Battle Born and Renogy on Sale

VanDerBlasts

Active member
Renogy has sitewide 15% off currently


Battle Born has another sale going on, some good discounts to be had on their and others (looking at you Victron) products through the website.
 

Cheyenne

UK 2004 T1N 313CDi
Renogy has sitewide 15% off currently
But read this thread first...
It pains me that my first post to this forum is a warning to others about a vendor that is currently bordering on a scam at this point.

RENOGY.

TL;DR

- RENOGY email support will respond once (generically) and then totally ghost you.

- RENOGY Call center is broken. Impossible to get through. They will then ghost you after promising follow up. Every. Single. Time.

- RENOGY will not ship product reliably. You will wait months. It may never ship. Right now they are not certified to ship batteries but are not telling anyone. They'll take your order and then just keep the cash.

- RENOGY will not refund despite acknowledging and accepting returns. You will be minus cash AND product.

- RENOGY are shipping out used/returned/opened products as new.

- RENOGY fulfillment is broken. They are randomly shipping other peoples orders to me. Yep, your stuff is ending up at my place.
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On paper RENOGY seem great. But in my 30 years of dealing with tech companies these guys would have to be the worst experience I've ever had.

**** BASING MY BUILD ON RENOGY PRODUCTS HAS BEEN THE BIGGEST MISTAKE I’VE MADE SO FAR. ****

It's been a month since i placed my order and despite multiple promises “to look into it” they still haven’t shipped my panel. I know this just sounds like a vendor that is having COVID supply issues but their negligence goes much deeper than this.

It's WAY worse than just a late shipment.

1. They accepted a product return a month ago and have yet to refund my money. Despite multiple requests and excuses on their part. Silence. If you send product back for return, you probably won't ever see your money again. I'm writing off $100 in returned product.

2. It's basically impossible to get through to a rep via telephone. I've called them a minute after their opening time and then immediately been placed on hold for over 40 mins?! Right now their support line just cuts you off on transfer. When you actually get through to a person they cannot provide any assistance of value beyond "we'll look into it for you and get back to you" Then they totally ghost you.

3. I've lodged multiple support cases via email to look into why the panel is not shipping. The only responses I get are "we'll look into it" and then the case is dropped on their part. The last response I got was "the product was delivered already." This is not the case. The tracking number clearly shows that they printed the shipping label 2 weeks ago and then no package was made available for UPS to pick up. They just forgot about it at their end. Zero follow up, they don't care.

4. I recently received a DCC50S Battery Charger from them that had obviously been handled by a customer and returned. I'm not even going to bother contacting them about this as the pre/post sales support is non-existant. I don't want to return it as there is a good chance (based on my previous experience) they will accept the product back and then just refuse to refund my money. That would be another $300 I'd lose. I just pray that it actually works because I have zero faith in their ability to support it.

5. Right now their fulfillment system is so screwed up I am receiving random shipments that I have NOT ordered. They are sending other people's orders to my house. I have received 4 erroneous shipments so far WTF ?!?!?

I've also just ordered an open box RENOGY solar panel from amazon in a desperate attempt to finish my install. My month old order placed and paid with RENOGY I'll probably never see. I've filed a dispute with my credit card company. It's the first time in my life I have ever had to do this with a company.

I’m normally very patient and give businesses the benefit of the doubt but when another customer actually goes to the trouble to create this site:


you know there are deep systemic problems.

It's my first van build and introduction to sprinter life and I can't believe that such a completely incompetent, uncaring, and basically fraudulent company continuous to exist in this ecosystem.

Sorry for the rant, probably had too much coffee. I'm just posting the info I wished I had seen prior to making the decision to buy something from RENOGY. Hope it will save someone else the grief that comes with dealing with this abysmal company right now.
The Amber arrow takes you to the original thread.

CAVEAT EMPTOR!!!
 

VanDerBlasts

Active member
Sharing this type of information freely is what makes this forum a great resource for all. I'm sure there are good and bad experiences with Renogy to be shared, this one sounds downright horrible, buyer beware indeed. I'll be sure to follow up here on my own experience with Renogy once it pans out.
 

Carminooch615

Active member
I bought a renogy 100ah 12v LiFePo battery end of May. Then renogy decided to move all of their batteries to a new facility in Texas before they secured the necessary certifications to ship batteries fedex ground from that location. Rather than tell any of their customers that, they sent out dead tracking numbers and ignored calls to support. My battery came two months late after 8 attempts to reach out. In that span of time, I ordered two battle born and they arrived in a week.

I’ve got an unused brand new renogy battery I’m letting go for $100 less than Renogy’s sale price. I hope I’m not breaking the rules by stating that here, but I’ve got no use for it now.
 

VanDerBlasts

Active member
Following up on my purchase experience
Renogy
I ordered 3 100W panels, branch connectors and mounting hardware during the sale. Everything arrived to my door within 7 days.
I'm no solar expert, but in an effort to check the quality of the panels I put them in full sun and measured the voltage across the + and - connector ends. These panels state 22.3V max, 1 panel was right there while the other two were approx 87% to 95% of stated max voltage. ( All panels oriented in the same spot for the measurement.) I don't know if this is a good way to measure the quality of Renogy panels or not, but the info is here for someone who does.

Battleborn
I jumped on their blemished battery sale on June 27th, got 2 100AH batteries. Turns out the sale on July 21st was even steeper and I could have saved $80 bucks if I had ordered then, not to mention it was on A stock, non blemished items. I reached out to BattleBorn to see if I could get the difference back, or even a store credit. The response was "No, it had to be within 7 days" to match to the new sale price. I think they could have been more flexible in this situation, but I totally get that they are a small company trying to make it.
 

autostaretx

Erratic Member
The second thing to test on a panel is the "short circuit" current (Isc)

Connect your multimeter in its "10 amp" configuration and just have it tied to the (+) and (-) leads from the panel.

Voltmeter.jpg

SolarGrassTest.jpg

That second photo is using a "clamp-on" DC ammeter ... if you have one, you'd just tie the (+) and (-) panel leads to each other and clip the meter around the wire.

--dick
 

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