Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I used to be a big APC fan, using and recommending their UPSs for the past 20 years. Until recently I had never had a need to call their support, but a replacement battery for a Smart UPS overheated due to overcharging by the UPS, boiling the acid, releasing hydrogen sulphide and making a huge mess. The UPS is damaged and the battery pair are both destroyed (melted!). When I contacted support I found out that APC is owned by Schneider Electric and they have offshored all their support. Normally I'm ok with that but they should be embarrassed by their support partner. I was asking about thermal management in the UPS, to understand if there was some sort of monitoring circuit to see if the battery was getting too hot since the pair I had in the UPS was melted. Each email response was from a different support engineer and they collectively, have been going in circles. Along the way I was told there's no risk of fire or explosion from the hydrogen release from the batteries (which I don't believe). The APC replacement battery was less than 3 years old yet the support engineers told me that a failure in that time is expected because of my environment where the UPS is gets up to 100F for a few hours in the middle of the day. The operating range is documented to be 32F to 104F, so I'm inside that range. In the end they told me that I could trade-in my UPS and buy a new one, but the cost with the trade-in was more than purchasing new here on Amazon. After getting frustrated with getting what I felt was incorrect information from support and them not answering the original question, I wrote the support person that I wasn't getting good answers and the trade-in was a joke, a manager replied and although he "understood my frustration", he asked if I had stored the batteries before using them and if I had replaced the UPS battery with an APC battery. This was the 3rd time APC/Schneider had asked me this question! Maybe they work on a script. And yes, I provided answers each time to this question. Since all I had asked for originally was about thermal protection to prevent overcharging the battery, the Q&A line was going totally sidewise and I gave up. I told the manager I was done with APC and would switch to another brand due to their poor support. He understood and apologized and wished me well... Then 3 days later I get a new email from APC support about my question and asking me for my serial number (5th time!) and if I had replaced the battery recently (4th time) and if it had been stored before using it. It's obvious they don't have any case management. I would recommend that if you're in an IT role, call or contact support before you buy a UPS, and evaluate them by their support response. My mistake was I had assumed that APC was world class for support and I found out otherwise. In evaluating other brands I contacted Cyberpower and spoke immediately with a support engineer who had the various UPS models at his desk. I was trying to find a pure sinewave output model that had a data logger for input voltage. He had the various options at his desk and was able to walk through the various settings on the card for logging frequency and confirm for me about some features I needed in the logging. This was critical information since I was sourcing the UPS and card for a retail store chain. The battery and UPS chassis stuff is pretty much all the same, the key differentiators are the after-sales support and plug count. APC is, in my opinion, not a leader from support and doesn't stand-out from the crowd for the other features. I was pretty impressed with Cyberpower support and will be going with them for now. Edit: 12/2013. I was contacted by APC Customer Support about the poor review on Amazon and they have arranged to replace my old unit with a current model that has a thermal monitoring circuit. I'm adding 1 start to the review (was 1 now 2) due to this. It's good to see that they monitor the reviews of their products. However I maintain that their customer support when working with the email/phone team was extremely poor, disorganized and uninformed. They have since assured me that I was unlucky and caught them during a transition to a new support system. I remain skeptical but am open to being proven wrong.