Sawyer Water Filter Refuses To Work With Small Business

Sawyer Water Filter Refuses To Work With Small Business

In recent communication, EveryDay Preppers reached out to do a Product Review with the Sawyer Water Filter and compare it to several of the top brands like the new Renovo MUV and the long established Life Straw and Survivor Water Filters as well as several others.

First, I would like to say we have already done in initial product review of this product months ago based on personal research but not based on personal experience testing the water filter. My intentions were to follow up with my own personal experiences and show the Good Vs Bad / Pro’s Vs Cons and possibly compare it to others on the market.

After weeks of reaching out to them only to be ignored for additional information about their product I finally was able to get someone from the company thru their Facebook page overseas who suggested another Facebook page that was supposedly in the USA Facebook page. The USA Page also ignored us for some time before finally responding. I was finally given a point of contact for Sawyer. We contacted Kelsey Myers (Title Unknown) who asked us to fill out a questionnaire and application. All of this before she would offer us information about the product.

I would say I have heard mixed reviews about this product but the overall conscience was good and it does appear to be highly recommended in certain circles. One of the major benefits was that it can be used with its built in thread design to be screwed to a standard soda bottle or water bottle or can be used as an inline filter and straw configuration. This to me is the top three benefits besides the obvious filtration numbers and specs. All of this is based on their own videos and hand full of other public reviews like the one I wanted to do. Keep in mind like others on the market, this is a Hollow Fiber Filter Only and does have its limitations in filtration. While I did initially ask for a donation of one units, the Mini Filter or Squeeze, I had no issue with purchasing one but after their reluctance to provide basic information about their product and what I take is a standoff approach to people inquiring about the product, red flags started going up for me and I started investigating the company even more. When I initially wrote Mrs. Myers, I received an auto response that show she would be out of the office for a month and it gave me another point of contact. Keep in mind, I also wrote the company thru their Web Site Contact Us tab several times only to be ignored there too with no one following up to talk to us! So, what’s the next step? Write the person Myers suggested Mary ? (Again: Title Unknown for her either). I wrote Mary only to also be ignored and then we received an email from Myers with that long questionnaire and application to fill out before she would provide too us any information about the Sawyer Products. After filling out the questionnaire and completing all the requested information here is her reply: Thank you for reaching out to us and for your interest in our products.  We are happy to hear that there is ample interest for our products in your store however we have active partnership agreements with “local retailers which we would like to prioritize over competing internet sales”.

First allow me to state, I never said I would offer the products via our online store only! We might would have considered it for our store if we found it to be as good as they want you / us to believe. But we also have to look out for our customer base and what they would like us to carry. I will say her comments didn’t quite make since. I wanted to do a review of the products and possible offer it at trade shows we attend throughout the South if we found it to be a good fit for our company but first things first, do a product review in person. My other thoughts were she wanted to show favoritism to local retailers over internet sale, which again is not the things we might do as a means of offering this product “IF” we decided to carry it. Notice she skirted the issue of Trade Show events and us offering this product to the masses at events we attend. My other thought was that you cannot Google Sawyer without countless internet retailers popping up over local retailers (See Image). So, who is she protecting the local retailers or other Online Retailers like Amazon who are by the way, individual retailers like myself selling their wares. She / Sawyer is not showing fair business practices across the board and this seems odd for a company that wants to help the community to segregate an entire group of small business owners, or she was just not being fair to us.

Is this not suspect to you? Is this not illegal? Isn’t fair business practices covered under Federal Law? Click on the images to see all the online retailers they say they do not allow to sell their products...

So, my next thought was to write her back informing her of my history in emergency management and my goals for EveryDay Preppers to help educate others and shine a light on valued products that benefit others lives thru our product reviews. While I may feel this is initially a viable product I now have my reservations about it simple because of the treatment shown to me and my company for information about this product being what appears to be very one sided. So, to recap. Sawyer and its representative state they want to show priority (favortism) to local retails but cannot provide a list of those local retailers in my area or the areas I travel too and the fact you can find them readily available all over the internet voiding what Myers stated about internet sales competitions. The only retailer I know of in my area that offers this is WalMart so, once more she is showing unfair business practices and showing favoritism to the big box store over small businesses like ours?

The bottom line is while the product may be good and I never said it was bad their business practices and rhetoric is something you might want to consider when purchasing one of these products. Do you want to contribute to or purchase from a company that really doesn’t want to help the little person? History has proven catering to one group and not being fair across the board in business, especially businesses that doesn’t care about the products they carry, it is just another item on their shelf can be detrimental to the success of the company at large. They forget about the grassroots efforts of us Product Reviewers & Bloggers and those trying to shine a light on good products. If it wasn’t for the efforts of Reviewers and those willing discuss products, where would companies like this be?

In closing I will say I have written both people back plus both Social Media pages and their company emails and non will not reply to my inquiries, this says a lot about them and the persons behind their company. I could go out and purchase a Sawyer as I stated but I feel that would that go against my efforts to shine a light on a valued company that cares about product reviews and cares about what the grassroots efforts thinks of their products? In the mean time, Life Straw, Survivor and Renovo has reached out to us and we will be working with them in the near future. Time will tell if I will go ahead and give them money for a Sawyer product, I do plan to go forward and do more product reviews on other water filters and Yes, we might carry & showcase what we feel is a good product going forward. This is the purpose after all, to shine a light on products we feel are good for the community at large, if Sawyer doesn’t want the help of the community, time will tell for the longevity of their company.

When you prove time & time again you don’t care about people and you are selling a product for people, they will wake up and see behind the curtain. How long will Big Box care about Sawyer before they stop purcahsign their items due to low sales numbers? How many people will it affect when Sawyer lays their people off and shuts down plants because Mr. Big Box stops buying in bulk? Thank you for once again checking out our articles and for following us here on the World Wide Web. These are the comments of the reporter and freedom of speech is a power tool.

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God Bless, EDP