Pristiva Primer and Activator

[PoolDoc]

Hi Geoff;

While I appreciate your attempts to support the value of your product, nothing you've said here is likely to persuade me, or any of the moderators and contributors here that your product has any value, except as a means of boosting income for Compass and its dealers. While I appreciate that novel but un-patentable products can be protected by obscuring their nature, I'm sure you can appreciate that useless old products can be obscured the same way . . . and yet acquire a new and marketable cachet via a catchy sounding trademark, like "X20" for example.

I gather that Compass is new to the pool industry.

Many of us are not. Speaking only for myself, I've witnessed 30 years of product shyster-ism by both small businesses and big corporations. During that time, I've learned -- often through painful and personal experience -- that most of what claims to be "new and improved" is neither.

We can accept at face value your claim that the Pristiva products are not yet another re-incarnation of the various blends of borax, polyphosphates, and copper that have played such a large role in the "new and improved" products foisted on naive consumers over the last decade.

But the fact that Pristiva's products aren't like those in no way supports the premise that they have any unique value.

The simple reality is that it's not hard to prove that your products work. If you've done so, show us the beef, so to speak. You can take a look at the China Shop, and quickly determine that there are a number of us here who are quite comfortable reading peer-reviewed scientific literature.

We've seen -- and archived -- your brochures, and aren't really very impressed. I'm not going to reproduce the article I published years ago on "Blue Water Voodoo", but years before Compass even dreamed of Pristiva, I explained in some detail how I could hire a "gold neck-chain sales promoter" and sell fancy jugs filled with blue water and silicone thickener AND provide a 120% money-back guarantee AND make money doing so.

You inform us you are active in the APSP. Not to put to fine a point on it, but so what? The APSP is, as the NSPI was, dominated by the corporate chemical players, and reflects their interests, not those of pool owners.

For the past 3 decades, chemical company after chemical company has attempted to make gold out of feathers, by creating a putative 'need' for specialty chemicals, thus allowing them to escape the nasty and low profit margins that come from selling mere commodities. The great majority of these products are unnecessary 90% of the time; the remainder are NEVER needed. Your 22 years in the industry means that it is likely that you have worked for one of these companies. And, it means that you know -- as I do -- that in the pool industry a "developmental chemist" is not someone who researches new and more efficient ways to manage pool chemistry, but rather is usually someone who re-blends the 15 or 20 existing pool chemicals into new mixes that can be sold as "new" and "improved" and (more expensive at retail) and (less expensive to make).

In 30 years, I've seen possibly 4 new chemical products, in TOTAL: the chitosan products, the enzymes, the lanthanum phosphate removers, and the new CuLator products. CuLator is the only one of those that might have significant specific value -- IF it works. The chitosans are another way to clarify, not a particular better way. The enzymes may -- or may not -- be occasionally valuable. And now the "ESSENTIAL" lanthanum products have suddenly become non-essential, with China closing down the supply.

So, in 30 years, there has not been a single, proven, SIGNIFICANT new chemical product. But there have been hundreds, maybe thousands, of chemicals that claimed to be all those things. So, just by the historical odds, it's 100 to 1 that your product even works differently, and it's 500 to 1 that the difference (if it exists) matters.

You want us to trust you? Fine. Prove that you are NOT like all the other chemical companies that have gone before you!

You don't want us to know what's in your product? That's fine, too. But PROVE that it works or we will be convinced that your well written post, filled with vague and meaningless implications of value, is all the substance Pristiva has to offer.

You wrote:

Also, years of intensive research and development are behind Pristiva and its superior performance has been verified by independent, third party testing.

Fine. Send them to us. We'll read them very carefully.

Until you do, we'll continue warn people not to waste their money on products with vague and unproven claims.