The past two years has seen us provide detailed reviews of the electric, cordless, lawn mower from Linamar Consumer Products with the optional solar charging option. 

This lawn mower is sold throughout North America under the Solaris, Epic and Utopia brand names, each with slightly different finishing.

For historical purposes, here is the link to our review of the 2008 electric cordless lawn mower, its first year, including our use of the optional solar charging station to maximize our energy savings by using only electricity generated from the sun, for those interested.

What about our series of articles reviewing the 2009 model? You can see it in the picture below with the optional rear grass catcher.

As those who have already followed both series know, there were major changes between the 2008 and 2009 model years.

However, just before I was about to write our article summarizing our reviews from last year I received a request from a visitor to our site, DailyHomeRenoTips.com, to compare the 2009 model to the 2010 model.

So, I first tried to do my own research and went to the Solaris web site. I seemed as if it was the same as last year; same for the Epic and Utopia web sites as well.

I then contacted Linamar Consumer Products directly to ask them what was new for 2010 with any of the Solaris, Utopia or Epic brands.

The reply from Steven, their lead Customer Service representative, was that there was to be ’… no changes in design…’ or pricing in any of the three brands for 2010.

Of course, retailers may have their independent promotions during the year.

So, if you see a 2009 model on sale, all things being equal, buy it rather than waiting for a 2010 model to be available later in the year because, according to Steven, there are no design changes. So, this picture of our 2009 model, this time without the rear grass catcher below, is what you will also get for 2010.

With that in mind, what follows is the collection of articles we wrote last year on the 2009 model which are now equally applicable for 2010.

One aspect I did not get to last year was to setup the 2008 solar charging station. Life sometimes gets in the way.

As well, I have also received emails asking me how my Solaris lawn mower is performing, as well as its batteries, now one year later. Once the snow is gone from our lawn, the grass has started to grow I’ll return to revisit both aspects and let you know.

For now, here are the links to each article of our review of the 2009, and now also 2010, Solaris electric cordless lawn mower.

Part 1 - Looks Very Different from 2008

Part 2 - Status Indicator and Height Adjustment

 Part 3 - The Batteries and Recharging

 Part 4 - Terra Phase Brushless Electric Motor

 Part 5 - The Test Drive

Part 6 - 2008 vs 2009 (and now 2010) Model Comparison

Hopefully the weather cooperates and in a few week’s I’ll return to let you know how the 2009 model performed during its first use in 2010.

First it was at Home Depot Canada’s web site and next at Tim Hortons web site.

For the third strike I tried to order dinner at one of the most Canadian, since this is supposed to be a Canadian product, restaurants I know … Swiss Chalet.

Now I have enjoyed Swiss Chalet dinners for over 30 years.

Yum.

So I placed an order totalling $19.31 … well within the $20 card  amount.

Did it work on the Swiss Chalet web site?

Yes. Yes it did.

Then about 30 minutes later I received a phone call from the Swiss Chalet Customer Service.

She advised that the Swiss Chalet store closest to my home call them to say that the 3V Visa pre-paid card I had used to place the order was rejected.

So, she proceeded to ask me to repeat the card number and expiry date, which I did.

About another 15 minutes went by and someone else from Swiss Chalet Customer Service called to say that the card was again, rejected.

Sigh.

And, after emailing the Customer Service area of 3V Visa, they still have not replied what went wrong this time.

Three strikes.

Three strikes Visa.

If you are ever offered a 3V Visa voucher …. do not walk away, run.

They do not work.

Three strikes, Visa … three strikes … you are out.

As that article outlined, my experience was arguably not the fault of the 3V Visa product but possibly the retailer who failed until several days later to inform me that my on-line purchase had in fact not been successful but had become rejected.

So, I waited a couple of weeks and tried again.

However, as before with only $20 to use I was thinking what I could purchase. Home Depot does not offer a Home Depot Gift Card for less than $20 so I couldn’t simply go back to that well again with a smaller costing gift card.

Then after seeing all those commercials during the early stages of the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics on TV for a certain brand  of coffee in Canada, I had an idea. My wife still had her Tim Horton’s gift card she received from one of our kids at Christmas. I checked and it had all of $1.97 left.

