Sicce Xstream SDC - at wits’ end after 9 months…

[AlexandraDreadlocksPanda]

I bought a pair of these for my frag tank, and I am out of patience with these dang things. Pumps themselves are great, but the controllers are absolute junk. I have lost count of the amount of times that they lose wifi connection, then fail to reconnect. I’ve left them a whole week and they haven’t reconnected.
Yes, they’re on a 2.4 ghz network. No, there isn’t congestion / interference on that channel. I set up a separate wifi channel just for my reef tanks, all other equipment has rock solid connectivity. On the most recent attempt to reset they now won’t connect at all. I wish I’d spent the extra money on a pair of Nero 3’s; the 2 Nero 5’s and 2 Nero 7’s in my main display run faultlessly, 24/7/365….

Has anyone found a workaround? All I seem to find on the forums is people reaching out to Sicce customer service and getting the ‘our server was down’ excuse… I get the impression these controllers are fundamentally flawed and Sicce don’t *quite* know what the problem is. Or don’t care….

 

[twentyleagues]

I bought a pair of these for my frag tank, and I am out of patience with these dang things. Pumps themselves are great, but the controllers are absolute junk. I have lost count of the amount of times that they lose wifi connection, then fail to reconnect. I’ve left them a whole week and they haven’t reconnected.
Yes, they’re on a 2.4 ghz network. No, there isn’t congestion / interference on that channel. I set up a separate wifi channel just for my reef tanks, all other equipment has rock solid connectivity. On the most recent attempt to reset they now won’t connect at all. I wish I’d spent the extra money on a pair of Nero 3’s; the 2 Nero 5’s and 2 Nero 7’s in my main display run faultlessly, 24/7/365….

Has anyone found a workaround? All I seem to find on the forums is people reaching out to Sicce customer service and getting the ‘our server was down’ excuse… I get the impression these controllers are fundamentally flawed and Sicce don’t *quite* know what the problem is. Or don’t care….

Sicce has one of the best warranties out there. Have you tried to contact them with your concern? While Its good to read about these issues and possibly how it got handled or not I try to go to the source especially for warranty or tech questions. Working in an lfs we got all kind of "issues" with equipment of all kinds half the time its something to do with the customer either their unique situation or how they conducted themselves and the other half actually the equipment (depending on brand). Sicce usually handles their warranties well compared to other major companies from what I've seen.

I had an issue with a kessil 160 tuna sun on my fw planted tank. It was out of warranty being 4-5 years old at that point. I went to the forums reading about failures of kessil products and how under warranty they did nothing to help. I didnt like what I was reading, but I called anyway explained my situation and customer service sent me to tech. Tech told me how to properly test the unit (which I already had easy I have three), properly clean the unit, got the info from the unit said wow its an old one and sent me back to cs. When I got back to cs they already knew what tech and I had done. She said unfortunately its out of warranty, which I knew was just seeing if I could do something to fix it myself with their help ( with the way they are built and coated in epoxy inside not a lot you can do). She then said "look I can offer you a new one at a discounted price vs map pricing (40% off) if you'd like?" better then paying map, even at the lfs I worked at there were no discounts on map items. I said yes, they priority shipped at no charge to me. Had it in 2 days. Why did I take the time to type all that? Because people on forums said they had terrible customer service and their products dont last. Well I can tell you 2 of the 3 i've had for 9 years and the other one about 3 now. You cannot believe everything you read and every situation isn't the same.

Take it to the source especially for warranty issues. Be polite they almost never expect that with good reason, if you've worked cs you know. If they dont help come back and join the crowd talk about your bad experience.