Tayt O.
Bad product with no real help from the company.
Maybe the epoxy is good, but I’ll never get to find out due to a bad pigment. I purchased a HyperREZ kit (3 gallons) with ford blue pigment. First off, for some reason my shipment was sent from Chicago to Norfolk VA via Las Cruces NM. Not sure how that happened but it add a week to a shipment that should have taken two days. Then when I opened the boxes a couple of days ago, the cans had taken an obvious beating and the was some leakage and cured epoxy on the bottom. It looked like I had enough epoxy resin to do the job, so no harm no foul. The issue is when I opened the Ford blue pigment can I found that the pigment had the consistency of two-year-old taffy. The directions tell you to mix the pigment before adding to the part b of the epoxy resin but there was no way I was going to be able to mix this pigment due to its thickness. I called George to verify that this was the way the pigment should look and feel. I took pictures of the box and of the consistency of the pigment and sent them to George. He assured me that that was about right and that I could take some MEK and thin the pigment. The problem is, I had to take a can opener and open the bottom of the pigment can just to get the pigment out of the can. I had to press it from one side with a broom stick to get it to come out the other side of the can. In doing so I had about 20% product loss because the pigment stuck to the inside of the can. It was nearly impossible to work with and was ripping the fingers off of the gloves that I was wearing while trying to remove the pigment from a now razor-sharp can. Once I got as much pigment out of the can as I could, I placed it in a 5 gallon Home Depot bucket. I was told I could thin the pigment and mix it with part B of the epoxy. I was told to keep mixing until the pigment dissolved into part B of the Epoxy. 30 minutes later I now had blue, watery part B and an inch to inch and a half of pigment laying on the bottom of the bucket solid as a rock. There is no way the pigment should have been in that state when I received it. When I spoke with George about the status of the part B and pigment he told me I wasn’t using the right mixing blade. The blade I was using was a halo style mixing blade and he told me I had to have a Jiffy style blade. The halo blade I was using was essentially half of a jiffy style blade. Not only that but the blade would have zero effect on the consistency of that pigment. I understand that George is not the technical person I would need to speak with, but there is no way this kit should be this hard just to get it into the correct state to deploy. It would be the equivalent of a customer complaining that their car can’t do 70 miles an hour and the car dealer saying they should be using a five layer air filter instead of a three layer filter. George is a nice guy and genuinely tried to help but there was something wrong with that pigment and all he wanted to do was blame the mixing blade. I’m now out hundreds of dollars and have an absolutely useless epoxy Kit in a box. There was no attempt to even make it right, just a statement that he would call the manufacturer on Monday. I had a feeling that the pigment wasn’t right from the beginning but was told over and over again that the blue pigment is a thicker pigment. I guess I didn’t do a good enough job explaining exactly how thick it was, but I did send him videos and pictures showing exactly how thick it was. I could not even press my fingers into the pigment. That just can’t be right. Oh well, lesson learned. Some lessons are more expensive than others and this one cost me time and money. At least I didn’t attempt to actually deployed the defective epoxy on my prepped garage floor.
Response from Exterior Performance Coatings, LLCNov 15, 2018
Replacement pigment and epoxy was shipped to customer at no charge to replace product that did not perform as expected. All mfg of epoxy we work with recommend a Jiffy Style drill mixer be used for proper mixing and dispersing of pigments (has blades on both top and bottom of mixing head).