[RE-wrenches] warranty liabilities

[Keith Cronin]

Marco

Perhaps the offering to clients is workmanship and the actual product falls 
under the domain of the manufacturer.

We all have folks that call saying their inverter is not working anymore and 
less of a challenge with the panels having a short life.

If a client wants to be covered, look at the auto industry on how they address 
repairs. If its under warranty, its covered. If not, its a cost to the end user.
Let them know this upfront, as this could be the difference between them going 
with you and someone else.
Sure you could be out of biz in 1 year and offer a 5 year warranty, but putting 
$ in an escrow account for this is standard and what manu's do- have a reserve 
for the unfortunate events that plague products.
Since we offer more services and then products vs manus offer products and 
generally less services, this is a way to look at the relationship with the 
client base moving forward.

The warranty is also a bridge to your clients in the future for other services, 
like energy efficiency and things we don't even know exist yet, or are on the 
bleeding edge and almost ready for prime time, like storage. Storage will be the 
holy grail, moving forward and having a conduit to the clients to tell them 
about it can come via a warranty/maintenance relationship. I'm sure many of the 
off grid wrenches have these relationships, as folks can have a tendency to 
smoke their first sets of batteries and need TLC and guidance along the way. 
This goes for the folks that want to live off grid, but might like to spend less 
time being a power plant manager and focus on other aspects of life.

Without warranty-maintenance, we will have orphaned systems. Makes you wonder 
today, how many systems are deployed and not functioning to their fullest 
capabilities, doesn't it? Shame, as we have all indirectly paid for the systems 
in the form of tax credits at the fed and state level, so we are part of the 
problem and can be part of the solution.

Keith



________________________________
From: Marco Mangelsdorf <marco at pvthawaii.com>
To: RE-wrenches <re-wrenches at lists.re-wrenches.org>
Sent: Sun, October 31, 2010 1:32:43 PM
Subject: [RE-wrenches] warranty liabilities

 
In places like California, and other states as well I’m sure, a PV integrator 
needs to provide a bumper-to-bumper system warranty of what? 10 years.
 
I’d like to know if many, or any, of you all put aside any money to cover your 
future warranty liabilities.  (I don’t.)
 
My belief is that we as an industry—at least as far as the large majority of us 
who are independent small companies—don’t have a clue when it comes to 
calculating what our present and future exposure is as far as warranty liability 
issues.
 
Having gone through the boom and bust of the solar thermal business in CA. in 
the late 1970s and early 1980s, there were tons and tons of orphan systems that 
had been supposedly covered by warranties by companies that were long gone.  
Makes we wonder how close or far we are these days to a similar situation…
 
marco
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