I'm looking at replacement filters for a Britta water pitcher and I noticed that some places online have the filters for $5 to $10 cheaper for a pack of 3 on average than they cost in stores. I'm kind of leery about buying water filters online though because I know how much knockoff producers love consumables like water filters, and the last thing I need is to get some knockoff filters from China after some genius decides putting lead dust in the filter will protect me from harmful nuclear radiation.

When I look at Britta's website, they say to change filters once every 2 months. If I can get a $10 filter to last me 2 months I'll be tickled. I can go through $10 worth of bottled water in less than a week. So I'm wondering, considering that when I go straight to Brita's online store and get an error page that makes me feel uncomfortable about using their store, where I should get them and how I can tell if I have knockoff filters ?

I've been using a Brita pitcher for years and years now and I love it. I buy a big pack of 10 filters from Costco for like $45.00. The filters usually last me two months and I can tell when they have about had it because the water starts to taste more metallic like it does straight out of the faucet. I'm pretty sure they are not knock off filters. I don't see how they can be as long as the Brita logo is pasted all over them. Plus Costco is a pretty reputable store.

I ended up getting one of these Culligan pitchers from Walgreens for about $10.



I like it so far, the first thing I did was pour a glass of water and let it sit for awhile. Usually I end up with stuff settled on the bottom of my glass, but I didn't get any of that with the water that came out of my pitcher.

I read some of the reviews at Walgreens website, and two out of the three reviews say the pitcher pours badly. I don't think those people are used to using pitchers. They're probably impatient and try to full on dump the water out as fast as possible with a full pitcher.

I haven't filled mine up all of the way yet. My first fill I only filled the top once and left it in the fridge, which if you look at the box leaves me with about half of the bottom chamber filled. So far I've been pouring a glass or two and filling the top when it looks like doing so will leave me with maybe three quarters of the bottom full. Then again, maybe those people are fulling the top, and trying to pour a glass of water before it filters through. I could see how it would leak on you then.

In any event, I haven't had a problem with the pitcher leaking. My non-filter pitcher I used for tea used to leak on me if I tried to pour too fast. Just like a coffee pot would. I guess I've just been using pitchers long enough that paying attention to a pitchers pour pace is something that comes naturally to me now.

I didn't price the filters, but I figure worst case scenario I just buy a new pitcher for $10 when my filter quits working. The filter's supposed to be good for 50 gallons of water, which works out to $0.20 a gallon. That's cheaper than the going to the refill station down the street ($0.25 a gallon) and I don't have to make a special trip for water. Again, worse case scenario, I doubt the filters cost that much and I get I could sell my old pitcher to one of the day labor people across the street for $5 anyways.



You'd be surprised how many knockoff products have packaging that looks exactly like the original products package.

You have bits in your tap water? That would do my head in. Other than the water being very hard around here, it's fine to drink unfiltered - I drink two or three litres of it a day on average.





I agree that some counterfeit goods are very hard to tell from the original, but I'd imagine Costco are careful of their sources though- selling knockoff stuff wouldn't do a whole lot for their reputation. If you found them very cheap in a little corner shop somewhere, then you'd be right to be suspicious, but surely not somewhere like Costco? A recent sting on counterfeit goods here turned up a load of dodgy designer label clothing recently - rather than destroy it, it was giving to a homeless type charity, who rebranded it all with their own logo and gave it to the needy, which I thought was a much nicer idea than just destroying it all!

(As an aside, I was introduced to Costco whilst staying with my cousin and his wife in Canada about ten years ago - I loved the place, and wished there was one here. There are a few over here nowadays, but none within a reasonable enough distance to make the journey worthwhile...)

Whatever it is, it's white and it clumps together. Especially when the water is cold.
Sometimes if I leave my shower running so the water heats up before I get in, the whole bathroom smells like a public pool (chlorine) when I go in there.
Occasionally there is a heavy salt taste to the water. I've made ice cubes with it that can completely ruin a glass of water, soda, tea, etc forcing me to pour that glass out.

