Problems with refrigerator water filters from Crystala

Posted By on October 3, 2019

Late in the spring of 2019,  I ordered three new refrigerator filters from an Amazon seller for Crystala replacement filters. I’ve opted for third party filters before and really didn’t think much about it … but as more vendors use Amazon Marketplace, consumers need to be more careful since their support isn’t what we might be use to from Amazon or local retail stores.

AmazonSellerExpressPartsCrystala

In late summer I replaced the previous filter with a new one and noticed the taste wasn’t quite right. After running a few gallons of water through the filter, I started to wonder if these were “discount” filters and didn’t have the charcoal component that removed some of the chemical taste in our chlorinated city water.

CrystalaFilsterORing191001I opted to switch out the first filter with another one and noticed that it would not install easily (see below) … almost as if it didn’t fit our Samsung Refrigerator? About that same time, I started a conversation with customer service who indicated that I was past my return period (I didn’t open for a few months). After a gruff reply from me in getting no support, and post to Amazon complaining about lack of support, a supervisor named Luke responding as “Crystala Filters Support” under the Express Parts Amazon Marketplace email address, contacted me. He had me install the 3rd filter about that time I noticed that the top rubber o-ring was missing (see photo). This must-have permitted the water to bypass the filter and caused the “unfiltered” taste. In the back of my mind, I wondered if the o-ring may have either been missing or stuck in the red cap … then thought about the difficult fit inside the refrigerator. Hm, could the o-ring have prevented the correct seating of the filter in the mount?

Never the less, the supervisor would not replace the 2 filters, but said he would credit back 30% of my purchase price – one filter. Personally, it should have been both defective filters, but since I only threw away one of them, I can probably use an o-ring from the installed third filter an add it to the second in order to get it to work. All in all, I’m glad to have figure out the problem.

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