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SIGNATURE SOLAR / EG4 - AAAAAAGGGGGHHHHH !!!!!

ghostwriter66

"Here - Hold my Beer"
Joined
Nov 13, 2019
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Location
EE from LAX CA -work in SouthTX for giant evil Oil
You ever run into one of those companies that you can't figure out why they aren't ruling the world but then after dealing with them you understand fully why they don't and won't.

I have met several of them in the last 5 years of doing this professionally for a major oil company. Signature Solar started off great but now just can't seem to get out of their own way. Let me caveat this with that we have ALLOT of their products - their LVX6048 is/was a workhorse for us. And once we (the DIYSOLARFORUM community) got all the bugs figured out FOR THEM and made each other smart - the LVX6048 was a force to be reckon with.
But wouldn't it be nice to finally be able to open a box - plug it in - have a clear - concise - accurate manual - and not have to set aside the next 40 hours to troubleshoot?

Signature says they pride themselves on their customer service - but if you leave a voice message you never get a call back AND if you leave an email it takes over a week sometimes - if ever...

And then when you do get a reply they point you toward a solution that makes little sense or has nothing to do with your issue.

Recently we purchased a EG4 Chargeverter | 48v 100A Battery Charger | 5120W Output | 240/120V Input ... manual is worthless.... LED screen does not have a setting where it will remain on so you have to continuously hit the ESC button to see what the readings every few seconds ... AND the manual tells you that if the CHG light is solid GREEN then the battery is fully charged -- which is totally wrong since even if you hook this up to a mostly dead battery the CHG light will be GREEN until you turn on the breaker then everything goes BLANK on the screen .... BUT a BLANK SCREEN actually means its now charging and after a short bit the CHG light will then start flashing ...THAT issue cost me about 30 minutes to try to figure out - i though that with the screen not working the damn thing was simply broken and not working -- i didn't realize that by the screen being OFF that this meant it was working ... (NOW that makes no sense!!!)

anyway -- they make some great stuff -- some good stuff -- and some stuff that even they don't know how it works ... and I can understand that - but if you're going to say that you have INDUSTRY LEADING Customer Service then maybe you should actually pick up the phone ... OR -- have someone that's NOT the manual writer actually look at your manuals and see if THEY can figure it out --

Maybe they're just a small company that grew too fast -- who knows - and I wish them the best of luck - but in this market - there's the quick and the hungry -- and although they will probably eventually get to a point where they level out and maintain status quo -- its unfortunate since at this point in history - they have every capability of being a solid large force in this industry if they could just get-out of their own way ...
 
I will say I had an instance where about 6 months ago I called (and got someone on the phone, to many peoples surprise), and asked if their 3k 48v EG4 inverter would still charge with PV with the switch off. They said no, once its off, its OFF. I notified them that their manual states it will, and what page its on. The women put me on hold for a few minutes, then got back on the phone and apologized and said I was right, and the manual does state that.

I still to this day don't know for sure, because manuals have been wrong before. It's not like they actually have tested or knew that it would do that, again they are going off a manual that has been wrong before.

TL:DR, my experience was the tech support did not know enough about their product, where I expect them to know EVERYTHING about what they sell. I take pride in doing that in my own line of work, but I guess you can't expect others to do the same.
 
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