Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

My boyfriend and I got this directly from the manufacturer and were having trouble with it working consistently for the first few months of owning it. Then it just stopped working altogether at about 3 months. We figured maybe we just needed to buy new filters and although the one that gets replaced the most is supposed to last around 6 months, maybe ours just didn't (??). Anyhow, we get new filters and replace them, and manage to get 1-2 pitchers of water out of it before it stops working again!! We read all the instructions multiple times and followed all the technical "checks" they say to do in the instructions but it not only wouldn't work anymore but the blue light on the screen wouldn't even come on anymore. So, we've been messing with this thing for like 4-5 months(?) maybe now and my boyfriend is pissed and wants to return it. I call customer service and they say too bad, you only have 30 days to return it. But since it's clearly defective, and has a 1 year warranty, I can pay 19.99 and have a new base (not the pitcher/filters/etc---just the bottom white part) shipped out to us and *hopefully* that will fix the problem. Well, at this point (after buying new filters and mineral solution) we're in close to $500, so what's $20 right? So, I'm waiting (7-14 days supposedly) for the new base to arrive and we're having to buy lots of bottles of water right now. I'll update this when I know we actually have a working water filtration system, but in the meantime, I would NEVER recommend anyone spend money on this. It's impossible to tell how well this thing will work for the next few years in only 30 days. There should be at least a 90 day return policy. Note: customer service for aquatru (which is not easy to reach by the way) told me I should've called them everytime I had a problem so they'd have a record of it. She made it seem like if I had called them and made multiple reports of issues, I might've been able to return this after 30 days. How am I supposed to know that's how they make exceptions for returning after 30 days?? The instructions seem pretty clear for troubleshooting but she says I should've called them for trouble shooting?! In my opinion customer service is usually for orders, returns, etc and is not usually who I call for troubleshooting. Also, I live in Hawaii and am in a very different time zone and they are only open for short hours, so if I had known this, I would've coordinated my life around making these calls to them but usually manuals are excellent for troubleshooting and I am pretty handy and usually can get things working---but not something that just breaks down completely. Also, to top this off, after my new base unit arrives, she wants me to hold on to the broken one-to store it for about 30 days! She said because they MAY want to pay to have the base shipped back to them for the engineers to look at. But if they don't contact me in 30 days, then I can throw it away!?! Umm I live in a tiny apartment and do not have extra storage space for this bulky thing---this whole scenario is ridiculous. Either you want it back now or you don't...I'm not holding on to trash for 30 days. Ughhh... again, I do not recommend. **If you decide to ignore my review and buy this, I would buy it here on Amazon so you avoid the S/H charge through the Aquatru company and I would buy the 4 year coverage plan that Amazon offers on here for this-YOU WILL NEED IT, this thing breaks easily! Good luck!*** UPDATE: we got the warranty replacement base in the mail today, and set everything up as it says and you have to run 4 pitchers of water through it before it's officially "good to drink" water. Guess what? We got 2 pitchers done and when we went to do pitcher 3, it won't turn on!!! Are you serious?!? I have unplugged it, plugged it back in, tried other outlets, took the pitchers off, put them back on, looked over the whole thing again...no reasonable explanation as to why this would just break---not even power on---for no reason after only 2 pitchers AND THIS IS THE BRAND NEW REPLACEMENT!! I did feel the plastic (under the pitchers in the center of the base) and it felt very warm. Is the motor overheating from two small pitchers of water and maybe there's a built in switch that won't let the power go on if it's too hot? I don't know? Your guess is as good as mine. We definitely were able to do back to back pitchers with the other one so I can't imagine that's it. My overall point here is that Aquatru is really AquaTRASH. They don't deserve 1 star because it's a big waste of money and time...NEGATIVE 10 STARS for this. I included two pics, one of the blue light that comes on when the system is on/ready. The other pic shows the black screen you'll get when it breaks and doesn't power on anymore. 👎👎👎👎👎