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I just purchased thousands of dollars worth of Victron products and I'm finding it very difficult to find adequate support from dealers and Victron directly. Are you having this same issue? Perhaps they are selling more products then they can support nowadays?
I'm desperately looking for support from anyone, any dealer, any person, etc... Please help!!! Will pay for support.
Here's a previous forum post. I've also sent numerous emails.
This is something I am also experiencing now.
My distributor doesn't know and Victron support points me back to him...
And so the cycle continues.
I would have assumed the Victron professional support page would have been different but unfortunately not. Back to my distributor I go.
Hi @D S
Have you read the opening paragraphs of the Support page on the Victron website?
https://www.victronenergy.com/support
I have tried to make it as clear as I can there, and we do the same with all of our distributors, that it is the distributors who are responsible for supporting their customers.
Victron will support our equipment (hardware warranty, firmware, software, VRM) AND our distributor network. Then the design, selection, installation, integration, implementation, commissioning, customer documentation, ongoing support and service provided to end users and installers are all to be provided by the distributors.
On that same support page, there is an additional link that 'formalises' a support request from a customer to a dealer. It is still between the dealer and the customer, but it also notifies Victron that there is an issue, and gives you an opportunity to tell Victron at the end how that experience went (e.g. positively or negatively).
https://professional.victronenergy.com/support/
Now as to why you might be having issues getting the help you want. There might be a clue in what you have already written above.
Victron distributors and dealers are the recommended people to talk to FIRST about Victron products. Talking to a dealer about your power requirements, budget, after sales support expectations, system design, allows both you and them to make sure that you're getting the right parts, and have reasonable expectations of performance.
There are 1000's of Victron dealers and distributors around the world, each with their own experience and specialities. We hope that a suitably qualified one is local to you, but it might involve some time sending out emails and phone calls to find the right distributor for you.
Coming to a dealer AFTER you have already purchased the equipment (presumably from another now-unsupportive dealer) and then leaning on someone else to either put it all together, or troubleshoot issues from a partially commissioned system that they did not design has many problems. The main one from the dealers perspective, is once they lay their hands on it, there is some reasonable expectation that they are taking on some of the responsibility for getting things working 100%. But there might have been components used, or design decisions made (before they were involved) that they are reluctant to take on that responsibility.
Especially if they are also already busy from their own customers who are with them from the beginning of the design, purchase, installation journey.
Before I worked for Victron, when I was a Victron dealer, there was a problem that I came across regularly. Customers were good at finding the cheapest price, low-service dealers could offer discounts (as they were not paying for dedicated technicians and ongoing training), then when things didn't go smoothly, customers would become frustrated with Victron, or me (from a full service dealership) for not providing the support experience that they were expecting (from Victron or a Victron dealer with a good reputation).
That experience was a BIG motivator in why I started this site, to provide some pre-purchase information to help people in their research & some safety net from a supportive community if they were left without help in a post-purchase situation. But this community is very limited to what help can be offered when it comes to a full system.
The community will never replace a dealer with training, experience, and knowledge, applying them all to your specific circumstances, and then seeing that through to a fully commissioned system.
There are a few things I can recommend that you do in your current situation:
Continue to press the shop that you purchased the equipment from, they should bear the responsibility of supporting you and your system. If they do not have the knowledge, then they can get training from Victron. That is how it is supposed to work. We help them, and then they help you (and others like you).
Failing that, continue to contact Victron dealers in an increasingly wide circle, there are many truely great ones out there that ARE willing to go out of their way to help, please do not be discouraged.
Failing that, continue to learn yourself, this community is an enormous resource. There are further resources available from Victron to the motivated self-learner. Such as the online training course series -
http://professional.victronenergy.com/online-training/
Ultimately, nothing is more reliable and empowering than having the knowledge yourself. You are welcome to continue bumping your existing community posts with more information, additional things you have tried or learned. These additional supportive posts should be as comments to the original question, and not answers. Once 'answered', it is more likely your post will be overlooked by others looking to help.
@D S it's the same issue here.
The distributors are willing to support but beyond broken hardware (which isn't always easy to demonstrate), they quickly get out their depth.
Much of the ecosystem is software driven and beyond standard electrical help they become ineffective quickly.
You are left to come to this forum and hope someone replies, which is seldom for more complicated questions.
Escalating is problematic.
Best advice is to try find a really good installer, but more and more people are going DIY.
It's not unusual for growing businesses to push off support to suppliers, unfortunately you lose control of the customer experience and your sales channel can really ruin your name.
Running a support organisation myself ,I can say Victron is a great product, only let down by the customer support experience.
I agree totally. @Guy Stewart (Victron Community Manager)'s answer is 100% correct in a perfect world, and works in 98% of cases but in the real world @nickdb pointed out the pitfalls when things do go wrong.
I have the same situation, initial installer sold their business, the next guy was not totally committed. Escalation ended with Country Manager which is not really his job to juggle customer issues to/from Victron and Distributors - he should be managing the channel, explore new business, develop strategies etc. PS. Escalation didn't help at all, referred back to installer -> deadend.
In a nutshell, I second Victron products are great but the feeling of total helpless when faced with an issue a (now) DIY'er faces is getting to me. The community forum is a best-effort support structure by fellow members. If you don't get answers here you are stuck.
I'm doing my installation mostly DIY myself and can fully understand the situation. It seems there are a huge amount of unsolved problems from DiY installations, which ev. could be matched to esperient people. Normally Victron dealers or installation company are busy enough with their stuff and are rarely open to give paid support to DIY installations. A more spefific forum which includes the location of peoples answers and questions (aka support demands and offers) could help. I could launch such a site relativly easy on the IT part but for the rest I would need help.
Eventually a Freelance platform could be used to, because for paid support it could be a legal risk to match such deals.
https://www.g2.com/categories/freelance-platforms
P.S:
Having a similar installation I could ev. offer remote support.
