Sol-Ark may not have pulled the trigger on bricking the inverters, but it certainly sounds like their legal actions pressed Deye's hand.
And then to shake down all the individuals who's inverters broke with a limited time opportunity to buy a brand new one from them....
I can't really figure out what they did that was in breach of contract. As far as I understand it, they don't do business inside the areas affected, so there is no contract to speak of. Instead, their authorized resellers seem to be the ones installing for their hardware; I don't even think it's legal to sell their hardware if it doesn't comply with FCC/etc guidelines.
Is geo-blocking illegal? Am I entitled to a refund if I import American hardware that refuses to operate in my country?
I think people were risking a broken setup for a big discount, and now it's come back to bite them in the ass. If the units affected were official installations done by their American reseller, their reseller wouldn't be so ready to offer up free replacements.
If the product doesn't obviously communicate that it won't work in your country: yes.
Had there been no exclusivity agreement, I think we can agree that the inverters would not of been bricked for being located in the wrong regions.
I think the malice from Sol-Ark here is that they are only offering a limited time deal, which may pressure people to pay up before the courts clear this up.
Regardless of who shares the majority of the blame, Sol-Ark, Deye or 3rd party vendors, this could of been handled better by all parties involved, and should not have harmed end consumers in this way.
It seems deye either willfully or negligently ignore their contract they made with sol ark. Or their middle men in other countries did. Deye then punished the end users for deye’s lapses.
Where does solark get blame unless the exclusivity contract is what one objects to.
I like that you substituted a similar word while paraphrasing a common phrase and then used the opportunity to say “I didn’t mean what you thought I did. I meant something else but will not describe what that is exactly”