Forest City Water

IThat remains to be seen

I called Forrest City Water to look at an ailing water softener. When he arrived, he didn't seem to know how to fix the softener after I described the problem. He asked to look at the softener's manual. After looking at the manual briefly, he asked to take it back to his business to read up on it. I told him I wasn't comfortable lending it out to him, when he snapped back saying "You'll get it back". I should have taken that as a deal breaker, but allowed him to take it with regrets anyway. Long story short, after numerous, and I do mean numerous, calls to him, and numerous promises on his part to return my manual, he never did. Finally, he stopped answering my calls. I paid him a visit at his business in Machesney Park, but he never answered the door, even though I saw him inside his business. He keep's his door locked. Eventually, I called someone else, and had the problem fixed. A simple part needed to be replaced. I did file a complaint with the BBB for him taking and never returning my manual, but they were never able to get a response from him. Do yourself a favor and stay away from this guy. You'll be saving yourself a great deal of aggravation. I gave him an "F" for quality, because he never could figure out how to fix my softener.

We called. They came out and checked the old softener. They gave us a price and a 10% senior discount. We agreed and set a date 2 days later at which time they delivered and installed the new unit removing the old defunct unit. The new unit works well.

He seemed very honest, he didn't try to sell me a whole new water softener. He was very easy to contact. He was running a little late but he called me to let me know that.

So last week I finally decided I would get around to getting my water softener looked at.. It has been here since we moved in and hasnt worked. There was an ad that i had seen repeatedly in our local newspaper that read something like water softener service 19.95 35 years of experience and a phone number so I decided to give it a shot. The guy answered his cell and told me he was somewhat in my area (Freeport) and that he is from Rockford and could be at my house in 40 minutes. Sure that sounded great to me. When he and his partner got to my house led them to the basement and he got to work doing some diagnostic stuff while his assistant talked about random things. After he had tried several things he told/showed me that when a certain function went off the level of something in the tank should have changed which it wasn't...He shined a flashlight through the tank to show how it was stationary.. This is when he said to buy a new system was ~1300 and to repair this one was ~300 ..200 for parts 80 for labor and 20 for the service call. I debated it a bit and talked to my wife she said she thought we should wait because we didn't have 300 sitting around. I informed him that we wanted to hold off and he started saying they could take the unit and we could pay 150 and he would bring it back the next day and reinstall it then we could make 2 more payments of 75...Sure I said that sounded reasonable so off we went back to the basement where they removed the top control part of my water softener and headed straight out the door into their van and left..I returned to my living room and told me wife how the situation seemed...really weird... the speed that they had left in was odd to me. So the next day at 4 he was supposed to show up to reinstall...Never showed..I called 6 times over the course of 5 hours and left messages..This is when i found out the exact name of the company and searched the internet to find some complaints existed and they have an F rating with the BBB. The following day a Friday i tried to call him 3 more times in the morning and then decided I would use a different phone which he did answer and I hung up and recalled him on mine to see if he was possibly screening out my calls.. He answered the call from my phone and told me that he had been busy..apparently too busy to make a 5 minute phone call to tell me when he would be available and tell me he wouldn't make it out on the Friday. Then he asked if i would be home on saturday morning at 8 ...I said no he asked what time I get up on Sunday I said if i'm expecting someone to come I would be up at whatever time I needed to be. He said he would call me back on Saturday and tell me when he could be over..Of course this never happened...So here I sit on Monday with no information from him at all and still missing a part of my water softener that I assume costs a few hundred dollars to replace. --Updated just finally got a hold of him Monday at 12:30 he called me Mr Freeport and said you'll be home at 6 tonight? I said sure he said okay ill see you then I got held up (the same excuse he gave for not coming on Thursday.) He did finally show up around 615 installation took a few minutes and he went to do something to his van while the softener was cycling or something...It works now but I would never ever recommend him or use him again.

First the softener did not use any salt and was not conditioning the water. He came back and was upset that I filled the salt container, which he told me to do. For the past several months, the softener is using 175 lbs of salt each month (3 1/2 bags). A few months ago, he seemed frustrated and didn't know what to do to fix the controller. Now, at the most recent visit, the owner says this is "normal" salt usage for two people.