Cat Genie Customer Service our of Service?

[Miss Emmy's Mom]

Last week I had several issues requiring calls to customer service.

On the 15th I made a call and waited for a call back.  Eventually my phone rang but there was no one on the line.  Then an email came in with an agent saying she had called but there was no answer.  I emailed back and requested she call again, as I had answered the phone and there was nothing but dead air.

She wrote quickly again, saying my symptoms indicated a dirty hopper and the machine would need to be disassembled and cleaned.  I responded again that I had just done a complete service about a month ago, and had also used the cleaning cartridge.

She wrote back and repeated that the hopper must be dirty.

SO, I disassembled the unit.  The hopper was not dirty, but mysteriously there was a LOT of hair tangled around the impeller.  So, cleared that all away (she must have been having a high time grooming and swallowing all of that hair, thank goodness for the butter I give her every morning which has prevented further trips to vet for hairball-clearing enemas...) and put the machine back together.

STILL getting error 3's.  I had already checked the water sensor, so that was not it.  I emailed this CS agent again, but never received a response.

It was not until Friday the 17th that I was able to call again and spend time with the unit.  The first call assured me I'd get a call back in 17 minutes.  Two hours later, no call back.  I finally called again and was assured I'd get a call in 16 minutes.

NO CALL BACK, EVER.

Any idea what is going on?

[Robert Deliën]

I do not know what’s going on, and I’m pretty sure nobody else here has.

You have posted to the CatGenius software project mailing list. A project which can be found here:

https://github.com/CatGenius/catgenius/wiki

Occasionally people here are able and willing to help people out diagnosing what’s wrong with their CatGenie box, but that’s not the purpose of this community.

But in order to help you out, we need a lot more details about what’s wrong with your box and what you have tried out already.

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[Pamela Hanford]

Apologies, I thought this was a trouble-shooting group for the box.  I'm happy to delete the post if that is possible, or can admins handle?

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/catgenius/81EDCBE4-1754-4467-89C8-E2D99693664F%40delien.nl.

[Robert Deliën]

It’s not the purpose of this group, but there’s no need to delete anything either.

And while you are here, and we know everything about this box, go ahead and describe what is wrong with it and what you have tried to fix it. More details is always better. Perhaps somebody here knows the solution.

(Sent from a mobile device; Please excuse grammar, typos and brevity)

On 19 Jul 2020, at 22:29, Pamela Hanford <pamela....@gmail.com> wrote:



To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/catgenius/CAD8Hnby_U3XJ1-DUKmRRhW8pMp7tHRZEmZhHTnfW%2BJEXjTFj2g%40mail.gmail.com.

[Miss Emmy's Mom]

[Pamela Hanford]

Well, thank you for the offer of assistance, even though I found myself in the wrong place.

As I briefly outlined in the initial post, I was getting an error 3.  I was told it was a dirty hopper, so I disassembled the entire thing.  It was not "dirty," but there was an incredible amount of hair wrapped around the impeller.  I cleaned that away and reassembled.

When I put it back together, I added more granules, (and I think this was probably where I went wrong).  When it ran again error 3 hit again, and the bowl was full of water.  This required disassembly and bailing... not fun.  This time I thought perhaps there was a water sensor issue... so cleaned that again, although it did not seem at all dirty.

Again... error three.

This time my daughter came to help.  She has a CG also and has had all of the drama possible with hers.  We had to bail the thing again, and this time the water was not *nice.*  She was certain I had added too many granules, so we removed about a quart.  Then we had to clean excess granules out of the hopper, so she must have been right.

After all of this, the CG is running normally again.  So I think the issue was too many hairballs, and then too many granules.  As you can see, the issue has been resolved, and my initial post here was really wondering about customer service at Pet Innovations (still no call back, BTW).

Again, apologies for jumping into your group, and thanks for the offer of assistance.  I am reading many of the posts, and finding them informative.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/catgenius/30E644D7-9259-4470-AF66-B68510061BD5%40delien.nl.

[BamZipPow]

You mention that you had standing water in the bowl.  I'm wondering if the impeller motor is weak and not pumping out enough water.  Can you run the processor in manual mode and see if the water can be pumped out?  I'm not sure how much time is designated to pump out a certain amount of water.  I've been researching a better method of pumping out the water with a bigger/better motor.

[Pamela Hanford]

I actually believe that the water drainage problem, the second time, was due to having too many granules in the bowl.  When we removed a significant amount of them and ran a new  cycle, there was no standing water.  Since then (two days), it has been running well with no errors and no standing water.

On Sun, Jul 19, 2020 at 6:24 PM BamZipPow <bamz...@gmail.com> wrote:

You mention that you had standing water in the bowl.  I'm wondering if the impeller motor is weak and not pumping out enough water.  Can you run the processor in manual mode and see if the water can be pumped out?  I'm not sure how much time is designated to pump out a certain amount of water.  I've been researching a better method of pumping out the water with a bigger/better motor.

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[Robert Deliën]

> As I briefly outlined in the initial post, I was getting an error 3. I was told it was a dirty hopper, so I disassembled the entire thing. It was not "dirty," but there was an incredible amount of hair wrapped around the impeller. I cleaned that away and reassembled.

An error 3 means that after the maximum allowed time of draining, the CPU still detects water. This can have two reasons:
1. There is still water in the box
2. There is no water in the box, but the water sensor still reports to see water.

To exclude the second case, you always need to check if the translucent light guide of your water sensor is clean.

In your case, there is clearly still water in the box. In that case we need to figure out why it is not draining (quick enough).

> When I put it back together, I added more granules, (and I think this was probably where I went wrong). When it ran again error 3 hit again, and the bowl was full of water. This required disassembly and bailing... not fun. This time I thought perhaps there was a water sensor issue... so cleaned that again, although it did not seem at all dirty.

Cleaning out the hopper is always a good starting point. Hair, debris, but also lime building up in the vent ports are frequently occurring problems. What also occurs frequently, is a lump of wet granules clogging up the hopper; When the box starts stopping while the granules are wet, the scoop can pick up whole lumps of wet granules, dumping them in the hopper, clogging it up.

If your hopper is clean, you may still want to check the drain hose. Remove the hoppen and improvise to attach the exhaust of the drain hose to you faucet. Open the tap and let the water pressure blow back clogs in the hose. If water flows freely, your hose is clean.

> This time my daughter came to help. She has a CG also and has had all of the drama possible with hers. We had to bail the thing again, and this time the water was not *nice.* She was certain I had added too many granules, so we removed about a quart. Then we had to clean excess granules out of the hopper, so she must have been right.

Less granules is always better. If you cat is happy with a 1cm (1/2 an inch) of granules, it’s also better for your box

> After all of this, the CG is running normally again. So I think the issue was too many hairballs, and then too many granules. As you can see, the issue has been resolved, and my initial post here was really wondering about customer service at Pet Innovations (still no call back, BTW).

Ah, so it’s solved; Great!

> Again, apologies for jumping into your group, and thanks for the offer of assistance. I am reading many of the posts, and finding them informative.

No worries!

Do you have a CartridgeGenius device installed already?
http://cartridgegenius.com