Compensation Claim with LG - Prime RESU Batteries - Looking for Advice.

MadAsToast

Long story (with a timeline if it helps) and looking for some advice/suggestions with how to get a response from LG about compensation for the battery outage and perhaps inconvenience compensation for all the effort to get them to sort their admin.

Feb 2022

Solar panels installed and commissioned

September 2022

LG Prime RESU 16kw battery installed and commissioned

December 2022

LG Prime RESU 16kw battery shuts off and never works again.

December 2022 --> June 2023

Long protracted drawn out "efight" with installer and LG to get a battery replaced under warranty, electricians come and do various tests then go again, long periods of radio silence from LG

who don't seem to care about customer at all providing they get their money.

June 2023

Replacement Battery installed and broken battery takes up residency on driveway (pretty ugly having to see that everyday and watch a box start breaking down due to excessive rain and bad weather).

December 2023

Battery finally collected (after LG finally switch logistics partner)

December 2023 up till now,

trying to get hold of LG to actually start the compensation claim and pay back.

I've learned a valuable lesson and will never have an LG product again.

Hoping someone might have some guidance or some idea how to proceed, perhaps even some insider knowledge of who to email?

Thanks in advance
MadAsToast.

RefluentBeans

Sorry to hear you’ve had a bad time with LG/suppliers. 

The first question I have is what are you actually wanting to claim? As far as I am reading, the battery has been replaced? So what grounds are you wanting to claim compensation for? 

The second question is who did you purchase the battery from? LG directly or from a supplier? If you purchased it from a supplier (as some sort of fitting) then your consumer rights are with the supplier, and they should’ve been the ones to repair/replace/refund the battery. The warranty is normally all that useful until after the 6 months, as before 6 months the fault is assumed to be there in the consumer rights act, and so a claim against a retailer of a product is often simpler than a warranty claim. After 6 months you may have to prove the product is faulty and it wasn’t user error; and that is normally where the warranties are more useful. 

MadAsToast

@RefluentBeans

Thanks for the reply,
First Question:
The compensation claim is for loss of money, the battery holds up to 16kw/h of energy that my solar panels has generated each day.

As the battery stores the excess energy and when it fails it doesn't, all this energy was returned to the grid (I got 5p per kw/h at the time as export guarantee) I then had to buy the energy back when I needed it (rather than relying on my stored energy which at the time was 32-35p per kw/h).

It's something that the installer and LG both advised me of at the time that compensation was due.

You're quite correct the consumer rights part was "sorted" (regardless of the unbelievable delays).

I cannot find guidance anywhere on LG websites advising how much this is or how long it takes, but as they indicated I am entitled to it then I am going to chase it down.

Second Question:
From supplier, however the warranty is with LG (again I'm not a legal expert and the compensation is from LG for faulty products)

RefluentBeans

MadAsToast said:

@RefluentBeans

Thanks for the reply,
First Question:
The compensation claim is for loss of money, the battery holds up to 16kw/h of energy that my solar panels has generated each day.

As the battery stores the excess energy and when it fails it doesn't, all this energy was returned to the grid (I got 5p per kw/h at the time as export guarantee) I then had to buy the energy back when I needed it (rather than relying on my stored energy which at the time was 32-35p per kw/h).

It's something that the installer and LG both advised me of at the time that compensation was due.

You're quite correct the consumer rights part was "sorted" (regardless of the unbelievable delays).

I cannot find guidance anywhere on LG websites advising how much this is or how long it takes, but as they indicated I am entitled to it then I am going to chase it down.

Second Question:
From supplier, however the warranty is with LG (again I'm not a legal expert and the compensation is from LG for faulty products)

Okay - that’s a fair claim. It read a bit like you were attempting an inconvenience claim - which whilst annoying and poor customer service, those claims often fail in court. 

I assume your calculation is going to be the energy you purchased multiplied by the difference in sell rate back to the grid and buy rate from the grid? 

