Eyes on GivEnergy service – our Gen2 inverter is faulty

Only some 2 ½ months later when an intermittent fault turned permanent was our installer (whose service has been more than good) able to pin-point the root cause – a faulty inverter. This is prime generation time so we have been and are losing a lot of money. And we’re more than upset. That said it’s not the installers fault for being supplied with a faulty unit in the first place.

The catch is, only GivEnergy can repair the inverter internals or authorise a working replacement, and
1) their engineers are already booked up for the next two weeks,
2) our installer’s electrician informed us that GE’s engineers may arrive on site WITHOUT A REPLACEMENT UNIT, be unable to fix the faulty one and then say “We’ll have to take it back to base (over 300 miles away etc. etc.) to see if we can repair it there…etc. etc.”

Now, the Consumer Rights Act 2015 states that goods should be as described, of a satisfactory quality, fit for purpose and last a reasonable length of time. And as the inverter unit is not our installer is therefore in breach of contract.

Since our installer’s service has been more than good, we have made the decision to await the visit of a GE’s engineer and have requested GE that he bring a working replacement unit. We will however let you know if he arrives WITHOUT A REPLACEMENT INVERTER and then says….“We’ll have to take the faulty unit it back to base (over 300 miles away etc. etc.) to see if we can repair it there…etc. etc.”…

This would then put us firmly in the invidious position of having seriously to consider pursuing the Consumer Rights Act 2015 route directed at a blameless party…

Have you seen this post?
https://community.givenergy.cloud/d/3158-givenergy-no-quibble-return

sugarfree My experience of GivEnergy support when I had a faulty inverter was reasonable and not as black as you suggest it might be.

When the issue was diagnosed (Friday morning) I then had to wait until Monday afternoon for a repair/replacement to be authorised by GivEnergy management. Then my ticket was handed to the person who books site engineers. She couldn’t give me a date that week as all the engineers were booked, and I think the following week was the same, but by the end of that week I had been given a date for the engineer visit early in the following week.
There are (were at that point) 8 engineers that cover the entire country so not surprisingly they tried to book them to do jobs in a similar geographical area.

It was just over 2 weeks from engineer approved to the engineer coming on site. He confirmed the issue and had a replacement inverter on board his van which was swapped in for mine and commissioned there and then. Total time on site was a few hours, mainly waiting for firmware upgrades to happen.

About a year ago GivEnergy had only a couple of engineers and were swamped with customer demand, people could wait for months before they got an engineer on site. Since then GivEnergy have increased the engineer pool considerably.
Overall I was pretty happy with the engineer process. Yes of course could have been much quicker but realistically 2 weeks wasn’t too bad to wait. Appreciate your issue sounded harder to diagnose and so you feel frustrated.

I’m no expert on consumer credit law but I think you’ll find that your right of recourse remains with the installer not GivEnergy as your contract is with the installer. Clearly its not their fault if they have supplied and fitted a faulty unit but legally you could demand that they swap the unit out and then directly pursue GivEnergy for the replacement/repair so that you are not affected.

I have had three inverters in just over a year. This was due to an EPS fault which it has turned out was almost certainly not the inverter. The first was replaced on the second visit but not because they didn’t have one but were still trying to diagnose the issue. The second was replaced directly from the van (this one had its own fault nothing to do with the original problem). Both times took a couple of weeks but they worked perfectly except for the EPS so there was no panic. Givenergy have been helpful with one exception and my installer is back again this week. Generally pretty good service.

The law states that consumer goods under warranty should be repaired/replaced within a "reasonable timescale".

That (in practice in E&W) means within 6 weeks unless "exceptional circumstances apply" - such as war, natural disasters etc etc.

Beyond that point, should you claim costs/damages then you'd most likely win. The only chance of losing would be had you in some way impeded the repair/replacement.

GE's "performance" on these matters are why more than a few installers have given up on them as a manufacturer.

I’m kind of amazed that people have been getting things fixed within 2-3 weeks. Most of my call outs have been 1 month plus. And the last one isn’t resolved from around 20th June !

This is between June 2023 and today. I’ve had battery issues, so maybe battery replacements take longer to source than inverters or maybe it’s a geographical thing?
I’m in Hertfordshire, where are you located that are getting things fixed in 2 weeks???

i would think if you need another battery, find one on the web or by ringing around and then tell GivEnergy where it is and let them get it to you. They will not be able to say they are awaiting stock. There must be lots of them in warehouses

My original All-in-One was faulty, from my installer placing a support call on 10th May I didn't get a service engineer date until 13th June (5 weeks).

I also had to jump through very many hoops, support were very quick to assume that the problem was with my WiFi, when I sent an abundance of evidence to show what they were suggesting was in fact nonsense. Have to say I was not particularly happy with that part of the service.

The engineer who did attend was fantastic and had the AiO swapped within a couple of hours (he'd brought a replacement with him).

My experience was pretty terrible. Had an AIO that bricked itself during an update, waited a month to get an engineer come out. He didn’t bring a replacement so when he couldn’t fix it I had to wait another 2 months for them to come and replace it.