So, I thought to myself, why not be the ‘nice guy’, earn some brownie points and simply use the $20 3V Visa pre-paid voucher I had been given to add $20 onto her Tim’s card?

Sounds simple enough, right?

Ha.

Although to Tim Horton’s credit, at least they told me right away that my attempt was not successful.

The first time I tried to use the 3V Visa pre-paid voucher to add $20 to my wife’s Tim Card, I received a message saying that I had entered an inaccurate security code. You know how on the back or front of your credit card there is a 3 or 4 digit number in addition to the actual credit card number itself? This is referred to by some as a Security Code.

I found this weird because I thought I had entered it accurately, but to err is human.

So, all I had to do was to re-enter the 3 digit Security Code which is part of the 3V Visa pre-paid voucher as all of the other details were still displayed on the screen. Once I did this I was again rejected (gee, good thing I don’t take rejection too personally). However, this time the error message displayed was that there was insufficient balance remaining available on the 3V Visa voucher.

Strange. How could there be ‘insufficient balance’ when the first attempt was rejected by Tim’s on-line system because of an invalid Security Code (which means that the transaction was rejected by VISA)

You see, what I didnt’ know and only found out a little later was that the first transaction actually was successful and authorized on Visa’s end. In fact it still displayed as an authorized transaction with an authorization number within my view of my 3V Visa account for several days until it was manually removed by VISA’s customer support as part of their attempt to resolve this issue. However, it didappear as an incomplete transaction (unconfirmed by the retailer, in this case Tim Horton’s). Interesting how the retailer’s system told me that the Security Code was not valid for the voucher number yet the 3V Visa system accepted and authorized it just fine and dan-dy.

Now, because on the 3V Visa side of the transaction the first attempt was authorized there was $0 left in my 3V Visa voucher. Therefore, the Tim Horton’s system correctly rejected my second attempt. This was also shown as rejected on the 3V Visa system.

Then I remembered my experience with this pre-paid product at Home Depot. I wondered to myself (since no one else was around at the time) if my attempts were rejected for the same reason as Home Depot had several days later rejected my attempted use of this product on theirweb site; this phantom additional $1 charge.

So, I then tried a 3rd time and attempted to use $15 of the pre-paid card (remember, I did not yet know that the 1st attempt was accepted by the 3V Visa system to bring the pre-paid voucher’s balance down to zero). It was rejected for a 3rd time by Tim Horton’s system.

Ugh.

Now when I looked at my wife’s Tim Card account it simply shows that for all three attempts the ‘Credit card charge failed’.

This all happened on a Saturday. I emailed my 3V Visa contact as well as the Customer Support of 3V Visa directly but heard nothing until Monday. Monday through Thursday the 3V Visa and Tim Horton’s customer service representatives went back and forth, back and forth, back and forth by phone and email.

No resolution.

Friday I emailed the 3V Visa Customer Support person to ask what was happening; was this now a dead issue since I never paid for their voucher (remember, I simply received it free from 3V Visa’s PR firm to try out)?

Over the weekend, no response.

It appears that the Customer Support  for 3V Visa does not work weekends…..at least not in a way which is communicated back to me.

So, after more than a week (mroe than a week from when I tried to use it at Tim Horton’s on-line web site? yes) of no resolution the $20 was put back on my 3V Visa voucher.

I asked if I should try Tim’s again. After no response from the 3V Visa people I decided to try it the next day.

I did.

Same result. It was rejected

Tim Horton’s representative emailed be a few hours later via email to indicate “…this card will never work for reloading because Tim Hortons does require the security code to be matched and that won’t be possible if the Visa Gift Card issuer doesn’t support it.”

As of this writing, my wife still has only $1.97 on her Tim Card.

Is this the fault of 3V Visa? Well, the lack of demonstrated customer support on the weekend sure is.

And, if you purchased the 3V Visa pre-paid voucher, gave it to a friend or relative as a gift and they encountered the same situations as I had, how would you feel? How would they feel about you?

So far, still two thumbs way, way down.

