Dave Wow it really sounds like a mess, logically you would charge the customer for your time but ethically or morally or as a humanitarian you would discount the cost, l have been in your shoes and it is a difficult position. I would have a conversation with the customer detailing your time and costs and come up with a number. Sure you can say it's this much and that's it but we are all in business to stay in business so customer satisfaction and good words go a long way to referrals. Jerry
On Mon, Jul 1, 2019, 8:32 AM Dave Tedeyan <dtede...@taitem.com> wrote: > 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 > _______________________________________________ > List sponsored by Redwood Alliance > > List Address: RE-wrenches@lists.re-wrenches.org > > Change listserver email address & settings: > http://lists.re-wrenches.org/options.cgi/re-wrenches-re-wrenches.org > > List-Archive: > http://www.mail-archive.com/re-wrenches@lists.re-wrenches.org/maillist.html > > List rules & etiquette: > www.re-wrenches.org/etiquette.htm > > Check out or update participant bios: > www.members.re-wrenches.org > >
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