It's one of the contributing factors to why I'd drink so much soda before. While the soda was probably worse for me that whatever is in the water, it had the benefit of being a commercially packaged product and subconsciously it seems safer than water with a chlorine smell, salty taste, and white clumps settling on the bottom.

I'm not sure how tea affected the water, but putting ice cubes in my glass of tea would sometimes taint my tea. I can also make it to the store and buy some soda quicker than I can make tea.

With this water pitcher now though, I just pour a glass or two then put more water in there. Very little work/time involved with maintaining this at all.

Wow, I thought California's water was bad when I lived there. The water actually looked sorta yellow when it came out of the faucet. You couldn't drink that water before filtering it first. Up here in Washington the water can be drinkable without it filtered. The water is clear and leaves no clumps of anything at the bottom of the glass after it sits for a minute. It depends on where you live I guess because I drank tap water out of my friend's house and couldn't taste any metal, but when I drink out of my tap, I taste a very faint metal flavor and I can't stand it so I have to filter it.

The water tastes a lot different after being filtered, that's for sure. It tastes like bottled Dasani water. I've been making my tea with water filtered through the pitcher and the tea tastes different too. I've been trying to re-evaluate how I make my tea because of how different it tastes.

I have a friend that lives in Plant City Florida, they're far enough out that they don't have a city water connection and they need to use an expensive unit just to make the water potable. It's so bad that it leaves rust stains without the unit.

You mentioning Dasani reminds me of the time they tried to launch it here, with disastrous results. Though lots of people buy bottled mineral water, the idea of purified tap water was all too much, not to mention the miguided ad campaign. Here's the entry from Wikipedia:

Dasani was launched in the UK on 10 February 2004. The product launch was labelled "a disaster"[6], a "fiasco"[7] and a "PR catastrophe"[7].

Early advertisements referred to Dasani as "bottled spunk" or featured the tagline "can't live without spunk". These slogans were used seemingly oblivious to the fact that spunk is slang for semen in the UK.[8][9]

Prior to the launch, an article in The Grocer trade magazine had mentioned that the source of the Dasani brand water was in fact treated tap water from Sidcup, a suburban development in London. By early March 2004, the mainstream press had picked up on the story[10] and it became widely reported that Sidcup tap water was being treated, bottled and sold under the Dasani brand name in the UK.[6] Although Coca-Cola never implied that the water was being sourced from a spring or other natural source, they marketed it as being especially "pure". This led the Food Standards Agency to request Hillingdon trading standards officers to launch an investigation into whether the claim was accurate.[11]

Richard May, Chief Publicity Officer of Dasani, was said to be disappointed that the water had not been more successful.

The media made mocking parallels with an episode of the well-known BBC sitcom Only Fools and Horses, in which protagonist Del Boy attempts to pass off local tap water as bottled "Peckham Spring".[6] Del's scheme fails when he pollutes the local reservoir, causing the bottled water to glow yellow.

On 18 March 2004, UK authorities found a concentration of bromate, a suspected human carcinogen, in the product that could be considered harmful if consumed in large quantities. Coca-Cola immediately recalled half a million bottles and pulled the "Dasani" brand from the UK market.[2] Shortly after, plans to introduce the brand to Continental Europe were announced to have been cancelled as well. Bromate was not present in the water before Coca-Cola's treatment process. During that process the bromate was produced from the water's bromide.

Coca-Cola intended to launch Dasani in France and Germany, although this never went ahead after bad publicity in the United Kingdom.

I don't feel so good after reading that.

That's why I stick to using my Brita filter! I hardly ever by bottled water.

My only problem now is I'm having trouble keeping track of when I need to change the filter. How often do you guys change your filters ?

You are supposed to change it every 2 months. My Brita actually has a digital filter change display on the lid that reminds you when to change the filter, which I believe is set at about 2 months.

Well look at that, it's time to change my filter according to the start date on this thread.

Ha!

I've couldn't tell you how many times forum threads have been my goto when I need to know a time line.