Signature Solar refuses to honor a warranty for a defective product! (And Solar Assistant Discussion)

[Adam De Lay]

I should mention, I sent this thread over to two people at SS this morning. Sucks it has to be through the forum but at least we can get it taken care of this way.

Yeah, it really is a shame that it even has to come to this or even have to have SS people on the forum to “look for issues”

 

[Shiv3]

Well, I dought this will have any effect on my case, as I fell the only option they will be interested in giving me is the same thing they have already said, but thanks anyway.

 

[SolarMann]

I should mention, I sent this thread over to two people at SS this morning. Sucks it has to be through the forum but at least we can get it taken care of this way.

That was kind.

 

[Zwy]

None of these products should require contacting anyone for setup. The manual and quick start guide should be plenty. When people contact support it should be because they have a defective unit.

I have a charge controller that sets a bus start failure code. The other charge controller works with no problems. Yet, I'm being ghosted by Signature Solar, complete lack of communication. Original call I spent 24 minutes on hold. I also emailed support on their website before calling, never did receive a response. Since talking to tech support, I've sent messages 3 times and no response or acknowledgement they received the messages. Original details in this thread.

Why does everyone like solar assistant? Is there a feature that I should know about because it doesn't seem that appealing at all.

In my case, I spend most of my day in my shop and the solar system is located in the house on the same property. I can log in remotely in my office and see if I'm at full charge, what load is. And it allows me to determine how many Kwh are generated/used if I want to see production over a time frame. I use because it just plain works.

I personally like autonomous systems probably because I come from robotics. I do not like monitoring my system at all. Usually I will walk around my system with a clamp meter to make sure everything's functioning right. And then do a capacity test on my batteries every few months.

 

[Zwy]

I don’t disagree that some of the installations that I have seen on social media and the forum scare me. Some of it is due to just the excitement of getting the things set up and making a simple mistake, others. It’s a complete lack of understanding of what they’re trying to accomplish.

Ultimately, I think the biggest issue that support has is a lack of communication. They really don’t seem to be able to keep you in the loop with what’s going on. You have to badger them left and right in order to get an answer, as we’ve seen in this thread. Whether that’s a lack of training, or just the fact that the tech is green who’s to say? I had a list of questions with support that took almost 9 months to get completed.

It is pitiful a customer support system can be this bad. I've never seen anything like it.

I will say that a companies support team is your first line of interaction with a customer in most cases, and needs to be top-tier.

SS fails miserably in this aspect.

 

[Gavin Stone]

That's their target audience. Those are the people paying their paychecks. Dance with the one that brought you.

On a serious note, yeah, must be a real pain in the butt.

Yeah I totally get that. I was just pointing out some of the difficulties I’ve seen.

 

[wildbillpdx]

Why does everyone like solar assistant? Is there a feature that I should know about because it doesn't seem that appealing at all.

For me, I just installed my system, which is my first. SA gives me information on how it is performing so I can easily verify that things are working correctly. I come from the IT industry and we monitored EVERYTHING to make sure there were no problems. Probably just being anal but I want to know my system is working correctly. I'll probably be less interested after it has been running awhile.

 

[JRH]

If you don’t want to keep an eye on your system, it would have no benefit to you.

For those that want to see what’s going on, or even troubleshoot why something is happening, having real-time data at your fingertips is a lot more helpful than the 5-10 min snapshot that WatchPower provides.

It also allows you to make changes to your system remotely. I seem to recall you saying you use the app for your 18kPV instead of using the display because it’s just easier. It’s the same thing. Instead of having to scroll through arbitrary menus and remember what a specific menu number is, you can just look for the function you wish to change.

You are 100% correct… if reasonably new to any system , be it a boat, a large sound system,a complex solar system a modern car OR even your own body, real time info and data is king.

some people are sorta slack about monitoring and some are OCD ..eventually each finds his own area of balence.
what I’m not hearing discussed is that as you grow with any type system you learn to ” feel” it’s vibe.. you know it’s sounds ,it’s smells, it vibration .. it normal performance…or lack of these things…
Data and observation and “ noticing changes” helps head off issues early…and makes trouble shooting 10x easier…BUT ,the correct metrics are essential to solving any problem…EVER..!
From car problems ,to relationships , to your dogs health, to an electrical fire Most things in life give some advance warning before it goes south… Not all, but most…….
If one doesn’t have the correct data or doesn’t feel the need to be aware , they generally have more problems with life than the person who keeps an eye on what’s important to them….

The problem with this theory is it requires some level of diligence and effort….most people only learn this truth as they age ,after suffering loses the could have caught early…

J.

 

[Crowz]

I think what every complaint has in common is that the customer support does not realize that the unit is actually defective and requires RMA. They need training to understand when the customer needs support or to return the product ASAP and send out a new one. Especially with products coming from China.

I agree but it sure seems like they can take the time to train the reps on how how to void a warranty pretty good. They need more training on how to make the customer happy and less on arse covering practices.

