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I Will NEVER Buy a Price Pfister Product Again!
By JLP | October 3, 2008
UPDATE: Please read this follow-up post.
Remember me complaining about our Price Pfister kitchen faucet not even two months ago? To refresh your memory, our faucet had a problem with the diverter. The diverter is a little piece of plastic that diverts the water from the faucet to the hose or vice versa.
Our diverter went out, which caused extremely low water flow. To make matters worse, the faucet was only about 10 months old! I called Price Pfister’s customer service department (FYI – Price Pfister is owned by Black and Decker) and they were more than happy to send me out a new diverter for “free.” The only thing is, I had to pay $8 for them to ship it to me! I balked at the idea but gave in and said, “Fine. Send me the parts.”
Well, the parts came and I fixed the faucet. Everything was fine and dandy up until about 3 days ago when I noticed that the water flow is steadily decreasing again! It’s starting to act the same way it acted two months ago. Two months! I thought I’d get to use it at least 10 months like I did with the other one. I guess not.
I’m telling you…this product is a piece of crap! Companies really don’t care about their customers. If they did, they wouldn’t make such crap. Never again will I buy a Price Pfister product. Never!
Topics: Rant | 18 Comments »
October 3rd, 2008 at 10:16 am
diverters sometimes get stuck. just take it out completely. you don’t need one. That is what we did.
Water pressure is now very high for both faucet and sprayer.
October 3rd, 2008 at 11:17 am
We will probably need to replace our kitchen faucet sometime in the next few months. I’ll keep this information in mind. Thanks!
October 3rd, 2008 at 11:56 am
Ah, the beauty of blogs. Price Pfister will loose money because of this post. On the other hand, they are not alone in making shoddy products. It seems that almost all products made today are designed to fail after a certain period so that you have to buy another one. As an example, if you look at manual can openers, most of them nowadays have one piece of plastic on them. It is the part that connects the turning key to the little wheel. If it breaks, the opener cannot work. It also seems to be the piece of the opener that receives most of the force in the opening process. I can only conclude that they made it out of plastic so that it would break after a certain number of uses and you’d have to buy a new one.
October 3rd, 2008 at 12:39 pm
Or that little plastic pieces is there as a failure point to prevent the opener from failing at the handle and cutting your hand open. Then they would have a lawsuit and be screwed. Often times the small piece that fails prevents the entire system from destroying itself.
Not that I suspect this problem with JLP but it could be there is too much pressure in the system and if that small piece were not failing it would mess up something else that would leak water all over the place. A method that is used in engineering basically is designed to have something leak before a fatal rupture. That way the leak is fixed and you do not have anyone dead.
That said however, I still agree there is a great lack of quality in many new products and most won’t last as long as older ones. Some of this comes about due to the majority of consumers shopping completely based on price and they have to be competitive, if people would still shop for a good product first then it would not have this problem as bad.
October 3rd, 2008 at 3:13 pm
Be careful making absolute statements…they ALWAYS come back to bite you in the butt.
October 6th, 2008 at 5:39 pm
Price Pfister: The pfaucet with the pfunny pfunctionality.
October 9th, 2008 at 1:42 pm
I can understand your phrustration with those phuckers. I thought Price Pfister was a good product too, but wound up replacing my kitchen sink phaucet with a Moen within two years. It’s going on phour years and haven’t had a problem since.
October 20th, 2008 at 9:59 am
Like most products you buy at your local retail store, the comsumer buys according to price. All manufacturers have to build products that you want according to your demands. If you go to a plumbing professional you will get a pro grade product. Almost all manufacturers make two grade of products, consumer and pro and they are built different. If a pro is going to install it they want to know it will last and thus the manufacturer will ship all repair parts to pros free, no shipping fees. May sound crazy but the price for the pro product has this cost figured in and because you only try to get lowest cost you do get exactly what you pay for.
