Leslie
Defective product, terrible service
Terrible experience. I ordered the Maxwell-901BH 1 Person Ultra-Low EMF Far Infrared Sauna on a Black Friday online sale. When I received it, there was wood splitting off the casing of several heating elements,and one of the frames was cracked apart along the top side. These defects were clearly the result of poor workmanship. Trying to get help by phone was nearly impossible, and took several days. Their website says to call Kate during US business hours, and after hours, to call Frankie. Kate never answers the phone, and then the line disconnects, no way to leave a message. So much for troubleshooting in real time with the product warranty I purchased. I had to resort to email to communicate with Kate at all. In her emails, Kate took no responsibility for the broken pieces, blamed the shipper, and then said she wants to send me new parts. I refused, then she said I should send the whole thing back, and then she’ll ship me a new unit, once received. After all the emails back and forth, I tried to call Kate again, no luck. I called after hours, and Frankie answered the phone by saying “Hello.” That’s it, like am I calling a real company? I suspect this is Frankie’s cell phone, and he has other jobs elsewhere. When I explained to Frankie that I wanted to talk to Kate, and why can’t I get her on the phone, he told me, “Kate doesn’t speak English.” I was just astounded. At that point, I demanded a full refund. Through many emails back and forth with Luna and Kate, at first I was told it was up to another team to determine if this could be done. They wanted to examine my return to see if it “qualifies” for a refund or a replacement. By that time, I was done with them and said that I had lost trust in them as a company and could not move forward with a replacement. After days of back and forth, they finally agreed to a full refund. I had to pay a handyman out of pocket to properly repack the many boxes and send them back. Their entire support staff is overseas, which can be doable. You can find highly skilled, competent professionals if you are willing to pay them a generous living wage. It is inexcusable that a US based company has a customer service phone rep, working US business hours, who doesn’t answer the phone, and doesn’t speak English. I did some research after my bad experience. Multiple reviewers on multiple sites also complain about damaged products and bad service. Every response from Salus to these negative reviews is the same. They are sorry, and intend to do better. They have promised to replace problematic staff, and yet, their current service team is still incompetent. 3 months after my debacle with Salus Heat, I see Kate is still running the daytime service hours. As predicted, their response to my review is to blame the shippers for their inferior product, and make more excuses for their incompetent customer service team. The products are sub-standard. My sauna was not damaged by shipping, the container was beautifully packed and protected. They are maximizing their profit margins by producing a cheap product, using various drop shippers they can blame when anything goes wrong, and having low-level, likely underpaid overseas staff. If you buy from Salus, do so at your own risk.
Response from SalusHEATMar 6, 2026
Hi Leslie, Thank you for taking the time to share your detailed feedback. We sincerely apologize for the frustration and disappointment you experienced with your sauna and our customer service. This is not the experience we want any of our customers to have. Red cedar is a naturally soft wood, which can sometimes make it more vulnerable to damage during shipping. While we take great care in packaging, we clearly need to strengthen our process, and we appreciate you bringing this to our attention. We are truly sorry for the difficulties you faced when trying to reach us by phone and for the confusion around our team. We have teams working in different countries to help us offer quality products at competitive prices, but we understand that communication fell short in your case. That is on us, and we are actively working to improve. We offered to replace your unit and later approved a full refund, but we recognize that the process was frustrating and took far too long. We are reviewing our return and refund procedures to make them smoother and more transparent for our customers. Again, we are sorry we let you down. Your feedback is helping us become better, and we are grateful for that. Warmly, The SalusHeat Team



