any recourse?

[Dandee52]

We too have lost a lot of money with epods from Kevin Planks Re-
Epower, we're out of pocket over $6,000. I purchased and installed two
2000's in our new catamaran in 2008. The parts were delivered late in
dribs and drabs and not all parts actually arrived. The performance
was very poor, one pod stopped working after 10 minutes. Kevin sent
another pod to replace the faulty one but the performance was still
bad. We removed the pods in 2009 and tried an outboard version which
also didn't perform. We contacted Kevin in order to send all the items
back for a refund but were told that due to financial difficulties he
couldn't refund all the money at once, only in stages. We were
reluctant to send them back without a guarantee of refund and still
have them. We thought about selling them but I wouldn't want others to
go through the same problems as us.

[Gail Parsons]

How disheartening.  The really outrageous part is that he has a new website and is still advertising.  At this point, we're glad we didn't get the motor, but we might have if you had sent yours back.  We've filed a complaint with the Indiana Attorney General, but have not heard anything for awhile.  Thanks for letting us know about your experience.  It adds more ammunition to our case.  You might also try the Attorney General if you haven't already.  Perhaps the more complaints they get, they'll push harder.

 

Gail and Doug

[Michael Nikisher]

Having been involved in litigation in the past (against a custom
homebuilder that defrauded me and several other people to the tune of
several million dollars) my advice is to cut your losses and move on.
The legal costs of suing Mr. Plank will far exceed your losses on his
product with no guarantee that you would recover any money. I also
believe that it would be virtually impossible to convince any of the
various government entities that Mr. Plank deliberately set out to
defraud anyone so I think that avenue is also a waste of time.

You can send the stuff back to him and hope he can resell it and send
you some money but I wouldn't hold my breath. Like you I am ethically
adverse to selling it to some unsuspecting soul out there. Personally
I am going to EBay the controller and trash everything else. The motor
is an unknown quantity except for the fact that it has brushes to
maintain so I am not interested in moving it inside the boat and using
it to drive a shaft and prop. I am going to pursue a Mars 3000 based
solution though it means undoing all of the work I put into removing
the prop shaft. There are several packaged systems using the motor and
some positive feedback from folks who have installed them.

I will keep this group updated as I progress with that project.

Regards,
Michael