Verify the complaint before you touch anything

Half the jobs that come back were never broken the way the customer said. See it fail yourself, or you're fixing a guess.

The short version

• Make it fail in front of you. Same mode, same conditions the customer described.
• Ask when it happens: shore, battery, generator, going down the road, after rain, only cold mornings.
• Can't make it fail? Write down exactly what you tried and what it did. That's a real result, not a waste.
• Check for the obvious stuff first: breakers, switches, tank valves, a tripped GFCI, a slide lockout.

Shop tip

Ask "what were you doing when it quit?" It finds more problems than any meter.