Repudiation of 10 year guarantee

<p>Are you contemplating the installation of a solar hot water system for your home?<br /> <br /> If so, you need to be on your guard and not be taken in by grandiose claims of 10 year guarantees.</p> <p><br /> As many others on this Hellopeter.com thread have discovered to their chagrin, and to employ a cliché, the guarantee is not worth the paper upon which it is written, especially if your make of geyser is from WE Geysers.<br /> <br /> At the beginning of 2013 we decided to "Do the right thing" and "Go green" by installing a solar heated hot water system.<br /> The primary selling point that swung us into making the decision to part with a very substantial amount of money, which incidentally came out of our pension savings, was the stated 10 year guarantee on the whole installation.<br /> A case of install and not worry about being caught napping for the next 10 years and that warm feeling, pun not intended, of doing something constructive to help our ailing earth and a critical country wide electricity supply shortage.<br /> <br /> I will not go into the outright ********** installation contract particulars, but said companies have conveniently either gone into liquidation or flat out refused to accept any liability.<br /> We had a problem with a vacuum valve failing in 2015 and it was then that we discovered that the "whole" installation was no longer covered for 10 or any further years for that matter, as a result of the aforementioned statements.<br /> <br /> Subsequent further enquires with WE geysers, assured me that the geyser itself WAS still under guarantee which, while not ideal, provided a small amount of relief.<br /> <br /> On the 1st of January 2017, we noticed that there were several points on the geyser from which a steady dripping could be discerned.<br /> Further investigation determined that the geyser had indeed burst, not catastrophically, but was still in need of urgent replacement.<br /> Upon phoning WE Geyser and speaking with Dorothy, I was assured our geyser was still under guarantee, until I gave them the requested serial number of the unit.<br /> Suddenly the guarantee was null and void as apparently that particular geyser had morphed into an "Ecotherm" geyser, and as such was not covered anymore as Ecotherm had gone into liquidation in 2016.</p> <p><br /> This Ecotherm company is listed nowhere in any of the installation contract papers in my possession, but WE Geyser insists that it is an Ecotherm geyser, even though there is ruddy big sticker plastered to the side of the geyser which states, for all the world to see, it to be a Solartherm Geyser by WE Geysers!<br /> <br /> Having thus been conned by all these companies, it fell to us to dish out many more thousands of Rands to remedy our dire situation, and during our enquiries with many plumbing persons it became clear that WE Geysers are known for the fact that they repudiate the majority of their Solartherm geyser 10 year guarantee claims.<br /> In every case where we discussed our predicament with these same plumbers, they all interrupted the conversations by naming WE Geysers straight out as the make of geyser that we were wishing to replace, as soon as we mentioned the repudiation of a 10 year guarantee.<br /> Feel free to draw your own conclusions as to what the plumbing industry knows and / or believes.</p>