question

Hey Victor

You can directly reach to us on our website www.solar-sky.com

Hey Mark.

I've v been offgrid for 20 years, before internet and forums, and it's much better now.

Need to see their point of view. They sell countless high tech items to people who have no clue. That's what the dealers are there for, and qualified electricians. Electricity is complicated and hurts when it hits wrong.

It's also a serious learning curve especially for people that come from mains power and expect it all to work with a flick of the switch.

I only changed to victron when I upgraded. I wanted another inverter from the previous maker, and was told I could only purchase through an installer.

Because of too many mishaps.

All I can suggest is to ring around and find someone who knows his stuff. A good electrician is always good, but you may have to pay.

Hi @MarqG

Thanks for taking the time to write that out so articulately.

Appreciate that the brand made such a good first impression, and that the community forum came across as a good source of knowledgable and active people.

I can say with absolute certainty that the Victron model of support is not going to change to provide 1 to 1 support from manufacturer to end users. It is just not compatible with the structure and vision of Victron as a company.

So the current 'support network' model is more or less how it is.

That isn't to say it can't be improved because at the end of the day I think you would be happy as long as you felt supported, even if it was a dealers employee rather than a Victron one that provides the feeling of support.

The level of support, and the customer experience is something that we care about, it's ultimately our brand that will suffer if customers are let down, so we are motivated to do what we can to make it work.

In an ideal world how Victron sees it working is you find a local dealer who is able to talk to you, usually referred by a friend or via our where to buy page, establish what you want to do with them, what equipment that requires and then ultimately they deliver on that, and support the system if something goes wrong.

From what I read into your post, you did a lot of your own research first, then provided a parts list to a supplier who delivered it to you, and now the issues arise in putting it all together and making it work as expected.

You've spent the money on buying the equipment, but it also needs to considered how a qualified and trained system designer and technician to put it all together are paid.

To be crude in an analogy, it's one thing to buy the pallet of bricks, but another to get a finished house.

Some dealers will attempt to reduce the prices they charge for our products by reducing the level of service workers they have to support them. This works for some customers who really only need the part in a box, no questions asked, and don't want to pay any overhead wages for someone who understands how it all works.

Other dealers will charge a premium on their parts, and then use that additional margin to provide a top level of service and support. They usually build a word of mouth reputation on this, and some are active in this community.

Yet others will charge for their labour by the hour for their design, installation and support services.

I have seen all three models work well, and long term. Issues arise when the customer's expectations are not meeting the dealer's.

Victron has some standards on the minimum service levels, at least for our direct dealers. Every product comes with a serial number, and that is linked to a dealer (the company that bought the part directly from Victron to resell), customers can then use this form to request support - https://www.victronenergy.com/support-request

If a dealer isn't supporting their customers and that is leading to them generating lots of complaints, then a Victron sales manager will first talk to them and work out why their customers aren't satisfied, and if it persists we can ultimately stop them selling Victron.

Without more insight into exactly what has gone awry in your case it's hard to be any more specific, but that should at least give you some certainty into the support situation, and path to formalise your next request to your dealer (and escalate things if necessary).

IMHO...

You pay for the equipment which gets you support, i.e., they respond to "hey, this thing isn't working like it's supposed to."

That gets the hardware in your hands.

To deploy it, you either become the expert on the installation, or you pay for one.

Expecting hand-holding for free during deployment is not reasonable.

95% of what I needed was in the docs or "best practices." The rest came from specific questions to my dealer about how very specific things worked (he's invested about 30 minutes of time in follow-on support for the last 5 years) and community.

What almost made me laugh out loud is the idea that there is another company out there that even comes remotely as close to end-user support as Victron does.