 

[Quattrohead]

I should mention, I sent this thread over to two people at SS this morning. Sucks it has to be through the forum but at least we can get it taken care of this way.

You are going to be busy if you do this for all of the complaints, this forum is literally now their support system.

 

[Quattrohead]

Usually I will walk around my system with a clamp meter to make sure everything's functioning right. And then do a capacity test on my batteries every few months.

Solar Assistant will do this every 10 seconds, log it and make nice graph's too. Sorted.

 

[Crowz]

None of these products should require contacting anyone for setup. The manual and quick start guide should be plenty. When people contact support it should be because they have a defective unit.

Why does everyone like solar assistant? Is there a feature that I should know about because it doesn't seem that appealing at all.

I personally like autonomous systems probably because I come from robotics. I do not like monitoring my system at all. Usually I will walk around my system with a clamp meter to make sure everything's functioning right. And then do a capacity test on my batteries every few months.

Solar assistants appeal to me is two fold. One it lets me see how well the system is performing so I can spot issues instantly. Its very fast with instant updates on the live webpage. You see cloud cover effects as its happening not minutes later. You know when a panel is having issues because the data is instant. It works when the nets down and that's a BIG deal for me.

Also its easy to read by a person that has never seen any solar stats before. I can show someone that has no idea what solar power is at all and they can comprehend it instantly. They can see what power I'm making at that exact moment and how much I have so far today. What I made yesterday and previous days. What power I made for the month, year, etc without me having to enter info to create some chart for them. Its all one click away with most of that info on a single page.

It doesn't make the persons eyes glaze over when you try to explain it to them.

I love the thing.

 

[wildbillpdx]

No, I don't call customer support. They are useless to me. I am a diy type person and figure things out on my own. If it doesn't work for me, I make a video crying about it.

There are times when we all need to call customer support...failed hardware needing an RMA. I meant nothing disparaging about needing to do so. I had a problem with the 6000ex. It would shutdown every time I plugged in a heat gun (only load) with an error message and the troubleshooting section of the manual said, if it repeats, call for an RMA. I then had to jump through hoops with lots of pictures before I could move on to tier 2 support and never did talk with them. Original tech said, "Oh, heat guns can cause that issue." I moved on and connected my house circuits and now it's working. Never would have called except the error suggested a hardware issue requiring repair.

 

[Nobodybusiness]

I guess the reviews don't weigh heavily on the grade. They are an A+.

An A grade with a 1.4 satisfaction rating?

Seems counterintuitive.

 

[cs1234]

An A grade with a 1.4 satisfaction rating?

Seems counterintuitive.

I know, right? The crazy thing is, contrast those reviews on the BBB site, with the reviews on SignatureSolars own site.

 

[theoriginalgiga]

Non isolated power supplies are the problem here, not solar assistant or Pi's or bad customers. But finding random stray voltages around the inverter or associated parts could be bad installation.

Possibly, but the unit is rubber mount Insulated from the concrete backers it's mounted to, because I'm a paranoid person I probed all my leads before and after connection and everything is torqued to the proper tightness. 60v is way took weird of a voltage for an improper install. If it were 48v dc or 120v ac I'd agree no doubt but in this case I'm more apt to believe some sort of fault with the unit.

 

[theoriginalgiga]

I can be a pest but I have plenty of things to do in a day.

One has to think of those people out there that aren't part of this forum and SS just ghosts them. The only reason the OP received the RMA was to shame SS on this forum.

Agreed and it's a shame it had to come to that. I do hope the improve.

 

[theoriginalgiga]

No they zap me sometimes ? and yes, that's why I created this forum. The 3kW unit has the least amount of issues around versus other aio, and is made by a completely different company than their other products. But thanks to this forum, I can hear everyone's experience.

Will, I appreciate to creating this forum and I immensely appreciate that it isn't tied to reddit with all their latest craziness. Without this forum I wouldn't have been to sharey experience with SS with as many people and I hope these posts are catching attention within SS to help better their customer interactions.

 

[Quattrohead]

Possibly, but the unit is rubber mount Insulated from the concrete backers it's mounted to, because I'm a paranoid person I probed all my leads before and after connection and everything is torqued to the proper tightness. 60v is way took weird of a voltage for an improper install. If it were 48v dc or 120v ac I'd agree no doubt but in this case I'm more apt to believe some sort of fault with the unit.

Ground connected ?

 

[theoriginalgiga]

Yeah it's a straight up defective unit. End of story. They need to refund you or send out a new one in less than a day. In my opinion

I did want to update everyone. I talked with rma to see about getting a unit shipped out first by putting a CC on file and they did just that. Am I thrilled that I had to do that? No, but I totally understand, they don't know if I'll just ghost them and did all this to get a free unit, so I respect that move. The shipping is free in both directions and I hope they ship Monday.

So since this whole snafu with the SA has been cleared up on this case their customer service is moving forward thankfully.