You are better off purchasing a pre-paid gift card (if you must) from the retailer or shopping mall where you want them to purchase something. Or, better yet, take all of 60 seconds, withdraw the amount of money from your bank account and give it to the person to whom you intended to give this pre-paid card as a gift.

A lot less hassles and waste of your time on their part and on yours.

While the detailed account of my experiences are below, you are likely interested simply in my summary evaluation of the 3V Visa pre-paid voucher product.

Here it is.

Thumbs down.

Why?

In summary:

• Three on-line purchases I attempted over a 3 week period with very well known international retailers failed
• Customer support only replied to my situations during the week; there was no evidence of any weekend support
• 3V Visa pre-paid vouchers can only be used (as I am told) for on-line purchases.
• There are fees associated with this product in voucher amounts in excess of $20 ($2.95 for $30, $50 and $100 vouchers; $4.95 for $150, $250 and $500 vouchers). I am told these are ‘comparable to Interact fees for debit purchases or interest fees for traditional credit cards and there is no credit check (true, which can be useful for ome folks); however, the largest Interact fees I personally have received was $1 or $1.50 when I used an Interact outside of my bank’s own Interact system.

Now for the details of my experience.

And yes, while this might discourage other product and service providers from wanting us to evaluate their products in the future because of the bad review I am giving here, as a consumer you need to know about this.

I was invited (along with several others so I was told) to blog or Tweet about my experiences using a $20 3V Visa voucher. They were interested not in what I purchased but in my experience using the voucher.

Well, I don’t have an iPod and I refuse to pay for ring tones for my mobile phone, so $20 is not going to get me too far, especially when most on-line retailers charge shipping costs for low cost on-line purchases.

I have an upcoming project to tile the floor in one of our bathrooms, a DIY home renovation project which will surely see me go to my neighbourhood Home Depot outlet for some supplies.

So, I thought why not purchase a $20 Home Depot gift card with the $20 3V Visa voucher, especially since Home Depot does not charge shipping for these … at least that is what their web site stated.

So, I went on line to Home Depot Canada’s web site and made the purchase. Every thing went fine. I even Tweeted about how simple the experience was. It was a purchase just like using any credit card.

Then about 3 days later I received two automated emails from Home Depot indicating that my purchase of their gift card had been rejected.

Why?

The long and the short of it, as it was explained to me by the 3V Visa representative upon her subsequent research, was that Home Depot actually charges a $1 authorization fee on new credit or pre-paid cards which is reversed by them immediately after the transaction goes through. So, even though I could not find this practice on Home Depot Canada’s web site, it caused the transaction to subsequently fail.

Disappointingly, it should have failed at the time I was on their checkout web page and not indicate that that transaction had been accepted. As well, I should not have received a confirmation email from Home Depot a few seconds after I successful made the purchase using the 3V Visa voucher on their web site saying ‘all good’.

So, lesson to self. Never use the full amount of any prepaid card on Home Depot’s web site (or, for that matter why tempt fate on any other vendor’s web site as I am sure Home Depot is not alone in this practice). Shame on Home Depot for not making this clear.

Was this the fault of the 3V Visa prepaid voucher product? No. Was the customer support I received satisfactory? Yes. Rachel, on behalf of 3V Visa, was able to obtain me the above details on what happened within a few minutes of my email to her. That was great. However, one does have to keep in mind that she was not part of 3V Visa organization itself; rather, Rachel is part of a public relations type of firm. Would I receive the same service if I encountered an issue the next time I tried to use it?

Select this link to learn about my experiences when I attempted to use this financial product at as Canadian a retailer as there is……twice.

First, and most importantly, when we poured coffee it would overflow the spout on the carafe, especially when we made a full brew.

Second, when we unplugged it, the high pitched beep would bother our dog Sandy’s ears.

Now, does this look like a member of the family (a few days after her recent hair cut) whom one would want to hurt?

The response to that article was overwhelming in that it was one of the most commented articles we have written; about a simple home coffee maker no less.

