Why am I seeing Sol-Ark 12k's being sold on Craigslist lately?

[ChrisG]

Is the sol-ark warranty transferable? If so I may start looking for a used one.

 

[Tomthumb62]

IMHO the 8k and 12k are a niche market.

No matter the field, niche markets are usually a poor financial investment if you ever think you might sell. Or think you might like to have the option to sell and get your money back.

OP, If you can wait, you might be able to recoup your investment. Wait until there are no 12k’s on the used market, then list yours. Because of the niche market, when someone decides they want THAT model, you can ask your price, as long as it’s less than the current new street price.

 

[robby]

Bit like what happens to a brand new car once you drive it from the Dealers lot, the resale price drops like a stone from the new price.

$3k seems awful high for a used piece of electronic equipment. Now if it was $500 I might be interested.

That very much depends on the type of Equipment.
Ham Radio gear may drop in price by about 20% after 5 years of ownership. Some discontinued gear goes up in price when you account for inflation.
Iphone 13 which is almost an 18 month old product is sold refurbished for $653 on Amazon and on Apple Website it is $699 brand new.

I see one Sol-Ark 12K on eBay with a starting bid of $3000. People have already started to bid on it and there are 5 days left to go.

 

[SHTF Power Anyway]

Is the sol-ark warranty transferable? If so I may start looking for a used one.

No the warranty is only transferable in the original installation location so if I sold my property, the warranty could be transferred to the new property owner. However, that said, they still provide full support to a buyer. I made sure to confirm this just in case I do sell. Still on the fence at the moment. Lots of reasons to just suck it up.

 

[SHTF Power Anyway]

That very much depends on the type of Equipment.
Ham Radio gear may drop in price by about 20% after 5 years of ownership. Some discontinued gear goes up in price when you account for inflation.
Iphone 13 which is almost an 18 month old product is sold refurbished for $653 on Amazon and on Apple Website it is $699.

I see one Sol-Ark 12K on eBay with a starting bid of $3000. People have already started to bid on it and there are 5 days left to go.

Good to know!

 

[robby]

Yes, 60W x 2 plus .05 of consumption is bothering me but only in the winter. I do have two already so my lowest consumption is 2880 watts for 24 hours (that's idle consumption). In winter I can have days as low as 2,000 watts in production. I need to know I can refill my batteries when I can have multiple days of this uptake. With a Victron setup I can get down to 30W/hour by reducing my inverter number from 4 to 2 as my power needs are significantly reduced for winter. I'm also sitting on 10 eFlex which, idle (powering NOTHING), will consume over 12W per hour (120W per hour for me with 10 in my bank) but that's only when idle. It's worse when active. So I'm sitting on a system that's not fit for my purpose. I've been working at this problem for months and keep coming back to the same answer. I'm about to post these batteries for sale again. I did so once before but had a hard time with the loss I'm about to take. I don't think my loss is avoidable though now.

BTW are you the person that had 10 eFlex batteries for sale on eBay a few weeks ago?

 

[SHTF Power Anyway]

BTW are you the person that had 10 eFlex batteries for sale on eBay a few weeks ago?

No. Did they sell? I was going to post on Craigslist but have had trouble doing so. There’s a local battery builder who is likely flagging the ads.

 

[Nobodybusiness]

I'm strongly considering bailing on my Sol-Ark 12ks due to their self-consumption. But when preparing to do so I've seen 3 being sold in my area for such low prices, I'm struggling to let go of what I have due to the significant loss I'd incur. If people are bailing out of this product and taking large losses on their investment, I can't be the only dissatisfied customer out there.

Who else is selling and why?

Nothing to do with dissatisfaction.
The 15kw has displaced the 12k.

 

[SolarTexan]

60W of self consumption is bothering you?
I could have upgraded to a 15K but I have never ever maxed out the 9.6KW on my 12K so I see absolutely no point. Another thing is that the only advantage to the 15K is the Pass through. If your seeing 12K for $3000 dollars I would get two of them! You would have 19KW of power which beats the 15K and the EG4 18kPV power and it's around the same price, plus you have redundancy should one fail.

Being off-grid, I need the redundancy in case one of my 12Ks goes down. I am planning on buying a spare soon, and I hope to pick one up under $3K if possible. If I have too much self consumption, then I need more batteries. I have 12Ks and a 15K as well as both AGM and Lithium.

 

[Nobodybusiness]

Being off-grid, I need the redundancy in case one of my 12Ks goes down. I am planning on buying a spare soon, and I hope to pick one up under $3K if possible. If I have too much self consumption, then I need more batteries. I have 12Ks and a 15K as well as both AGM and Lithium.

Dang you must be using some power..

 

[robby]

No. Did they sell? I was going to post on Craigslist but have had trouble doing so. There’s a local battery builder who is likely flagging the ads.

I don't know but it felt like a Scam and possibly it was because eBay removed all traces of the listing and it's history.

 

[SolarTexan]

Dang you must be using some power..

