Outback dealer protection? [RE-wrenches]

[Christopher Freitas --- OutBack Power]

Bob - I am very sorry to hear of this situation and the impact it had on 
you and your business.  I do want to clear up a few statements you made.

The price for a complete set of replacement boards for an FX inverter 
(any model) was increased from $700 to $1200 over a year ago - this was 
to allow them to be sold with the normal discounts so that dealers can 
make a profit (if resold) or "cut a deal"  with the customer.  When the 
spare board set had cost $700 it was because we had a flat price 
approach - everyone paid the same price (i.e. no discounts). 
We made this change in pricing in order to help with this exact 
situation.   

Our own in-house service / warranty guys are authorized to make 
exceptions when they feel it is justified by offering the replacement 
boards to an end customer at a discounted price - we don't expect or try 
to make a profit on the misfortune of our customers.  Since our failure 
rate of inverters is low, we tend to be generous in many situations.  

We often prefer to get the inverters back to the shop in order to see if 
any of the circuit boards can be salvaged - again to save the customer 
money.  This is probably why this was suggested.  We keep stock of 
replacement boards on hand here at OutBack ready to go and some of our 
larger distributors do as well.  I know several dealers keep spare 
boards in their trucks to allow immediate service of their installed 
systems.  All of the board sets are reverse compatible with older units 
and the systems can be stacked with mixed revisions of the same model in 
nearly all cases.  

I will discuss this situation with Roy Dyngen, our customer service 
mananger, when he gets back from the ASES show in Denver at the end of 
the week.  Feel free to also contact him or me directly if you would 
like to discuss this.    

Christopher

Christopher Freitas
OutBack Power Systems, Inc.
cfreitas @ outbackpower.com  
www.outbackpower.com
Arlington WA USA
Tel 360 435 6030  


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