So, today I thought I would write about a replacement coffee maker we recently purchased. This one, an Oster coffee maker (made by Sunbeam, actually) we picked up from our local Costco for all of $38! it was one of those bulk purchases which Costco makes all the time; they had lots of them.

I love it. Much less expensive than the President’s Choice coffee maker, does not spill when we pour coffee and when we unplug it (to conserve electricity of course ;)  ) it does not make a piercing beep to annoy Sandy.

Now, this coffee maker actually has a few more features than our last one. It has a setting which allows you to indicate if you want it to make a stronger batch. This is the setting we prefer. You can see in one of the pictures below the lighted red light indicating the stronger brew.

It can make up to 12 cups of coffee, has a timer, and all the features one would expect from a nice and a very nice home coffee maker.

As you can see in the picture below, while the carafe can hold 12 cups, the water reservoir looks like it can hold much more. This is one complaint I have about this model.

There is a small hole in the back of the unit, just behind the water reservoir. If one is not careful and pours just over 12 cups of water then it will come spilling out the back even though on the water gauge on the right side, as you can see in the picture below of our new coffee maker, it seems like the unit can hold much more water.

If you setup the unit with coffee and water first thing in the morning before you are really awake or last thing at night when you are thinking about the bed and not about making coffee), I can see one easily pouring more water in and causing a mess all because it looks like the water reservoir can hold a lot more than 12 cups. Not a biggie, just be careful.

Here is a picture of the area containing the coffee grounds. The arm you see directly above the filter and the coffee grounds swings well out of the way when you are entering the coffee; it is where the water is poured onto the coffee grounds once heated by the unit’s heating element.

How does the coffee taste? Well, for us it tastes as well as our prior appliance; no difference at all. The picture below of our new coffee maker shows the red button indicating a stronger brew for our first batch of coffee.

Lastly, the other feature we do not like is that once the brew is completed, five beeps sound to tell you that the brewing is completed and the coffee is ready. These beeps go un-noticed by Sandy, but are a little annoying. I don’t need to be told when the brew is finished, I can see and hear that no more water is entering the carafe. But, this is minor. I’ll have to go over the instructions which came with the unit to see if there is a way I can turn this off.

So, for $38, this kitchen appliance is a keeper; even at twice the price. Something to consider should you need to buy one for yourself or someone else in the future.

Reporter Ron Charles was interested in possible ways the ecoENERGY program could be improved in advance of the Federal Government’s Budget, both from my own experience as a Canadian home owner who had participated in the program as well as the experiences from visitors to our site, DailyHomeRenoTips.com.

So I invited Ron and his camera crew to our home.

You can see the full 2 minute segment, which aired on The National Tuesday evening of this week, by using this link to the Eco Extension? segment on CBC’s web site, CBC.ca. The portion in which we appear starts at about 1 minute into the segment.

Thank you to Ron for asking us in the first place. It was an interesting and fun experience. Perhaps we will be asked to do it again some time in the future.

The points which we made to improve the participation levels (less than 5% after a full two years)  included:

Make It Simpler

One reason why the now discontinued Home Renovation Tax Credit was successful as far as participation was that it was simple. The different types of expenditures included in the program were more generalized and therefore much easier to understand than those in the ecoENERGY program for home.

Financial Payback in 5 Years or Less

Households have plenty of more immediate needs for their disposable income than energy conservation devices. Food, mortgage, utilities, transportation, clothing, children’s education and retirement savings. Heck, even the RRSP program provides an almost immediate return on contributions through the refund on the person’s income tax return.

In our opinion, the majority of households will not invest large sums of money on energy conservations devices unless they are confident they will recoup their initial outlay in 5 years or less. Government grants within the ecoENERGY program need to address this need.

Include More Energy Conservation Products

During the segment we showed Ron the two energy conservation products we really like and use in our own home but which are not included within the ecoENERGY Residential Retrofit program.

First was the solar air heater. It produces air heated by the sun to supplement a home’s primary heating system. However, for us it will not provide a 5 year payback; it was just such a great concept, was simple to install (it took one full day) and produces heat without using any natural gas or home heating oil or electricity (except for the fan within the unit). If interested you can read about our experiences installing and using our solar air heater here in our Solar Air Heater series of articles.