LG (I believe) has a complaints process. Given the issues you’ve had, it really shouldn’t be the first line customer service staff that deal with it. I personally would attempt to email the CEO - it’s unlikely that you’d get a response from them - but it normally gets kicked down to a more senior (and given LG’s a big company - a specific team) to deal with. 

Failing that - if LG are unreceptive then I think the only other options you’ve got is to see if the energy ombudsman could mediate/if LG have their own Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) system in place and what that looks like. If that fails, then the final option is court. It should be under £10k - and so you should be able to have it heard it in Small Claims, and you can claim the money back from filing fees etc. 

MadAsToast

Thanks for the reply.

RefluentBeans said:

Okay - that’s a fair claim. It read a bit like you were attempting an inconvenience claim - which whilst annoying and poor customer service, those claims often fail in court. 

I assume your calculation is going to be the energy you purchased multiplied by the difference in sell rate back to the grid and buy rate from the grid? 

To be honest I believe they have a "standard" compensation figure, during the period of "outage" I exported 1857.5kW/h and imported 1783.45kW/h, I appreciate there is no way that I would have covered completely the imported amount with stored energy that ended up being exported (weather conditions, seasonal daylight etc.) however even 50% of that would represent quite a saving at variance or ~25p kW/h (export 5p vs import 30p)

I will dig around for the specific complaints procedure as it's not LG main company it's a subsidiary LG ESS Batteries or something like that.

Also I will try and locate CEO  type role there and see what can be achieved messaging them directly - thanks again for the comment.

Okell

MadAsToast said:

... Second Question:
From supplier, however the warranty is with LG (again I'm not a legal expert and the compensation is from LG for faulty products)

What does the LG warranty say?  I'd be very surprised if it went any further than covering the battery itself.  I imagine it will exclude any "consequential" losses arising from battery failure.

The point @RefluentBeans is making is that your statutory consumer rights under the Consumer Rights Act 2015 (legislation.gov.uk) lie against whoever sold you the LG battery and not LG itself.  (Unless it was LG who sold it to you).

The only warranty rights you can enforce against LG (or any other manufacturer) are whatever rights the warranty specifically gives you.  I might be wrong in this case, but I would expect those rights to be so tightly drawn as to exclude liability for the sort of loss you want to claim for.

So I think you need to forget LG and their warranty - you need to concentrate on the supplier/installer and your rights under consumer protection legislation.

Approx how much compensation are you looking for?

Have you sought advice from CAB?  (I can see that your claim could become complicated...)

MadAsToast

Okell said:

MadAsToast said:

... Second Question:
From supplier, however the warranty is with LG (again I'm not a legal expert and the compensation is from LG for faulty products)

What does the LG warranty say?  I'd be very surprised if it went any further than covering the battery itself.  I imagine it will exclude any "consequential" losses arising from battery failure.

Thanks for the reply.

 The compensation is a direct response from both LG and the vendor I purchased through, which is something they advised me about not something I even expected, however as they've both advised me it was something available I'm not going to leave it "on the table".

Okell said:

The point @RefluentBeans is making is that your statutory consumer rights under the Consumer Rights Act 2015 (legislation.gov.uk) lie against whoever sold you the LG battery and not LG itself.  (Unless it was LG who sold it to you).

The only warranty rights you can enforce against LG (or any other manufacturer) are whatever rights the warranty specifically gives you.  I might be wrong in this case, but I would expect those rights to be so tightly drawn as to exclude liability for the sort of loss you want to claim for.

So I think you need to forget LG and their warranty - you need to concentrate on the supplier/installer and your rights under consumer protection legislation.

Approx how much compensation are you looking for?

I understand that legally the reseller is responsible for the replacement of the battery and the organisation of the "admin" side of this, however I'm being told that LG is responsible for a standard compensation payment.

I'm not seeking any specific compensation and to be honest, I'm getting close to giving up chasing them down, I have emails from LG to the installer discussing the forms they need to complete to get it processed so I know that it's something genuine, however the warranty doesn't appear to cover compensation losses unless there's damage to properties.

If I hadn't been told about the compensation possibility I wouldn't have even thought that there was this available. 

But it's getting to the point where the effort might be higher than the "reward"