Home > Consumer Reviews > Ionic Pro CA200T Twin Pack Compact Ionic Air Purifier with Bonus Car Ionizers

I guess my first review got rejected for the mention of a certain website regarding the word ripoff. This was a fairly important point, so I'll try to make note of why. Unfortunately my first review was a little better, but here goes:

First I'll give a report of my experiences with product failure and customer service, then I'll give some general impressions after using the unit for a little less than a year.

Recently my red 'clean' light came on, and no matter how clean the blades and wires were, the clean light would come on after the unit was powered on. This happens after 11 months of mostly continuous use.

I emailed Ionic pro, and got a phone number to call. I called this number and they gave me another phone number to call. It turns out that the first phone number was for Ionic Pro sales, and the second was for retail sales (even though my email specified "I bought this thing from Amazon").

The second phone call resulted in the need to troubleshoot. Since I had done some research online, and since I had a second unit, I knew it was the unit itself - not the blades. If I didn't have the twin pack I wouldn't have had the ability to diagnose this problem - with or without the service representative.

It could have been the blades - apparently running the unit on high power shortens the blade life. The blades "dull" and must be replaced. Or something in the body of the unit breaks and the whole unit needs replaced.

My option was as follows. Fax a copy of my sales receipt to a bogus fax number. This is where my first review was stopped. Looking this phone/fax number online gave disturbing results leading me to believe it was a bogus fax (the ripoff report).

After (or in addition to faxing) I had to ship the unit to them with a copy of the receipt. When they got the unit they would call me for my credit card number so they could ship a new unit. The joke here, is that I pay to ship the broken unit to them, and I pay for shipping on the new unit. I have no idea how much it would cost for me to ship to them, but the shipping of the new unit via USPS was $29.99. So I can only imagine that my under warranty replacement would cost me roughly $60. The replacement process seems rather inefficient, costly, and has some suspicious details.

I must say the representative on the second phone call was nice and helpful. But the service options are disappointing.

All in all, this product is fairly noisy. When it buzzes you are supposed to lift a little lever to clean the wires, this hardly makes a difference. It was quiet for a few days, then I was never able to attain silence again - no matter how clean everything looked.

There is also an annoying bright blue LED that leaves a nice bright spot on the ceiling. Sure this could be covered up with tape.

After a few weeks of what I thought was success with this product, I almost bought a set for my parents. I'm certainly glad I didn't. Given the costs of under warranty replacement, the sale price is no real bargain. I have yet to decide whether I'll return the unit and pay IP another $60, but I doubt it.

Love the purifier. I have a 1000 sq ft townhouse, so use this one downstairs. (bought this exact one elsewhere, but didn't get 2) - it's a great price if I didn't already have one.. I bought one for $100. I know when it's time to clean it, because it makes a static noise, almost like a bug zapper.. but not that loud.

The car ionizer is useless to me. First off, when you plug it in, this annoying blue light comes on, and you can't turn it off. At night, it's really distracting while you're driving, and I didn't see a difference in my SUV. My vent air freshener works better than that thing.

I was very pleased with these units until about a month ago. I had them running continously for about 11 months...then both units started giving the red "clean" light no matter how clean they are. Several other people have written about this problem, so I won't do into further frustrating details.

Bottom line: only buy these if you don't mind having them go bad for no apparent reason after about a year of use. It looks like Amazon offers a warranty for purchase, so that might be the way to go - but be sure to read the fine print to make sure you'll be able to have the units replaced when they inevitably go bad!

I bought these February 2008 for my girlfriend and her daughter. They have allergies plus cats, and needed some help cleaning the air in their home. The products worked great for about 8 months or so. The units started acting up after that; even after cleaning the blades the units would immediately go into a "clean" indicator mode and not work. I Googled for an answer to the problem and it seems that the issue is a common one. I also saw that people called Ionic for customer service would be told that they would receive a call back from a technician but never were called back.

I called Ionic on a Friday and was told I would receive a call back shortly. By Tuesday afternoon I had not heard from them. Wednesday I called back and told them that I had not received a call back. They took my number and I did later receive a call. I spoke to Joe who should be working for Dell tech support based on his strong Indian accent. After giving him a brief description of the problem he asked if I could fax proof of the purchase date. I said yes. He said that the units would be replaced, but that I would have to ship the old units back at my expense, and then pay $29.95 PER UNIT shipping for the new warranty replacements. I estimated that I would spend $90-$100 and a lot of time to get new units that (according to the message boards on Google) would also fail shortly, and I would again be back talking to Joe.

As of now I have not returned the units nor will I.

The units DID work well, were attractive and small, quiet (except for some sizzling--but that told me that they were working), and were easy to clean.

As I said...BUYER BEWARE---you chose.

I ordered the pair of these a month ago and couldn't really tell a big difference when we had them on. They need to be cleaned ever 5 days or so. But, recently we've noticed when coming back from being away for several days that our house really doesn't smell like our dogs anymore. It's not a smell that we would typically notice until we were gone for a few days. Now, the smell is gone. As I said, they do need cleaning fairly often. However, it's really not very difficult to clean them. It takes about 1-2 minutes and requires a paper towel. Overall, when looking at the prices of these compared to others, these seem to be a great value. I would recommend them to others.