I bought a Generac inverter generator from Lowe’s. It was quite well reviewed, and Lowe’s had a good price and would deliver it (otherwise it’s more than a three-hour round trip to pick it up). It took them fifteen days to deliver it, and on the day they brought it I wasn’t able to drop everything to test it. When I did test it, the electric starter didn’t work. The directions anticipated this, but there was a non-trivial procedure to go through to try to make it work. When I finally had time to go through it, six days had passed since it was delivered. Turns out, it was broken out of the box.
Lowe’s has refused to do anything except give me Generac’s customer service number.
So they sold me a broken unit and are refusing to accept it as a return because, after taking 15 days to deliver it to me, I wasn’t able to finish testing it within 48 hours of when they finally deigned to drop it off.
So before buying a generator — or any of a long list of items in the same general category including major appliances, air conditioners, and the like — consider that Lowe’s won’t stand behind their products and might deliver you a dead-on-arrival unit and you’re out of luck if you cannot thoroughly test it within 48 hours. Be sure you’re in a position to drop everything and kowtow to Lowe’s draconian return policy.
The next issue will be to see if Generac’s warranty is worth anything. If they say “ship it to us at your expense and we’ll look at it,” then that’s a non-starter (ha!) as the shipping would probably be more than the cost of replacing the unit.
—2p