Nebulous said:
Plotinus, I understand that you PD recently stopped working, but what makes you believe that the internals were destroyed by charring? I'm a little surprised to hear stories like this, as the vast majority of PD users found the vape to be extremely reliable and durable.
Regardless, I believe it has become clear that several log vapes have already surpassed the PD's functionality. Im personally quite excited by vapes like the Old City Diffuser, which are re-defining what a log vape can be through variable temperature and other features.
Also Plotinus - it would be awesome if you could post a comparison of your new CRZ with your old PD. I'm curious as to how much of an improvement it offers for current PD owners.
I'll do it happily, I got a note from Rick saying it should be here tomorrow.
The full story with my unit: about 9 months ago I noticed that its core was wiggling around more than usual - and resetting the clip no longer solved the problem. I emailed Tom about it, offering to snap photos or whatever else he needed. He insisted that I just hadn't set the clip properly, and offered to send a new one. I tried to argue back, but he wouldn't hear it. To be frank, he was pretty rude about the whole thing.
I had noticed at the time that, in addition to the wiggling, the metal parts at the opening seemed to be sinking into the wood - meaning that I could see a lot of extra space between the wood overhang at the top of the unit, and the metal parts. Tom insisted that this was impossible, so I wrote it off and tried to ignore the issue.
Anyway, fast forward to my unit dying altogether the other night, and me returning to the board to figure out what had happened. As soon as I read about the charring, I got curious. I turned my unit upside down and gave it a little shake, and sure enough - charred wood particles came out of the top. I had seen this before but always assumed it was just plant matter that I accidentally dropped into the opening (even though I'm quite careful to never do this.) But now that I realized it could be something else, closer inspection made it clear. The color and smell were both that of burned wood.
The reason I'm not concerned so much about the health thing is that the wood only appeared charred to me, and not burned - and even when I shook the unit, not that much came out. (And it had to be fully vertical for anything to come out at all.) Also, given how mild vapor is, I feel like I would have noticed if I started inhaling large amounts of wood as well.
On the warranty issue, though, everything seems to add up. The core of the unit WAS sinking, because it was burning the wood from the inside out, opening up more space. I haven't cracked the thing open (yet) to prove it, but I expect to find that the unit ultimately failed because of this phenomenon. Why else could it have happened? It ran reliably for 2+ years, I never dropped it or even so much as took it outside.
Anyway, that's the story. The sad part is that the price I paid for more than 2 years of use made the PD very worthwhile, so I wish I wasn't mad at Tom. It's just the way he conducted himself on the customer service end that bugs me.
