New user here, just came to vent.
Just to give some context, I live in Romania, where apnea isn't very well researched or understood. There's only one public hospital with a wing dedicated to sleep disorders, and a handful of somnologists in private hospitals. I got lucky when a colleague heard me sleeping and suggested I'd make an appointment. All DME providers seemed a bit sketchy from the get-go.
I found out about the recall yesterday by accident while searching for a new hose (wanted to type in "philips dreamstation hose") and Google being helpful as always with their auto-complete suggested "philips dreamstation recall" before I could finish typing. I read some articles and became a bit concerned. I never used an ozone cleaner, but summers here get very hot and humid.
These guys that I was renting my Dreamstation Auto from send me a monthly bill and confirm it manually via e-mail, so there's no excuse like forgetting to tell me. We were always in contact.
So I send them an e-mail (Philips even made regional pages for all EU countries suggesting to stop using their machines, and I included it) while looking for replacements. I tell them to contact me immediately and ask them why they didn't do anything to notify me.
I get a call this morning from them, and the guy in charge tries to tell me there's no actual issue, that Americans are sue-happy and it's only a problem there, that it only affects ozone cleaners, that he didn't want to scare me, and so on. I cite the notice regarding the health issues and that not only ozone cleaners affect it, and that I'd appreciated they'd be honest with me. Then the guy goes on a long rant, saying that all other CPAPs actually face the same issue, that there is a problem but only a minor chance of anything happening, that cat hair is way more dangerous for my lungs if I own one (I don't, and I chuckled a bit on how silly this got),
all the way to saying it's a conspiracy between DME manufacturers and Philips taking the fall as they have other businesses to lean on. I immediately told him I'll cancel my contract and I'll drop off everything next week, and only then did he start telling me that he could get me a replacement, he'll give me a discount, the whole spiel. Too late.
I found a local DME provider that's the local branch of an international company, and they didn't believe me at first that the company I had a contract with were still selling and renting out affected Philips units. They luckily had a Resmed Airsense 10 Autoset in stock and here I am, 750€ lighter but with some peace of mind.
I'll probably spend some time browsing these forums from now on.
