Importance of Buying a High Quality Dog Kennel
As you know we buy a lot of these kennel crates, in fact this is about the 6th this year as we expand and our dogs continue to grow.
With the plastic kennels, we've never had a problem, because they all seem to be pretty standard, though I'm sure there are some lower quality of those out there as well.
With the metal crates we've started using, they've been great for portability, since they can easily fold up and be taken on the road.
The last two we bought have been through HEAVY use over the last few months and are one of the biggest sizes available (the 48" length). We've taken them on several road trips, folded and unfolded them dozens of times, and even set luggage on them in the car for hours at a time.
They've both held up perfectly and function just like the day we got them, so when we decided to add another one, we figured they were all pretty much the same.
We found one on Amazon at a great price, with promises of high quality and great customer service, so we ordered it. When it came, I was a little disappointed right off the bat because there was a piece of scrap metal on the plastic pan, and since it was black against a black background I could have easily missed it and one of the dogs could have swallowed it.
I was thankful I caught it and moved on to unfolding it and setting it up for the first time. But, this felt much flimsier than our others and didn't seem to fit together right. Then when I got to the doors and latches, I knew this was not a keeper.
The front standard door is out of line so that latching and unlatching the gate takes significant force and time, compared to our other two which are each by different makers but have wonderful smooth and easy secure latches.
Then, the side door was a complete disaster. I could see one of the loop-arounds was already disconnected and again the latch was even worse. As I tried to force it unlatched, the entire door came off the hinges and because of the one that was already unhooked and too small, it won't even go back on.
Now we have a low-quality and completely useless kennel and are hoping the company will live up to their promise of great customer service by refunding us our full original purchase price plus shipping and pay for return shipping.
I'll give them the benefit of the doubt in that this was possibly a return from someone else that was then forwarded on by mistake, especially judging by the crumpled and ripped instruction sheet.
They stood by their product in their original response (which is a great sign) and requested a picture of the problems, so I figured a video would be easier and more clear:
I'll update you when I hear back from them...