November 23rd, 2008 at 11:53 am
I just took apart my Price Pfister faucet apart at every junction yesterday to find that I have the same problem with the diverter. The faucet is just over a year old. I have had to replace the soap dispenser twice because it keeps cracking. I whent to the web site and when I enter the product number into the parts search it says that product doesn’t exist(my wife had called them about the soap dispensers) so now I have to wait until tomorrow to call.
I did not buy the faucet based on price. I felt tha Pf had quality products and this one was not cheap. Searching for parts is how I found this blog.
December 26th, 2008 at 2:35 pm
I have just bypassed the diverter on mine as the spray has never worked, and now, the diverter shuts off the water to the spout. $219.00 is not cheap in any one’s book. If it acts like junk and works like jun, then it is junk.
January 15th, 2009 at 8:30 pm
I also bought a price pfister with the sprayer attachment, from the time I put it in there was no flow. I already through out the box so I can’t return it to where I bought it. Never again will I buy price pfister, piece of crap!!!!!!!!!
January 29th, 2009 at 8:56 am
Price Pfister makes two lines of faucets, one that they sell to home centers and retail stores. The other is the Pro Line that they sell to plumbers and select online retailers. The pro line is very good and we highly recommend it.
I wish Price Pfister would not hurt their image by selling a retail line, they should have at least branded it something else.
Eric Da Plumber – ie. the Price Pfister Faucet Guy
March 13th, 2009 at 8:04 am
We bought a Price Pfister kitchen faucet from Home Depot. Just a piece of junk from day one. After shuting off water, it still ran. Had to be on full force for water to actually stay running. And super noisy. And the soap dispenser broke within a month – it just constantly oozed soap after that. Had a terrible customer service experience with them too. No attention to detail. Sending me parts I didn’t even ask for or discuss with them. Took forever to return my money. Will never purchase from them again. Bought a Kohler – very happy now.
March 15th, 2009 at 8:36 pm
I finally just replaced my Price Pfister kitchen faucet with a Delta. I don’t know if they’re any better but I just couldn’t get the PP to stop leaking. About a week after I installed it it started leaking out of the top and bottom of the main body. PP sent me a new cartridge (single handle type faucet) and the special tool required to remove the retaining ring. All seemed okay until the next morning when I found it had leaked into the cabinet below and all over about 20 square feet of wood floor. Needless to say the floor is ruined and so is the bottom of the cabinet. Pictures and a detailed claim are on their way to PP. Any bets as to whether I’ll get any reimbursement? Bill was over $800 to repair.
March 28th, 2009 at 6:21 pm
Price Pfister has great customer service and have sent me replacement parts free of charge. Their lifetime warranty is true.
April 21st, 2009 at 8:40 pm
We just bought a home with a new Price Pfister faucet. Poor design. Weighted hose never recoils properly and gets caught under the sink. To make matters worse, the soap dispenser broke after just a few uses and it seems that dozens upon dozens of other people on the web have posted the same problems. I went to Home Depot to get a replacement dispenser and the sales associate was surprised to hear that my PF dispenser stopped working because HIS DID THE SAME. I replaced it with Home Depot’s house brand (can’t remember the name). It appears to be made better with an all-metal upper construction.
April 21st, 2009 at 8:45 pm
Z,
Thanks for your comment. You should be able to call Price Pfister and get a new dispenser. Tell them you don’t want to pay for shipping.
September 26th, 2009 at 8:21 pm
I bought a PF kitchen faucet because it thought it was a good brand. The price we paid was middle of the road, certainly not the cheapest. The faucet is two and a half years old and we on our third diverter (and fourth soap dispenser). They replace them free, including shipping, because of the lifetime guarantee. But it is a royal pain to change the diverter. Technically easy, but my old bones don’t do well on my back under the sink anymore. Our problem is the sprayer does not shut off. I suspect it is a design issue. I’m sure they’ll keep sending me a new one whenever we call, but, c’mon. It just not right.