What happened to our Jackery ?
Thanks for stopping by . Last week we published an image on our Instagram channel, highlighting ownership of our second Jackery Power Station, an Explorer 1000. I also included a throw away comment to the effect that I hoped this one would last longer than our first.
If you are a regular user of social media, especially YouTube you can’t have missed the fact that Jackery have flooded the space with donated power stations to a host of You Tubers , ready to provide reviews that were largely positive. The result I suspect is that the potential benefit of such an appliance is/was being considered widely by the camping community. Hence my post caused some requests as to why the first unit failed and whether they should consider the purchase at all or at least consider alternatives.
Having caused such consternation a little more information from us is required. We purchased the first Jackery, also an Explorer 1000 as we set off on an 8 week tour of the Outer Hebrides. That unit failed , the AC units refused to work with the resultant error message displayed on the unit. As we were travelling we were not able to do a like for like swap under warranty, so after some initial clunky customer service from Jackery, we Fed Ex’d the unit from Sterling Post Office to their distribution centre in Blackburn against a refund.
Here is an interesting point , Jackery Customer Support is located in the US and operates US Pacific Standard Time and so replies to emails are sent overnight the next day ( sometimes) , Monday to Friday. We needed to get the unit returned before hitting the islands so needed some prompt action which initially wasn’t forthcoming.
Getting to the point - we realised that Jackery UK products are sold through the Amazon UK Market place , so we raised an A-Z Warranty Claim with Amazon direct. Whatever this actually means to Jackery, they contacted me the same day and arranged to have the unit returned to them, at their expense and our account refunded that day and before they received the returned unit. They asked if , in return if I would withdraw the A - Z Warranty claim with Amazon. After checking with amazon that I could resurrect the claim within 30 days , I complied and the matter was resolved as they promised
So why did we purchase another , here is the thought process.
Few people were reporting Jackery problems generally that we could see.
Despite the issues dealing with Jackery direct , Amazon do provide effective protection against delivery of a faulty unit
All products have a percentage of failure, it’s inevitable
Alternative products didn’t meet our requirements.
Why 1000w not 500w?
This was not an easy decision, but it really amounts to totting up the watts you need in lay-mans terms, which is about all I can manage as this is not a product review. For this you need to check out Bob Earnshaws Channel or Camper Vibe for what I think are the best sources of review of the Jackery , or John and Mandy and Posh Cats Camping if you want a PowerOak comparison.
There is no doubt that the 500w Jackery or the Poweroak alternative would suit our digital recharging requirements including phones , cameras , laptops , drones , cameras etc. However we wanted to go beyond that especially when in Europe and running on a combination of 6amp electricity and gas.
We also purchased the solar panel which works effectively but charges slowly , the secret seems to be keep topping it up, charging from empty whether by mains , 12V or solar is not a quick process.
I hope this has nailed the issue , we are happy with the product which is working correctly.
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