AstralPool Pandora Pilot Residential

Rubbish! – Our Pandora Pilot lasted 1 season before playing up. The bushings get elongated from wear and they aren’t available to buy. The drive belts that get stripped (as a result of the bushing wear) are expensive and without the ability to replace the bushings just get stripped within months. Customer service was disgraceful and I would never buy another Austral product as a result.  Show details

Terrible – Complete waste of money. Gets stuck in the shallow end and I have to force it to go where it needs to be. Now refuses to work at all and the cost of the part required to fix it is almost as much as the whole thing cost! Absolute rubbish!

Failed after 4 months, lost during repair, got old replacement cleaner – I bought this Pandora Smart Robot Pool Cleaner Robot for 1400 $, but should have read the reviews first. It did its work well, although it is quite a pain having to remove the leaves and dirt from this bag in the cleaner, that looks like a piece of underwear. After about 4 months, the robot ceased all work and I brought it in for repair. They were… Read more

busy, I was told and it would take 3 weeks. After 6 weeks I called and was promised another 2 weeks. Two weeks later they gave me a robot from the same brand that was not mine, it had completely different stickers on them.

So I brought it back and was promised another pool cleaner of equal value within 2 weeks. 4 weeks later heard nothing, so tried again and they quickly sent one. This was even worse, the replacement was a very old Pandora Smart, that was full of scratches, the rollers had tears etc etc. I got furious and told them I would take this further. I contacted Choice, the consumer organization, who told me they should replace for new. I went back to them and 3 weeks later I got a pool robot, which is from the same company, this time not yellow but blue and the opening to clean are at the top.

This replacement robot is one step below the level that I had but I am sick and tired of Astral Pools so just kept it and put up with some extra handwork to clean the pool.

My advice: never go with Astral Australia products, you can not trust them.

Love it - has made my pool maintenance so easy – I have a vinyl lined pool in an area where there is heavy leaf and gum tree seeds falling. The creepy crawly I had just wasn't able to do a thorough enough clean and of course when the creepy crawly is on there is no surface skimming so items would build up on the surface and eventually sink unless I was manually skimming every day and sometimes… Read more

2-3 times a day. The Pilot has done an excellent job and I only use it every few days in the summer and once a week in the winter (depending on the tree droppings). After 2 yrs had to replace the drive belts as the traction treads had worn down and the Pilot wasn't traveling around as it should. That is easy and you can do it yourself as the manual steps you through it. Only cost around $25 for a new set of drive belts and now good as new - 3 years on.

Terrible Product – We bought the Pandora wit our pool. It worked ok for the first season but failed the next. We call Astral Pools and also found their customer service crap. They were rude and aggressive about not fixing it. We finally got if repairs )(that took 4 weeks), it worked well but then had the same problem within 3 months, sent it back to Astral after… Read more

much arguing with their customer service (I use the term loosely) and this took another 4 weeks to repair. We got it back and all working fun till 8 months later same problem. We asked for a refund and was flatly refused. They assured us that this time they had fixed the problem that was April 2014. Guess what now Feb 2015 and we have the same problem. It stays in one spot and does not move.

Don't buy the product it does not last and the warranty service from Astral is crap.

Very good service from unit, but you need to keep it clean – The unit is robust very easy to service &store. The thing I don't like is to get drive belts & or spare parts for it the support from the manufactures is very poor. W.A. has over 2 million people these days, surely you shud have ONE agent that has a full spare parts inventory so all sales agents could get parts the same or next day. It is 2015 guys.

Terrible product – It is hopeless, goes back and forth in the same spot and if it goes over a very dirty spot it blows all the debris out the top. We have had it sent away twice to be fixed , we kerp getting told there is nothing wrong witj it, i filmed it today doing a horrible job and will be posting to company asap. The worst cleaner ever. Expensive, in efficient Everything

Terrible Customer Service, Expensive Spare Parts but good cleaner (when it works) – To be honest, the cleaner worked excellently for about 18 months but then it stopped working. When I took it back to Astral Pools to be checked the 'service manager' who was rude, arrogant and abrupt, advised me it was a fault with one of the two motors but it wouldn't be fixed under warranty as "I had been leaving it in the pool". Although I… Read more

advised her I hadn't been leaving it in the pool, she refused to fix it but advised me I could pay to get it fixed. $800 for a new motor or if I preferred, I could buy a brand new one from them!!

It wasn't until they received a letter with the threat of being reported to the Department of Commerce that they suddenly changed their minds and fixed it. Now don't be thinking we all went home happily ever after, because now the battery pack thingy has just stopped working and that's $450 to replace. Does what it says on the box - cleans the pool. Bad warranty service, expensive spare parts and don't expect to get more than 2 years out of it.

Excellent product support – The Pandora Smart has proven to be an even better product than I had hoped, it saves me heaps of time every week. Initially I found it would not climb the walls, however after about three cycles is cleaning the walls like a dream. Had a small issue with the filter bag which was promptly follwed up by Astral Pools, who went to a lot of trouble to… Read more

resolve the issue and going beyond my expectations. Would recommend this pool cleaner happily. Awesome time saver, no more brushing or vacuuming! Picks up every single leaf ! Took a couple of cycles to get it to climb the walls, all good now though.

Astral not interested in warranty – Got a Pandora Pilot when we got our pool, it did a great job of cleaning the bottom of the pool- never went up the sides though. When it stopped working all together that was when the bad experience started. Astral pools where rude on the phone and down right aggressive about the work that needed repairing. It was repaired and returned to us after… Read more

weeks with parts missing , and I even had suspicions it wasn't the same pandora we dropped off!! After providing photos of our concerns, it was just wrapped up with an email saying the only thing they would do was send the missing parts-end of story and no more discussion. So now we have a pool cleaner that goes up the walls of pool and gets stuck in places it never did before. So buy one at your own risk. Did the job After sales warranty it terrible

Never going back to auto pool cleaners – Bought this cleaner over a year ago and pool has never looked better, saves your pump form working too hard and allows the skimmer to skim. Amazing what this thing picks up and for the price, it has not needed any attention in the year except for emptying out the bag.