Hi All, I thought I would pick the hive mind to get some thoughts on whose responsibility it is when you service a system and things go wrong beyond your control.
Here is the situation: Outback Radian GS8048 inverter (out of warranty) goes offline and stops working. Customer calls me to check it out, and in the meantime, they had an electrician rewire the backed up loads to bypass the inverter (not realizing there was a simple bypass switch...). By the time I get there the inverter is working again. I wire the backed up loads back to the inverter, educate them about the bypass switch, and call Outback. We see some erroneous data on Optics, and so they suggest I replace all the ethernet cables with shielded cat5e. I do that, and charge the customer for the visit. A few days later, the inverter goes stops working again. I go back out and this time the issue is still active. Outback suspects it is one of the control boards, which cannot be field replaced. So the choices are send the whole inverter to Outback, or get a new Power stack for about $2500. So I send the inverter in. I offer to the customer to not have them pay for my labor this visit, since they already paid me to fix this issue and it did not work. Outback tests the inverter, finds no fault, although I ask them to replace the board anyway, since the fault was intermittent. They tested it and it was working then it left their facility. I receive it in a rough looking box. I go reinstall it, and the mate3 sees it, and the communications are okay, which is the original issue that I sent it in for. But now it will not put out any AC voltage. So a completely different issue, but still a useless piece of equipment in its current state. Tech support and I cannot determine exactly what is wrong after running through some troubleshooting steps, so they say I need to send it back to their facility. The best I can come up with is that it got damaged during shipment on the way back. (I was not excited to see that they left some poor Fedex driver to handle a 130lb package on their own....) So the inverter is currently in transit back to Outback. Here is the question: Would you all be charging the customer for all the time spent on troubleshooting and shipping, or at some point do you eat some of these costs? Even though (I am fairly certain) that I have done nothing negligent and none of this is my fault... but I am still not sure if it is right to charge the customer for all this back and forth when my actions have not resulted in a fixed and usable inverter. I'd appreciate anyone's thoughts and feedback on this sort of situation. Cheers, Dave *Dave Tedeyan, PE* Senior Engineer | Taitem Engineering, PC 110 South Albany Street | Ithaca, NY 14850 o. *607.277.1118 x121* f. 607.277.2119 www.taitem.com Solar • Sustainability • Energy • Design B-Corporation Best for the World 2018 Honoree
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