You return a solar inverter you already have installed? Maybe purchased years ago? And in the meantime you might be without power. That's not recourse.
The law needs to be updated for things with high installation costs.
For example, we bought a built-in oven, and post-sale we discovered a sticker saying that by using the oven, we agreed to a EULA and binding arbitration, and to return it if we disagree.
I think that, had we decided to decline the previously-undisclosed EULA, the manufacturer should have had to either provide one that works as they advertised (no EULA) and
with identical dimensions, or they should have had to replace our brand-new cabinets with ones that matched a competitor’s product (and incur a large multiple of the cost we paid for the oven).
Completely agree. Those things make even less since in the second hand market. What happens if the solar system was bought from a resaler? Or install by another company and you didn't choose it? What happens when you sell your house and you've removed the sticker?
Please engage in honest discourse. Both of us know that if you take a range back to best buy because you wouldn't agree to the EULA isn't going to cause best buy to send you all new cabinets
Please don't assume dishonest intent. Nothing in the parent says they bought from Best Buy. "Built in" is ambiguous. There could well be a home builder or contractor who should be responsible for correcting the situation.
Ok well "safe" in this case includes "the manufacturer intended it to be used here and is not going to modify the software in a way that is detrimental to you the end user."
If you sell a complicated product dependent on other parties then you are taking on risks.
I don't know which "this" was referred to, but I think we need laws to prevent a foreign company or hacker from shutting down our power.
There was an article on HN about a month ago, that two companies each have the ability to overload or shut down the entire grid in many parts of the states, just by their remote control of the solar panels and batterires.
How would a law prevent this? Does it cause a lion to manifest, whenever someone is about to shut down power, to maul the guy to prevent the shutdown? I do not believe laws have such supernatural powers.
Civil contract disputes don't empower or obligate you to commit crimes in the process of trying to make things right.
The power inverters were *not their property*. Remotely accessing them, without authorization and with the intent of disabling them, is a textbook CFAA felony.
Their 'right' to do that was probably somewhere in unreadable ALL CAPS on a small piece of paper at the bottom of the shipping box that the end user never got.
Fuck 'em. Isolate your local net from the world and only let through devices you trust. Plenty of ways to do that, even at low expense. But you will have to make the effort or pay someone else to do it.
Not to mention the slight complication of the entity is not in your jurisdiction and subject to your laws.
You buy a device from an intermediary and it phones home to a foreign jurisdiction. That sucks but I'm not sure what recourse you can realistically expect.
So? They’re responsible for importing the devices. They have an exclusive contract. Do your due diligence before offloading the risk to your customers.
It’s like if Ford outsourced faulty brake systems, had a bunch of cars crash because of it, and then say “it’s not our fault, we didn’t actually make the brake system”.
> You can close down the (smallish, veteran-owned) American company.
This is marketing fluff from the company. Who cares that they're vet-owned? They've been around for 10 years, they are not new to the solar game. They even claim to be an industry leader, if we're trusting their word.
> It would be great if American companies did more due diligence, but that increases costs.
How much is it going to cost to either replace all the inverters sold, or remedy whatever the gripe is with the manufacturer? How much is the outage going to cost across the (tens? hundreds?) of thousands of inverters sold?
