Don’t feel powerless with faulty inverter

Unsurprisingly, the word “inverter” crops up in a lot of my emails these days.

For those who can’t afford to go the whole solar hog, an inverter is a great way to mitigate our scheduled blackouts, albeit without doing anything to reduce the strain on the grid — or your electricity bill. But as with any appliance, things sometimes go wrong.

As they did for the Seymours who live on the Kwazulu-natal south coast, just 100m from the sea.

They bought an R8,000 RCT inverter from Incredible Connection’s Pavilion branch last September and parked its trolley wheels next to their TV set.

It worked well until December when it suddenly made a high pitched noise and then died.

Back to Incredible Connection they went, this time the Shelly Beach branch, where they were told the supplier would only assess it when they re-opened for business in January.

Given that the inverter was well within its six-month Consumer Protection Act warranty, the Seymours were confident it would be replaced.

But that was not to be. In midjanuary they were told the inverter had “liquid damage” and the guarantee was thus void.

“Although I explained that I never spilt any liquid on it or kept it near a window, and that my other devices were fine, they were not interested,” Clare Seymour said.

Attached to Seymour’s email were the “liquid damage” photos she was sent as proof, mostly of the inside of the inverter.

There was also an image of the fan outlet, taken from outside, which revealed corrosion.

“How is that explained?” I asked Incredible Connection.

“Did the staff member not notice? Could it be that the liquid which caused the damage was the high humidity levels in that area?”

I asked Incredible Connection how many other “liquid damaged” inverters had been returned and from which regions, and whether the company would consider replacing the Seymours’ inverter.

The company said “this type” of damage was extremely rare.

“Looking at the return rate on this specific product and other models of inverters within the business, we could not find units with similar reports of corrosion,” said the JD group’s customer relations manager, Ankia van der Pluym.

“We regret that the staff member at the point of booking the unit in, had an oversight in noticing the corrosion on the back of the unit and did not record this at the time.

“The extent of the corrosion indicates that it most probably occurred over a period of time.”

The supplier took another look at the unit in question and confirmed that the unit should be able to withstand usage in areas of “fair humidity”.

“As with any other appliance in the home.”

The units are definitely able to operate normally in all regions within SA, Van der Pluym said.

But she added: “A dehumidifier can also be used in areas of high humidity to protect appliances by reducing the amount of moisture in the air and making the environment less hospitable for mould,

The Seymours were confident it would be replaced. But that was not to be

mildew, rust and corrosion.”

Lovely idea, but they aren’t inexpensive and they run on that increasingly rare thing — electricity.

So here’s the good news. Incredible Connection will replace the Seymours’ inverter free of charge. Excellent.

Staying with inverters, a telesales agent threw in a free inverter to entice Favour Matlaila to agree to an MTN contract.

“I was offered a router — with an inverter so that I can plug the router into it during load-shedding — along with uncapped data, for R399 month,” she said.

“And I thought, what a good deal, I’ll take it!”

But when the router was delivered in mid-november, there was no inverter.

It turns out the agent lied to her to make the sale.

So she didn’t activate the SIM, instead returning the router to an MTN store and asking that the contract be cancelled.

That was at the end of November and when she emailed me this week, she’d been debited — twice — for the contract.

And for far more than R399 each time.

“I have emailed MTN’S complaints division with no assistance or even a response and I am unable to cancel this contract,” she told me.

I took up her case with MTN and the contract was quickly cancelled, and a credit of R1,170 passed.

“We would like to apologise to Ms Matlaila for the inconvenience and the anxiety this caused in getting the matter resolved.”

Beware the bogus inverter offer!