Charger- Repair or Replace?

[aggieterpkatie]

I've got a Zareba 20 mile charger that I bought in the late fall of 2005. I used it for about 6 months (if that), and then it sat in a barn until August of 2009. I've been using it since then. Just recently it stopped working. It would still tick like it was working, but it wasn't hot. Zareba said they could repair it for $40. Well, TSC has the same one for $90. The new one comes w/ a year warranty, and if they repaired the old one they would warranty it for 90 days. DH opened the old one and nothing looks obviously broken. I hate to spend $90, but is it stupid to pay almost half that just for a repair? Fence chargers should last longer than that, right?

 

[Roll farms]

In the good old days, they DID last longer than that.
NOW...4-5 yrs is a long time (take it from someone who works @ TSC).

Me, I'd buy the new one.

And here's an insider tip for you....don't get the "Power Plus" warranty they offer you, it's not worth it.

 

[aggieterpkatie]

In the good old days, they DID last longer than that.
NOW...4-5 yrs is a long time (take it from someone who works @ TSC).

Me, I'd buy the new one.

And here's an insider tip for you....don't get the "Power Plus" warranty they offer you, it's not worth it.

Darn it. I guess I'll just bite the bullet and buy a new one. The lady at Zareba quoted me $130 bucks for the same charger, but she said check the retailers because they never undercut their retailers. I find a $40 difference pretty surprising! Yikes. Thanks for the tip on the warranty. I hardly ever buy store warranties anymore.

 

[goodhors]

There was another post on here about a charger Repair place. Might be worth sending
in the older one to be fixed. Can't remebmber who posted it, but they sent in their
charger and got it repaired for less than cost on a new charger. I saved the site in case
I needed later on.

http://fencechargerrepair.com/home.html

Have you checked the charger itself for power? We thought we needed a new charger
just because it was old and the fence showed low numbers and jolt if you touched it. No,
there was another problem from charger, ground, and how the wires are attached. When
we took the charger off the fence, put the tester tool and ground on it, the output was 9.9!
NOTHING wrong with the charger, so we had to go look elsewhere.

Unhooking the charger to fence and, ground wire, testing charger output, only takes a minute.
Might save you some money from buying a new charger. Of course then you have to go hunting to find
the real problem in the fence! Some of the newest testers have an arrow feature that points
in the direction of the short. You work your way along the fence, until the arrows are pointing
inward, to locate the short between them. Our fence installer had one such tester tool. It was very cool
and saved a TON of time in problem location. He just kept hooking tester to the wire, going in
the direction the arrow pointed. When he came to a point that arrow pointed back the way he
came, he backed up until he had a small space between the arrows pointing inward. Shorts
were under two gates!! Someplace damaged in the buried wires carrying the charge. So they
dug up the wire and put in new, no short problem anymore. We had been blaming post insulators,
but they had no shorting problems according to this tester device.

I WISH I had noticed the name on the tester, but I was busy reading the face, all the information
it gave on the fence charge, while he was pointing out the problems of fence. My tester only
gives the numbers of charge going thru.

Forgot to ask if there is a replacable fuse? Might be you just blew a fuse, which happened on my older
Parmac charger last spring. We have a Zareba on the shelf for backup, but haven't ever checked it for
replaceable fuses.

 

[BJnMe]

http://www.dickselectricfencerrepair.com/index.html

Dicks is the best I have found. You will pay the lower cost of the repair and get the 1 yr warranty.

 

[aggieterpkatie]

Well, DH brought the charger to his buddy's house yesterday to see if they could fix it. It sat for several weeks before he did anything. All he did was clean it out again, and suddenly it works (he said it shocked the crap out of him ). Who knows what the problem was. Hopefully it'll work when I hook it up, if not I know it's something wrong with the actual fence itself.