If you are not getting a satisfactory response from the manufacture, I would threaten to take the issue up with electronic safety board in your country of residence? If the unit has a known issue that could cause a fire, you would think that the manufacture would not want to risk the liability.
A Warning for Owners of Furman IT Refernence 20i
A Warning to anyone who owns a Furman IT Reference 20i for power filtering-
Do Not Leave the unit unattended while powered on. A few weeks ago, I smelled the very acrid smell of melting plastic and circuit board coming from my stereo. Long story short, my Furman IT Reference was the source and one of the circuit boards that was designed to prevent ‘current inrush’ self destructed.
Thankfully, I was close by and was able to quickly unplug the unit or there was a very serious chance of fire! Since then I have tried, without any success, to have the unit repaired, but have gotten nowhere with Furman (now part of Nortek). I have tried sending in multiple requests for service. I’ve tried calling, only to end up in ‘press 1 for, press 2, purgatory..‘. When I have managed to get someone on the line, they referred me to their ‘dealer network’ for repairs. I contacted one of the dealers and they told me that only Furman is allowed to perform their own repairs. Call back Nortek and they won’t sell parts and they only use their dealers for repairs. Lather, Rinse, repeat. For $5k I’d expected better. The only good news is that I’m a very experienced service person for research instrumentation and I was able to identify the electrical component that failed (Ametek Thermistor SL22). Furman undersized the thermistor in their inrush circuit and thereby started the board to self destruct. The part is very cheap and I’m hoping I can still salvage the circuit board. But BEWARE! Had I not been nearby, it could have been much much worse!!!
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- 15 posts total
- 15 posts total