The second were the exterior solar window blinds on our large south facing windows. This product was very simple to install (it took only a couple of hours, if that), reduces the temperature inside our home by 15 degrees Fahrenheit (per our digital temperature gauge) and paid for itself after the first summer by significantly reduced air conditioning bills. You can read about our experiences installing and using our exterior window shared from EZ Snap here in our Exterior Window Solar Blinds series of articles.

Make Both Energy Audits No Cost to Participating Households

Many, many utilities and cities in the USA provide a full home energy audit at no cost. With participation levels at around only 5% after the first 2 full years of the ecoENERGY Residential Retrofit program, one has to wonder how many more households would participate if they did not have to pay the $325 (approximately) for the first energy audited and another $175 (approximately) for the follow-up or second energy audit. Sure, many Provincial Governments, like Ontario’s, will refund $150 to the household for the cost of the first energy audit.

However, the concept of home energy audit is relatively new in Canada. And, with the existing complexities of the program, having to pay any money for the home energy audits does not motivate households to participate, even though it is to their own benefit in the long term if they do.

What are your thoughts on the ecoENERGY Residential Retrofit program? What do you think could be done to make more households participate? I’d like to know your thoughts.

So, I now install this second model 6131 Bell satellite receiver and call Bell customer support for what I thought would be the same step by step conversation I had the prior day when I tried to install the first unit. Below is a picture of the unit’s back so you can see the various input jacks.

Now, after reading out for the Bell customer support person the same types of registration numbers from the display on our TV for the HD satellite receiver, she then asked me to do something.

“Let’s now do the Switch Test, shall we?” she said.

My response was, “What is that? None of the 4 people I spoke to or text-ed with from Bell asked me to do that yesterday”. The long silence on the customer support person’s part spoke volumes.

Above is a picture of the Switch Test screen after the test. Before the test, only Port 1 for Satellite 91 was displayed while Port 2 for Satellite 82 column was empty.

After the test you can see the results. Now the HD satellite receiver had actually connected with both Satellites.

That was the reason why the installation process stalled the prior day.

Had the very first Bell customer support person instructed me to perform the test switch test, none of this wasted time and aggravation would have occurred.

And, if any of the other 3 Bell customer support people who I contacted to assist me had asked me if I performed a switch test, I would not have been forced to obtain a replacement unit.

The reason that the 26 and 32 transponders shows no signal strength as we wrote about previously; i.e. the switch test was not performed. Now they had great signal strength.

Once the switch test was done, then all of the downloads between the satellites orbiting the earth and our HD receiver want as they should have and within 15 minutes we had a beautify picture of the Super Bowl pre-game show.

So, if you ever find yourself with having to replace your satellite receiver, please be sure to have the customer support person instruct you to perform the switch test; otherwise you will waste a lot of time and have a very frustrating experience in trying to perform a home maintenance activity which should be very simple to do.

Learn from other people’s mistakes, in this case ours, so you don’t repeat it.

Until next time.

Today, we share with you the installation experience which, hopefully, you can learn from so you can train your provider’s customer service staff.

OK, so I am now home with the new model 6131 High Definition satellite receiver from Bell ExpressVu.  The 5 year old model 6111 receiver is on the left with the new model 6131 unit on the right in the picture below:

After making all of the connections within my home entertainment electric appliances to the new HD satellite receiver, I followed the installation instructions and called Bell ExpressVu.

After giving the Bell person on the phone the numbers displayed on the TV screen she said that it would take between 15 minutes and 2 hours before we could use the receiver, and that we should just leave th receiver on so it could do its thing.

Two hours later, nothing. After three hours I called back and spoke to a different customer support person who said that it should not be much longer; perhaps no more than a further 15 minutes.

Another hour later and no change, I decided to use Bell’s on-line chat option for customer support.

I was with this person, Rachel, for a good hour. She had me check the signal strength for transponders 01, 13, 26 and 32. The signal strength for the first two transponders was very strong, between 85 and 90%. However, there was absolutely no signal strength for transponders 26 and 32.

