Sunsynk's new shock!

General Discussions
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Sunsynk
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Mistake one: In the beginning, Sunsynk handed out approved installers status based on the amount of installations you have done, no knowledge based criteria, let alone qualifications. This must have bit them in the @SS.

Now, approved installers must re-register and must present proof of Registration at the Department of labour. (ECA for Example).

Another change in their South African Warranty conditions include that its only valid if the unit was installed by an registered electrical company.

Danger: This might leave in the excess of 80% of the Sunsynk installs in SA without warranty… Just a thought.

Warranty document also states, Should you relocate you will lose the warranty if you relocate the inverter without their consent.

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Going to be interesting to see how this plays out.

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O jinne.

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Just another way that they are looking to void warranty and claims.

When I bought my first sunsynk, there was no mention of it only having a warranty if installed by approved installers. Then they changed that goalpost and it needed to be installed by an approved installer.

Now they change again the actual requirements for an approved installer.

They have just lost the plot.

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It doesn’t really surprize me, given the quality of “installers” we have here. If I were in their position, I would do the same. To me it seems like their only mistake was not having the requirement from the start.

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I agree but this is not an “only” mistake but a big mistake. It’s fine if it’s from this point onwards but it should not affect installations that were done according to the old requirements otherwise it also becomes a legal issue.

However, being registered with the dti doesn’t really make someone qualified with this product as most electricians are the ones not knowing how to install. So this goalpost should also change in future.

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In a way I agree, but lets look at the electrical regulations’ in SA. I experienced the situation I want to use as an example about 2 years ago in Bloemfontein in an old ladies house. She purchased the house in the 30’s and by that time having an Earth leakage in the house was not required. The law states that if she is still the owner and no changes was made to the wiring, the COC and the electrical installation is still valid and legal. When they changed the law to enforce the installation of earth leakages they could not force her to add one to her installation, because at the time of her purchase she was complying to all regulations, requirements and laws. Every installation after the regulation changes had to comply to the new requirements and nobody before that date was effected.

At this stage it seems like the end user might suffer due to these changes, and i feel that its unfair. How can Sunsynk revoke any warranty’s for installations before this new “requirement”? Idf that rule was not part of the Warranty document at the time of installation, how can it be considered now.

IMO it would be fair to enforce this new “Regulation” for installs after the date of announcement.

I expect to see some interesting cases in the future, but lets hang back and see what they really plan to do with the already not compliant installs.

I agree thats its a good thing overall and compliant installers receives a bit of protection, I would have liked to see a definite date to work with and truly hope that the majority of end-users wont suffer because of a rule that was not in place at the time of installation.

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Had a solar geyser installed with a 10-year warranty. Reputable Co, brand name, still in business, as is the installer.

After 9.5 years I had to submit a warranty claim, the installer says:
To claim on that warranty (from 9.,5 years ago) and you don’t have a, b, c, d … z in place, the only way is to go to court, with the rest of the claimants. They changed the T&Cs in the last 10 years.

The new T&Cs that drive the warranties were not in place when I bought it, I “lost”.

Since I first saw the 10-year warranties all over, I wondered: Ok, so how will that work? How can you offer a 10-year warranty on a new product that is not even 10 years old?

What makes it worse, Co’s offering 10-year warranties, some have not even been in business for 10 years.

That is not to even contemplate, the person who installed the system, they are a “brand spanking new” company. How do you prove after the event that they were on spec?

It is a mean feat to be in business for 10 years.

And the 2nd hand market … you buy that system from the original owner … what warranty?

My point … 10-year warranties, … the proof is in the eating of the pudding. Caveat Emptor … the Romans’ really understood it.

Romans.
Just extended my 4yo inverters warranty by 5 years (so 10 years), I trust that 100%.
Can buy 2nd hand Victron equipment that is still under warranty, and the warranty follows the item. No rules in place, just common sense…
They have been in business for more than 10 years, the warranty lies with Victron, not the installer/supplier to boot. Whole new kettle of fish that.

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that depends on your point of view - not if you want to flood a new market and want to make a quick buck - ethics aside… - although i have to agree, if you can get a false passport, id or drivers licence, anything is possible in the land of the free… or was not that one of the slogans of the ruling party long ago, pre-loadshedding?
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I believe this was in the original warranty documentation too. Inverter must be relocated by certified tech, or you lose warranty.

I need to break something to you clever guys and girls, and it is not even specific to this brand. At the next braai you can be as interesting (or weird) as me with this info.

Here it is: Warranties are marketing tools.

The company expects that some units will break and be returned. They want that return rate to be nice and low, so they can budget for it. The quality of the hardware is only one factor that affects the return rate. The various items you specify via the small print is another. The nature of the market (it might be the kind of thing with a naturally low claim rate) is another.

Let me use the example of paint (because it makes a rather good example). Let’s say you go to the hardware store and you buy Plascon Micatex or Dulux Weather Guard, and you see that 8 year warranty on it. Good right? No, check the fine print. A trained professional has to apply it (not a random Zimbabwean). You must use only products from the same company. And you need to fill in the warranty card and send it in. The fast majority of painting done in this country has no warranty because nobody bothers with that stuff. That means the return rate is nice and low already, and you can slap a nice big number on the can for whatever remains. Marketing can get away with a big warranty, for little money.

Now let’s get to the matter of limited warranties. After some years, the warranty may only pay for the remaining life of the item. A typical example would by tyre warranties. If half the usable tread is used by the time it fails, they will only pay out half, and possibly not half of the new price, but of the old price.

