues (pretty early on in our ownership), required that I spend my own time and money ($100+) to have our water tested by a local lab to determine what might be messing up the machine. We already had a whole-house filter, as well as living in an area with some of the best water in the country, and this test revealed nothing.
2) I had to whack the thing on the side to get it to run (yes, literally… videos available upon request). To ameliorate the problem, I Zontos’ owner and team had me open up the machine and flush it out with white vinegar. Unfortunately, this killed the thing entirely, and I had to package it up and return it.
3) But before they would send a replacement, I was required to purchase a reverse-osmosis water filter, or some other kind of system that would filter out particulates down to POINT.ONE.MICRON. (That is very fine —hospital-grade— filtration, which I had to pay for and install.)
4) When that didn’t work either (I was not surprised), we were then told that something must be wrong with our electricity (though we’ve had no noticeable issues with that, nor did anyone at Zontos know what the specific problem might be). We were instead sent a long, non-prioritized list of possible solutions for us to try… all of which would cost yet more time, energy, and money! Finally, after over three years and completely dissatisfied with all things Zontos, I returned the second machine. As of this date, we’ve spent around $4300, and have nothing but regrets.
5) Note also that Zontos’ own rep, who was a close observer of this whole mess,
quit the company in disgust and protest at the way they related to the issues we
were having. He was, in fact, prepared to testify on my behalf (but I later learned that small claims court offers no mechanism for enforcing a verdict; I wouldn’t be able to actually collect, even if a judgement was issued against them… which I believe would’ve happened).
My request to Zontos was to return less than the amount of money we paid, but they were unwilling to compromise at all. I’ve never been treated like this by a company. And while they assured me they didn’t have many problems like this with others, their own rep reported that “almost every machine that was sent had an initial issue and had to be returned, for which Zontos had to issue a replacement.”
Now, to be fair and transparent, it’s possible there is an issue with something in our electrical system. (And, although they’re claiming it now, nothing was ever said or written prior to all this about their technology requiring “clean electricity”… whatever that specifically even means.) Up until then, Zontos assumed and acted on the premise that our water had contaminants interfering with its operation… a non-existent problem we spent a LOT of time searching into solutions for.
I felt something was really wrong during the whole debacle. When buying a product (especially an expensive one), I think there should be some kind of warning or disclaimer regarding the really tight tolerance margins for the device, and that the machine may simply not work in all environments. Saying the water needs to be “good” or “clean” is not remotely informative enough when, for example, .1 micron level filtering may be required— or an advanced electrical examination or “dirty electricity” amelioration tool. (Such a disclaimer would, of course, not be great for sales.) No pun intended, but… this has not been a clean process.
My goal here is to save others from our own awful experience. I do believe in this kind of product, and also that the folks at Zontos may mean well… but they simply don’t have it together. I can’t state that as a “fact,” but it sure has been our experience.
So… BUYER BEWARE! There are a lot of good hydrogen water machine companies out there, but (imho) Zontos is not one of them. Do some good research for yourself before taking the plunge!
P.S.— Anyone who has questions or would like more information can write to H2waterBlues at gmail