The crazy heat we had in August took some juice to keep the indoor temperature at 73F when the outside temp reached upwards of 110F. My August total load was 4162kWh, with the highest daily load of 243kWh, and the highest peak load at 18,466 watts. I did have a refrigerator/freezer that failed and I noticed a 30kWh+ increase on the day it failed which is part of the 243kWh usage on that day.

I never had to run the generator at all.

 

[SHTF Power Anyway]

I don't know but it felt like a Scam and possibly it was because eBay removed all traces of the listing and it's history.

Do you happen to remember what they were asking for them?

 

[Nobodybusiness]

The crazy heat we had in August took some juice to keep the indoor temperature at 73F when the outside temp reached upwards of 110F. My August total load was 4162kWh, with the highest daily load of 243kWh, and the highest peak load at 18,466 watts. I did have a refrigerator/freezer that failed and I noticed a 30kWh+ increase on the day it failed which is part of the 243kWh usage on that day.

I never had to run the generator at all.

Wow. I have only had 1 month above 4000 kw and that was a December when we were moving in and the doors were open a lot.
I actually had to use the generator then.
With my new setup I’m hoping to avid that this year.

We do average 2400-3000 kw a month normally.

 

[SolarTexan]

Wow. I have only had 1 month above 4000 kw and that was a December when we were moving in and the doors were open a lot.
I actually had to use the generator then.
With my new setup I’m hoping to avid that this year.

We do average 2400-3000 kw a month normally.

My July was 3,375kWh and winter time is 1,100-1,200kWh on average (propane furnaces). The air conditioning in the summer here is a killer considering I am running two 3 ton conventional central air units.

 

[robby]

Do you happen to remember what they were asking for them?

$2000 which was what seemed very suspicious since they claimed they are brand new.
I suspect a bunch of people got scammed. This under pricing on brand new big ticket items is the biggest scam type on eBay and people keep falling for it.

 

[webbbn]

$2000 which was what seemed very suspicious since they claimed they are brand new.
I suspect a bunch of people got scammed. This under pricing on brand new big ticket items is the biggest scam type on eBay and people keep falling for it.

How does the scam work? I've almost been scammed selling items, which made me think that ebay was more interested in protecting buyers than sellers, but I don't have alot of data points. From my experience, ebay will not pay the seller if there's a dispute, until the dispute is resolved, but, either side can scam the other side if they choose to, so it's up to ebay to deicide who to trust.

I would like to think that almost 2 1/2 decades of history, with 100s of transactions, and 0 negative feedback would tip the balance with a scammer, who likely doesn't have much if any history.

FWIW, I see such underpricing on Mercari all the time, and wonder how they expect to get away with it. The ads always seems to be 1 item listed at about 1/2 the fair market price, by an innocent looking female. I don't really trust Marcari anyways, and certainly not those ads.

 

[robby]

How does the scam work? I've almost been scammed selling items, which made me think that ebay was more interested in protecting buyers than sellers, but I don't have alot of data points. From my experience, ebay will not pay the seller if there's a dispute, until the dispute is resolved, but, either side can scam the other side if they choose to, so it's up to ebay to deicide who to trust.

eBay pays the Seller two days after the Buyer has paid for the item.
The suspicious part is that these batteries were listed as New but when I called Fortress Power they said it was impossible for anyone to sell a New eFlex battery for $2K. It would be below the wholesale price that they give their distributors. I don't know what the distributors pay for the Battery but they typically Sell for about $3,400.

If the batteries had said Used then I could have understood the price, as most people just don't want to buy used batteries because they do not know the history of the battery.

Sellers can Scam you very easily with these Truck delivered heavy items by getting your money then stalling on the "Shipping" then giving you fake shipping info to buy a bit more time while they try to sell more of the batteries. By time the first buyer realizes (which may be two weeks later) that nothing is coming they might have gotten four more people in the Trap and have $10K in their pockets.
By time eBay contacts the seller and finally shuts down the Auction it's to late because they are gone with the cash.

Yes the Buyers will get refunded but PayPal takes the hit.

I would like to think that almost 2 1/2 decades of history, with 100s of transactions, and 0 negative feedback would tip the balance with a scammer, who likely doesn't have much if any history.

I have seen these Scams before and it's typically some account that has about 100-200 plus good reviews.
But when you check out what they sold it's these cheap items like $5-$10 range, items like cheap Chinese products. One of them I remember was selling Sunglasses and tiny stuffed bears.
Amongst all these things in their store front were a few expensive items costing several thousand dollars, these are the items that they are going to Scam people with. I had my eye on an Ham Radio Amplifier and kept on getting a bad feeling, so I passed on bidding higher and let someone else get it.
About two weeks later the Sellers account was gone and so was the history of the Amps listing.

FWIW, I see such underpricing on Mercari all the time, and wonder how they expect to get away with it. The ads always seems to be 1 item listed at about 1/2 the fair market price, by an innocent looking female. I don't really trust Marcari anyways, and certainly not those ads.