She then had me take our 10 year old model 2700 Bell non-HD satellite receiver from our bedroom and connect it to our home theatre. What she wanted to check is if our very old receiver would have good signal strength for all 4 of these transponders (not that I know what the heck a transponder is) or just for the same two as the 6131 HD receiver model.

This I did.

The old 2700 model receiver had strong signal strengths for all 4 of these transponders. So, she reached the conclusion that indeed I had picked up one of the rare defective HD satellite receivers and needed to exchange it for another unit.

Wow, and Super Bowl Sunday was the next day.

I went back on line to see what time the store opened on Sundays.

As you can see above, it clearly states that the Future Shop store opens at 10 am on Sundays, right?

Well, um, no. It was not until arrived at 10 am the next day, Sunday, did I see the sign in the front of the store that their web site was incorrect and that it actually did not open until 11 am. Sigh.

Well, at least I made good use of my time by going over to Home Depot to check out some tool rentals I was going to need for an upcoming tile installation project.

Note to self: Don’t believe everything you see on the Internet and check multiple sources.

Select this link to see how we should have been instructed to properly setup a HD satellite receiver for Super Bowl Sunday.

Let me do that now so (A) you have the full sense of my frustrations on the weekend and (B) you can hopefully avoid these for yourself. 

I went to the Future Shop store in our area where we purchased the original unit about 5 years ago.

The person who I spoke with over the phone was busy with another customer when I arrived so I dealt with another gentleman.

As mentioned yesterday, this satellite receiver was on sale for 25% less at one of their competitors.

When I mentioned this to this salesperson, he said that I was wrong.

He indicated that these receivers only go on sale for new subscribers to the satellite company’s service and that the reduced price was really in the form of activation credits or free movie channels for a month or two.

I told him that I was aware of this type of promotional practice and had already checked the competitor’s web site but could not find any asterisks or fine print.

He blew me off, not believing me.

Worse, he wouldn’t take the time to even check this out for himself to be sure who was right.

Sigh.

Perhaps I was wrong after all.

When I arrived home with the new satellite receiver and HDMI to DVI connector adaptor, the first thing I did was not to hook up the new HD satellite receiver, shown on top of its box in the picture below:

Rather, I went back on the Internet to the store’s competitor’s web site to check to see their price.

Sure enough I was right; there was no fine print or asterisk related to the sale price.

To be absolutely sure, I then called up the competitor’s store in our area and asked them to confirm the price which they did.

So, I called back the Future Shop store  to have a chat with the customer service person about this.

After a quick discussion she agreed that I was indeed correct. She also indicated that the sales associate should have at least checked the competitor’s web site to be certain rather than assuming I was wrong. That would have been easy enough to do as the store sells lots and lots of computers which are connected to the Internet out on display.

So, all I needed to do was to return in the near future with the receipt and I would receive both the $50 in price reduction plus $5 (10% of the price difference).

And, as I was to learn later that day, my return to the Future Shop store would be sooner than I would think, for my adventures in simply replacing a 5 year old HD satellite receiver were about to take a more frustrating turn.

Select this link to continue to our woes with the satellite TV’s customer service (so you can aviod them).

Now, with our TV being 5 years old, the newer HD satillite receivers no longer use the HDMI connection for 1080I High Definition technology.

Rather they now come with DVI inputs as home theatre techolobgy for the past few years is up to 1080P High Definition.

Is this a big difference?

Well, check out the picture below of the DVI input in the back of the new HD satellite receiver:

Compare the shape of the above DCI input in the new HD satellite receiver to the HDMI cable connection in the back of our now 5 year old rear projection HD television:

So in addition to the new satellite receiver I had to purhcase an HDMI to DVI video adapter.

I went home with the new receiver and this adapter., which you can see connected to the end of the HDMI cable in the picture below:

Once I placed the HDMI to DVI adapter at the end of the cable leading into the new High Definition satellite receiver a new set of issues arose.

I know, I know what you are thinking to yourself: “Boy, I’m glad this guy encounters all these issues and not me!”

Then again, without our special experiences we wouldn’t have as much to write about, right?

Next time, our new satellite receiver setup issues.