Thunder Auto battery charger warning, mainly for Australians.

[GILow]

Hi all,

Negative product review, pretty much for Aussies because I suspect these things are not sold anywhere else. (Maybe under another brand, not sure.)

A couple of months ago I bought a battery charger to supplement my solar, after moving to a pen where my solar input dropped by over 60%. (Great pen, crap solar orientation.)

I didn't need much additional power, so I googled around and came up with a 20 amp charger from Thunder Auto. (TDR02120) It had a few positive reviews, though none of the reviews showed any technical understanding, which should have been a warning sign.

Anyway, the thing is sold as a 20 amp, 8 stage charger. The whole 8 stage thing feels like a bit of a gimmick, but Frankies had the charger at a very attractive price of less than AU$150, and I've always been happy with them as a retailer, so I went ahead and hit "buy".

Well, what a load of crap!

The device put out 20 amps for all of about three minutes before slowing, slowing, slowing... down to 8 amps. Unplugged it, plugged it back in again, same thing. All this was happening with a battery bank voltage of under 13 volts, even though the manual claims it will get to 14.8 for absorption and then float at 13.7.

Long story short, I ended up being bounced around the phone support from Thunder Auto, who were always polite, but slow, before they offered to exchange it. This was duly organised, and, surprise, surprise, the next one did EXACTLY the same thing.

So, they've agreed to refund my money, and I've sent it back via Frankies, but the whole exercise was a pretty frustrating waste of time. (Nearly two months now.)

Put simply, this device is NOT as advertised, do not be fooled by the positive reviews. Now that I read them carefully, I realise that most reviewers probably wouldn't know how to measure output current, and one reviewer had resorted to unplugging it and plugging it back in again, but still gave it a five star positive rating.

(Notably, Frankies appear to have pulled it from their shelf, so maybe they now think it is suspect too.)

I've bought a Victron charger, which is what I should have done at the outset, and needless to say, it is working perfectly, exactly as designed.

I wish I'd done that at the beginning.

Matt