[RE-wrenches] Damaged in shipping

Tue Jul 2 18:38:01 EDT 2019

Dave, 
Two more pieces... 
- keep notes and records of dates, times, activities and results for the entire process. 
- stay in regular communication with your clients, so that you’re working with them rather than for them. 
Allan Sindelar, Sindelar Solar

> On Jul 2, 2019, at 1:26 PM, Dave Tedeyan <dtedeyan at taitem.com> wrote:
> 
> Hi All, 
> Thanks for the thoughts and opinions. It helps me a lot to get other opinions from people who have been doing this much longer than I. I am leaning towards the "don't charge any more until the issue is settled and then come up with a fair price" with the customer. Fortunately, I know that they are good people, who are also well connected in the area, so keeping a good relationship with them is certainly important.
> 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
> 
> 
>> On Mon, Jul 1, 2019 at 3:03 PM Jerry Shafer <jerrysgarage01 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 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 <dtedeyan at 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
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