<html><head><style type="text/css"><!-- DIV {margin:0px;} --></style></head><body><div style="font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:10pt"><div style="color: black; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; ">Marco</div><div style="color: black; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; "><br></div><div style="color: black; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; ">Perhaps the offering to clients is workmanship and the actual product falls under the domain of the manufacturer.</div><div style="color: black; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; "><br></div><div style="color: black; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; ">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.</div><div style="color: black; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;
"><br></div><div style="color: black; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; ">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.</div><div style="color: black; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; ">Let them know this upfront, as this could be the difference between them going with you and someone else.</div><div style="color: black; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; ">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.</div><div style="color: black; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; ">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.</div><div style="color: black; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; "><br></div><div style="color: black; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; ">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.</div><div
style="color: black; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; "><br></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif" size="4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 10pt;">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 </span></font><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;">indirectly</span></font><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif" size="4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 10pt;"> 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.</span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial, helvetica,
sans-serif" size="4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 10pt;"><br></span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif" size="4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 10pt;">Keith</span></font></div><div style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; color: black; "><br><div style="font-family:times new roman, new york, times, serif;font-size:12pt"><font size="2" face="Tahoma"><hr size="1"><b><span style="font-weight: bold;">From:</span></b> Marco Mangelsdorf <marco@pvthawaii.com><br><b><span style="font-weight: bold;">To:</span></b> RE-wrenches <re-wrenches@lists.re-wrenches.org><br><b><span style="font-weight: bold;">Sent:</span></b> Sun, October 31, 2010 1:32:43 PM<br><b><span style="font-weight: bold;">Subject:</span></b> [RE-wrenches] warranty liabilities<br></font><br>
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<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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…</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">marco</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
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