Acceptable product let down by unsatisfactory after-sales support
Consistently Poor After Sales Support Devalues OK Product
In August 2024, Mid West Renewables (“MWR”) delivered and installed an 17-panel 6.02Kw solar power system costing approximately E6,300 at my and my wife’s home in Co. Roscommon.
As summer was very nearly over, there was no real need for me to monitor energy generation/usage levels via the system’s app or the system until Spring 2025.
Then Storm Eoghan (24 January, 2025) hit. While our house got off fairly lightly, our power was out for 30-hours and I was unable to access MWR system data when power was finally restored.
27 Jan 2025
I contacted MWR’s system installer, SHANE BRETT for advice. He emailed back to inform me that the problem was not the system but the app which had actually stopped working the previous September.
4 Feb 2025
As I was keen to monitor the system during the brighter Spring and summer months, I emailed Mr. Brett to ask for help in resetting the app. I subsequently received several emails containing confusingly worded and impossible-to-follow instructions that had obviously been written by an engineer for engineers rather than actual system end-users.
19 Mar 2025
Some seven weeks after I first asked for assistance, Mr. Brett eventually came to the house to reset the app by scanning the QR code on a system component. This necessitated his climbing into the crawlspace above the upstairs press housing our main unit and then negotiating his way to the far side of the house where the component was located. Difficult enough for Mr. Brett, this was an almost impossible task for an overweight 69-year-old man such as myself.
Quite why Mr. Brett neglected to issue us with a copy of the QR code we could scan ourselves when installing the system is inexplicable. Still more mind-boggling is his failure to capture a usable image of the code we could scan in the event of future problems while in the crawlspace resolvíng the first app outtage.
28 Apr 2025
Our Eir broadband router having been causing problems, we were issued with a replacement that necessitated our relinking all internet-connected equipment, including the MWR solar panel app to the new router.
When asked to email us an image of the QR code needed for a reset, Mr. Brett sent back a blurry image that was so badly angled and lit that it was clearly useless. Subsequent emails from us have either been replied to via the same technobabble instructions as before, or – rather comically – Mr. Brett’s promise to film some kind of explanatory video.
More than two months since we reported the repeat of the issue with the app, my wife and I are still unable to monitor our panel power capture and storage levels.
While our MWR system seems to have performed satisfactorily since its installation last August, the app has not been accessible for fully eight of those 12 months.
I consider this to be very poor value for an approx. E6,300 system that is not yet one year old.
24 Sept 25
Still no contact from MWR so have deducted a further star
WAYS MWR COULD IMPROVE THEIR SERVICE
1) Make sure end users of what is a fairly advanced product are provided with all necessary documentation such as QR codes when system is installed
2) Ensure that, rather than simply pulled from tech manuals, instructions sent to customers are clearly worded and easy to follow
3) Respond to rather than ignore emails