Victron support - unacceptable!

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1

I need to vent, because I’ve never experienced such poor support for such important components!

I received no support from Victron. If you open a ticket with Victron, you’re forwarded to a dealer who’s supposed to handle it. The only response you usually get is, “Ask the community.” I do and did and some things are not known here by the community, of course. That’s it, and that’s why Victron support is “poor” in my opinion! Even when I go through the local dealer, I only get a two-syllable reply after many weeks or months. All in all – “UNACCEPTABLE”!!

2

Victron doesn’t provide direct support to end users. That’s what the dealer network is for. In turn, the dealer who sold you the equipment is responsible for providing both warranty and post-warranty service.

Also, if you purchased the equipment and chose to carry out the installation yourself, the dealer is not obliged to resolve your issues free of charge or to provide installation guidance during operation. That was your decision, and it’s your responsibility.

If you want to pass all of this work and responsibility onto someone else, you need to commission design and installation from a certified specialist.

So, your problems are your problems, you wanted to save money, didn’t you?

4

And based on my own experience, I’d say the community can help in 90% of cases. So what’s stopping you from describing your problem in detail here, instead of just venting?

This forum is a treasure trove of knowledge that no support team in the world can match…

5

Hi @ESSGobel

I’ve replied on the German topic regarding your problem.
Sorry my writing in English, but I am neither an English, nor a German native person.

6

Hi @alexpescaru don’t worry about english, we do not blame each other for not beeing a native speaker….

8

Just a question.
Does Victron also outsource their software?

I found a software issue with the by Victron advised EM540 grid meter in VRM, and I don’t get an answer here in this forum if the VRM team wants to look at the issue or not, absolute silence for several days now.
This is very frustrating!!!
And this is not the way how you improve your software,…

9

I’m not an employee of Victron. I’m just a regular contractor working on the design and installation of systems based on equipment from various manufacturers.

Issues with external meters do crop up from time to time, even with those recommended by Victron.
This is often discussed in the relevant Venus OS beta-testing threads, where identified issues and their causes are covered, and a changelog is published for each release.

10

I’ve had a look through your topics, and most of them are outside official support anyway (Node-RED, DIY battery), so you shouldn’t expect support from most dealers or from Victron.

Most dealers/installers only deal with what is officially possible with Victron components; they can’t and aren’t required to provide support beyond that.

You may be able to get help with such things here in the community, but that isn’t guaranteed.

Although a few employees are active here, this community isn’t an official support site; users help each other out here.

11

If not here, how can I contact official (software) support?

12

The official way is through your seller, distributor or the local sales manager.

But some topics are more important than others.
In you case (frequency in VRM) it’s not an urgent issue/bug, it’s more a feature request.

13

That’s a good one :slight_smile:
No way a distributor or installer can solve this issue.

It took me weeks to report the EM540 frequency was not updated in node red, now fixed.
The SOC 15 minutes issue is now also fixed, several people reported this issue and I was one of them.
Victron even got access to mine system for testing!
Main function of a home battery is charging and discharging according target SOC, but maybe not that important in other application?

In the months it took to solve the SOC issue, Victron decided that Shelly integration had more priority than SOC!

I don’t say this minor issue with the frequency resolution in a VRM widget is very important.
A simple we noticed this issue and we fix it in next release would be more than enough.

Maybe a simple to do list or a list with known issues in this forum, would avoid a lot of these discussions,…

14

Whatever it’s about, the journey towards the goal is what matters. Easier for some, absolutely awful for others.

In the meantime, people have got in touch with me and we were able to discuss the issues I raised—that was my goal. Achieved.

15

It’s sad that you can only get anything done by escalating things,…

16

It is a big problem even for us installers that we cannot get high-quality support directly from Victron. I mainly work with Victron installations in buildings, and our reseller is in the boating industry, so getting the right help there is out of the question. If I try to contact Victron for direct technical support, I am automatically redirected to the reseller associated with the serial number of the equipment. It is completely unacceptable and not how we are used to being treated in the electrical installation industry.

17

The Victron Ecosystem is extremely complicated and even with intense use of KI issues remain unclear – if you know what you need and how you want to do it KI is a huge help. If you try to plan all by yourself from scratch without deep knowledge of the ecosystem you are lost.

So I was asking several dealers for help (“Which device is better for my usecase?” / “Should I better go to the left or to the right? / “What is your experience …?”). Answer from ALLE DEALERS I contacted: “No support for DIY-constructions - only for B2B.” Private Makers are welcome as customers, but don’t ask anything.

I have an electrician who will help me building up my off-grid system, but he is not deep into PV. It took me about one year from the first ideas (of expanding my “balcony-PV” to a medium sized off-grid system) to today’s hopefully final solution.

It would have been really helpful if I’d found ready-made solutions online that I could have used as a guide. There are YouTube videos, sure, but the use cases are fundamentally different from mine and those people don’t know how to explain clearly and concisely what they’ve built, why they did it that way rather than another and why they have used these components. OR they do not include the specific german regulations.

That makes me all the more grateful to have found this forum, which is still largely free of trolls, where you can ask what might seem like a stupid question, and where neither the question nor the person asking it is immediately dismissed as too stupid to use this venerable forum.

Thanks for your help – and you can be assured that I will publish my solution answering all those questions I had in the past year.

18

I built and commissioned my system myself due to a lack of alternatives. The local electrician had no knowledge of Victron, and neither did the dealer from whom I purchased the equipment. Installation by a professional company was unfortunately not possible (the distance and price expectations were, to put it mildly, outrageous and would have stifled the entire project).

Inquiries are always forwarded, and it takes weeks, even months, for a terse response, if any at all!

I was only able to solve my system, which is anything but ordinary, with the help of the community (here and elsewhere); it simply wouldn’t have been possible otherwise.

Other manufacturers don’t offer the features I wanted and have now achieved. One year of planning, six months of setup until everything was up and running, and since yesterday, everything is running from the living room, including battery backup. Control of the two Cerbo amplifiers, top balancing, integration of various existing PVs, etc. I’m now satisfied and don’t believe that a professional company would have, could have, or wanted to implemented my project.

This isn’t meant to be a hate thread; it’s intended to encourage the techies who frequent this forum to think about this and share the facts. I certainly hope it reaches someone and leads to a change of heart at Victron in the future. Ultimately, it’s the customers who generate the company’s revenue.

19

Now, maybe you could share it in the Show your system section, please…
:+1:

21

I had a Victron Inverter fail after about a year after I installed it. I called the dealer I bought it from, 24 hrs later I had a return authorization shipping label for FEDEX emailed to me, next day FEDEX picked it up. Wow I was impressed. The unit was sent to a repair shop about 50 miles from me. That shop kept it for over a month, would not respond to my calls. So I have to say that Victron is the best in my opinion as far as quality. Their response was great but their repair depot was not. When you live off-grid you can’t wait weeks or months for a repair. I guess my point is Victron needs to hold the feet of the repair depots to the fire when they don’t provide timely service. After all we did pay a premium price for this quality product!

22

I just finished a very similar sounding installation. Started on it last June 2025 and finally got it resolved and working perfectly few weeks ago. My vendor, one of the largest Victron dealers in the US, while they have decent support staff that can answer about 90% of my questions, it was that last 10% that they got hung up on. I was asking a simple “yes” or “no” is this configuration possible question. It took them months to get back to me with a semi-sorta-answer. I had poured over every document available, on the community here and all of Victron’s docs. I was seeing conflicting information about two different ways it should be connected. I could not get a definitive answer from the dealer support, they kept telling me “yes” it SHOULD be able to be done the way I was attempting to configure it, but also in the same breath told me they had no real world examples where they knew someone that had a configuration like I was attempting. Needless to say through MUCH trial and error and testing, and re-reading.. I finally got it sorted out the way I wanted it all to work. BIG relief as my client was starting to think I was crazy. Turns out the way I initially configured everything it should have worked, but due to a bad connection and a blown fuse I was unaware of until later in the process, it was causing very strange errors that was complicating my troubleshooting steps. After giving it a rest for a few weeks I went back and tried again and pushed through all the last steps to get it running as expected.

I would say after all the missteps, errors, re-configurations etc I went through, I am probably more knowledgable than my vender tech support now, as I ended up giving them a full report of my setup and what it took to get it running.

Short version of the configuration.

  1. 2 Multiplus IIs 48/15000 230V in parallel feeding into a 100A Autotransformer for 120v/120v split phase output, SmartSolar MPPT RS 200A, 60kW battery.

  2. Non-grid tied but grid fed from U.S. 240v through contactor to MPIIs A/C IN.

  3. Manual transfer switch to switch house from “off grid” to “on grid”.

If house is “on grid” either for maintenance or very low battery, Victron system can still charge from grid. But in reality if battery drops below 15% it closes contactor for A/C IN to MPIIs and it charges while it closes another contactor to do the A/C OUT to grid connection. So it is grid fed which acts as a generator but not grid tied, which would backfeed grid.

Adam

25

Good afternoon Essglobal,

As an installer, since my college working on Victrons and all other concurrent brands, my experience is 100% positive about Victron.

The concurrent brands cannot even give the service provided as Victron does, even so this forum which solves, tests, has new ideas, etc, and most is solved here and gives Victron stimulation to change firmware etc.

As said above, it’s not LEGO, when you install your own system, whatever the reason, it’s your own responsibility and luckily you have this great forum to ask around.

Here, in a 350Km radius, is no engineer installer or elec with the caliber I have, and that’s worldwide a bit the same, engineering a system will cost me time and before mounting and then commissioning a system all parts I have to order and must be correct, and yes, that is costing, a one day commissioning only will set you back about 400 euro without travel, which is a quite normal price.

Then, when you buy everything from a Victron installer, they will give you a discount normally, covering the engineering costs mostly, so, brake even and the install runs perfectly from day one.

Today, indeed, you can buy all Victron equipment from internet shops, sometimes quite cheap, but, no support whatsoever, these companies are just vendors, you cannot compare such company to an installer company with all training from Victron in and out.

Well, I think the point is made clear here, do not blame Victron, blame yourself when doing things yourself.

Regards, Jeroen.