Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

My wife and I recently - last December (2011) - purchased this generator for our home. We needed it to ensure 100% power availability for a family member who has to do a life-saving medical treatment nightly at home using an electronic machine. We purchased Kohler after extensive review because it was supposed to be the best and most reliable residential generator on the market. After it was installed, it performed fine in weekly test runs and monthly automatic transfer switch tests ( to switch over to it in case of power outage). However, on its first real test, during a major storm last weekend that knocked out our grid power from our local utility, this generator failed us completely. It did not turn on, and would not even start up manually. The authorized dealer we purchased it from and who installed it was very responsive. They sent a technician immediately in the middle of the storm at 1.30am. He diagnosed the problem as an electronic fault inside the generator. But the computer diagnostics were too vague to fully identify the problem. They sent another technician early next morning who spent several hours to finally identify the problem. Two small - $20-30 each - parts had failed deep inside the machine. The dealer and the area distributor for Kohler did all they could to get the parts to come and fix the problem that same day. However, Kohler was closed for the whole weekend (all-day Saturday and Sunday), so could not be contacted until three days later! Oddly, given the simple technology, the inexpensive parts are not available as generics on the local market. You would have thought this would be the case. Finally, Monday morning we were able to get the order for the parts placed with Kohler. This is probably too late for overnight delivery - but let's hope it will happen! In all likelihood the parts will arrive in a day or two so that the generator will end up being fixed almost a week after it broke down. We called Kohler's customer service to get help and support. their attitude was totally non-committal and bureaucratic. The customer service rep just kept repeating "we understand your frustrations" but said they could not track the spare parts order or ensure rush delivery. I asked for the name and address of the corporate head office and the CEO of the company. But the customer service rep refused to give it to me. This is not information they give out! I later dug it out through a Google search. The design of this generator seems quite poor for what is meant to be a standby to be used in emergencies. If something goes wrong with it, it can take many hours to fix even simple problems. The two minor parts that have gone wrong in our generator will take two technicians six hours to replace, we were told by the distributor. The generator itself is based upon a very simple technology. It is essentially a four cylinder auto engine adapted to run on natural gas that works as a turbine to generate electricity. To this has been added a computerized control system and a computerized diagnostic system. So, the basic technology is very simple and well known for a long time. It is quite surprising then that the generator is configured in such a cramped way internally that even minor repairs can take many hours to be done. Meanwhile, the computerized controls are vulnerable to power surges - for which no internal surge protection is provided - and the computerized diagnostic controls are so poor that the primitive system of alphabetic codes used to designate different problem conditions are vague and ambiguous - so it takes even experienced technicians many hours to figure out what has gone wrong. In essence a simple technology has been made so complicated by poor design that, if it goes wrong, it can never be fixed quickly in an emergency. But the only time you will want to use it is in an emergency! We spent over $10,000 having our stand-by generator system installed. But by now, after just one emergency, we are totally disillusioned because the generator failed! Not only that, the company that manufactures the generator is so complacent they don't see anything wrong with us waiting a week to have it fixed. This has to be one of the very worst products we ever purchased! If we could give it a zero points out of five we would. If you are considering buying a stand-by generator, do yourself a big favor and do not buy this machine! The basic problems with are : (1) the design is fundamentally flawed; and (2) the manufacturer does not understand that to be in the emergency back-up power business, they have to give top priority to customer responsiveness.