This is why a 5-year comprehensive warranty may well be a better warranty compared to another 10-year warranty with all sorts of stipulations. And you know exactly which brands I am pitting against each other here :slight_smile:

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The other thing that I have wondered, also without naming brands :stuck_out_tongue:
It feels to me that this is a trick to shed some liability for potential claims with the clause : Only installed by a approved installer…
Because how can the other brand that offers a 5 year warranty do so without that condition?
Surely at some point both brands will have inexperienced installers trying their hand at a DIY install…

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I will venture and say, because of the quality of the product … and common sense.
They now have 10-year warranty extensions. Did you know that? After 4 years I extended my warranty for another 5 years.

Any case, if it is sent in for testing and failure was due to abuse, serious wear and/or serious tear, or incorrect connections, then that will come out and the warranty is voided.

I once bought a 2nd hand MP 800va. O my. It was so abused!
When I connected it to the house, it tripped the main breaker instantly. It was repaired for R1200.
How someone could abuse an MP like that, Neither me nor the repairer could figure that out.
It was bad. I blew sand out of the thing and had to scrape the inside clean of muck. It was bad.

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They look at signs that the unit was abused. You can usually see, relatively easily, based on what blew up. There is an RMA checklist that has to be followed. And of course, if it is a stolen unit, then no warranty either.

Mostly though, you can buy a unit, self-install it, and maintain your warranty. You cannot do that with the competition.

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Nothing wrong if they had those conditions from the get go.

The problem here is that the warranty requirements are a moving target. Whenever they see it necessary, they change the requirements.

As has been said here before, a long warranty from a startup is meaningless as there’s no guarantee that the company will still exist in 5 or 10 years. Deye seemed to be a decent brand though which also meant that the warranty was an indication of the product quality.

I agree though that in general, it’s a marketing scam. Sunsynk do the exact same thing with their batteries. If you use the sunsynk inverter and overpriced battery, then automatically, the warranty is extended. To me, it’s not worth the 40% premium that one has to pay for the battery.

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When I heard about this (without even knowing the price of the battery), it also immediately made sense to me. The odds of having to replace both within the 5 year real warranty (not the extra 5-year limited warranty) will always be lower than the odds of replacing either one. That’s how probability math works. So when you bundle two together, there is always a gain in the odds, which can be priced in and turned into a “feature”.

I blame my brother in law. He was the first one who told me that story about paint. I mean, it is not all bad. He also told me that you should still buy the more expensive Plascon/Dulux paints, because of the massive R&D budgets they pour into their premium products. Just don’t expect the warranty to be worth anything… it isn’t :slight_smile:

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Built Plot & Plan in S/West next to the hospital. Prominent paints the paint supplier. 10-year warranty on the roof paint. ±2 years later the roofs started to give off that white powder residue. We and the other houses lodged a claim with the developer, the professional, who painted the roofs. Large well-known paint suppliers/manufacturers repudiated the claims. Something to do with the color change or whatnot that THEY recommended, mixed AND supplied. Loophole, small print … whatever one wants to call it, we bought a 10-year warranty.

10-year warranty smaranty, if the company has not been in business for more than a decade, has an actual track record of honoring said warranty claims … and NEVER changes T&Cs changed retrospectively. Going forward, for new customers, of course one can change the T&Cs going forward.

Be Johnnie Walker and “Walk the Talk”.

Ps. I told my brother that. :slight_smile:

The warranty changes that started this post, man, it really makes me hot under the collar, me being bitten twice, first the paint and then years later the geyser. Slow learner me.

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Besides. I heard rumours about how that Sunsynk+battery deal came about, and a certain large reseller from the Eastern Cape (who is known to cause quite a bit of unhappiness in the politics of South African Solar) came up in that discussion a few times. Might have nothing to do with each other, but wasn’t terribly confidence inspiring. If something is too good to be true, it probably is. And a 10 year warranty on an somewhat unknown combo? I knew it would be leaning heavily on the small print.

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As I understood it - there are two sunsynk batteries, the one is from sunsynk, the other is a local distro that imported batteries and slapped on a sunsynk sticker, presumably with their blessing. I don’t know if the warranty is the same in both cases, but it’s worth reading the warranty documents if you are interested in buying a combo (or discussing it in public). It’s quite enlightening - for instance the BMS has a 5 year warranty and the cells a 10 year warranty. So that is probably an easy way of opting out of warranty claims after 5 years…

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This is a new revenue stream: Certification.

Some years ago the company I was working for at the time decided to embrace SAP. The project over ran, and the company had built escalating penalties into the contract and ended up paying very little for the delivered solution.

Ha! Ha! How clever they were.

Round about that time I met a nice bloke who was a SAP consultant. We got talking about this and he said “your employers have made the mistake that everybody makes. They think SAP is a software company.” I said “but they are”.

He says “no. They are a training and certification company. Your employers are now in a world where most of their staff will have to be SAP certified, and the certification has to be constantly renewed. You have got your initial installation at a good price, but in the long run SAP will profit because your directors never truly understood the game they were getting into.”

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HAh! Reminds me of the Samsung microwave in my kitchen. It has a nice bit “10 year warranty” sticker on the front. Below it, in small print, it says “on the cavity”. The enamel covering of the inside cavity has a 10 year warranty. Everything else, is the usual 2 years :slight_smile:

Yeah, I will admit I ventured out a little far from shore. I read one of those documents, but it was a while ago. Also, I never thought there could be this much politics in solar (and on my side of the pond, there isn’t, the company will tell anyone who tries to take a hike, we believe in transparency), but I heard a couple of rough stories. Of course, I know better than to repeat that in public! :slight_smile: