2 Hours on the phone with Renogy tech-support! Why would anyone recommend products from this company?

First - I am not a renogy supporter but it is useful to look at the big picture.

Probably people won't like anything I say on this subject.

If you purchased something from Renogy, you did not spend a lot of money. You purchased a super discount brand product with limited support with a manual that probably says "for professional installation only". A correctly made product with similar specs sells for 2 - 5x as much and that still is not large profit margins.

Products like this are intended to be supported by "the community" / internet forums, not by a phone based help line.

Amazon makes so much money in their IT division that the entire retail operation is almost a side show / tax write off. They force the sellers to eat a lot of costs that are not normal business costs and put a lot of them out of business.

Companies have a ton of problems dealing with customers returning products because either they just bought them to test / play, broke them attempting to install, or simply return because they changed their mind.

Restocking fees of 10 - 20% are a normal thing. When someone buys a product and returns it, it often can't be re-sold as new anymore and there is a real expense involved in re-stocking / entering it back into the stocking system.

I will say though that it is very frustrating to watch people spend their hard earned money and purchase so much low end electronics that will almost certainly be problematic, and then have to go back and buy a good quality product later.

I have never had a problem with electronics built in North America but you really have to search to find stuff like that.

740GLE said:

Marketing budgets out weigh R&D budget strikes again!!!

Granted I wouldn’t expect anything if I were to attempt to contact any customer support for any product I’ve bought in the past few years.

Isn’t that the whole point of DIY? Figure it out on your own?

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I disagree, when a company sells to the DIY market they need to be prepared for questions or a least have an extensive data base so people can find the solution

Greendream said:

When you pay enough restocking fee's you will start to call the company first before you give them your money. I'm not a fan of buying off of Amazon for easy returns even though that's what a lot of customers do. Companies, while I don't stand up for their rights anymore than I would the consumer, get ripped off a hell of a lot selling through Amazon. A simple example: A customer will have already owned a particular product, it's gone bad for whatever reason, then purchase that same product new on Amazon, then package up their defective product and return it. Pretty good deal, yeah?

My biggest mistake was purchasing the wrong size home run cable (2/0 instead of 4 AWG), pretty big difference in price. I think that mistake cost me around $250 just in shipping and restocking fees. Nothing was used or open.

I'm learning to be a better consumer lol

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Being a better consumer and outright committing fraud are 2 different things. Your example depicts outright fraud.

That said, I don't blatantly take advantage of amazon for easy returns and not everything on amazon is free return. You have to pay attention when you're shopping.

I consider myself a good consumer. Of the probably 10k+ ive spent through amazon (due to a project I am working on) ive returned 5 times (maybe 6?). The last one amazon didnt even have me return. They just refunded me. When i returned because it was my fault (didnt pay close enough attention when shopping) I told them so in the return request. I havent returned anything used or broken (unless i received it that way), either.

I can't speak for the asshats that rip people off, but I know I shouldnt have to pay for their lack of morals.

Tony Scott said:

I disagree, when a company sells to the DIY market they need to be prepared for questions or a least have an extensive data base so people can find the solution

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A low tier company catering to the lowest cost DIY market? You’re expectations are exceeding reality. Just because they pay influencers to hawk their wares, doesn’t mean they have any engineering support behind their product.

If the datasheet provided by the company doesn’t answer all my questions or concerns how the heck should I expec a phone jockey to know more than what’s on that same paper?

HarryN said:

....If you purchased something from Renogy, you did not spend a lot of money. You purchased a super discount brand product with limited support with a manual that probably says "for professional installation only".
....
Amazon makes so much money in their IT division that the entire retail operation is almost a side show / tax write off. They force the sellers to eat a lot of costs that are not normal business costs and put a lot of them out of business.

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That's why I'm happy with the Renogy product that I have. It took me a while to set up and get working with the help of the internet, I knew what I bought was a budget item, and am okay with that.

AWS (Amazon Web Services) is it's breadwinner. When I lived in Northern VA, they employed a staggering number of IT professionals. Everyone took a check from the Feds or AWS, or you worked somewhere that worked for those employees. (I fixed their pools).

"Amazon Web Services, the cloud computing giant led by the now-future Amazon CEO, closed out 2020 with more than $13.5 billion in annual operating profits, responsible for more than 63% of the entire company’s operating profits for the year, on annual AWS revenue of $45.3 billion, up nearly 30% year-over-year."
-Geekwire.com

This was my experience with renogy support:
- Went to their contact page on the website and filled out the "submit a ticket" form, including attaching pictures.
- 7 days later "Thanks for contacting renogy support, those pictures didn't come through on the online form, can you send them via email", replied to that email on the same day.
- 12 days later "Thanks, we received the photos. While we check can you please send through a copy of your receipt", replied with a copy of my invoice.

It's now been more than a week later and I still haven't heard anything back from them (Not even a "try turning it off and on again").
So almost a month an absolutely no meaningful or helpful response. It seems that if you have a technical question or issue it gets put into the "too hard basket" and simply ignored.

AussieKev said:

This was my experience with renogy support:
- Went to their contact page on the website and filled out the "submit a ticket" form, including attaching pictures.
- 7 days later "Thanks for contacting renogy support, those pictures didn't come through on the online form, can you send them via email", replied to that email on the same day.
- 12 days later "Thanks, we received the photos. While we check can you please send through a copy of your receipt", replied with a copy of my invoice.

It's now been more than a week later and I still haven't heard anything back from them (Not even a "try turning it off and on again").
So almost a month an absolutely no meaningful or helpful response. It seems that if you have a technical question or issue it gets put into the "too hard basket" and simply ignored.

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frustrating. :/

I guess someone was luckier than you, which is why someone liked their product. In fact, this trend is very bad for certain services and products, for example, many people consider VoIP numbers as bad because, due to certain companies, these services are considered useless. If people knew the benefits of these numbers, they would have paid attention to them a long time ago and they would have replaced the cellular service. I, for example use Mightycall and it is an example of a good company that provides quality and not expensive services. With this number, no one will be able to listen to you, and the data that you tie will be protected more stronger.