to Adverc or not to Adverc, that is the question

Sorry, this is going to be a bit of a nerdy techy blog entry but I am confused. I have an Adverc battery management system which up to now has worked beautifully - optimising the charge my batteries receive from the alternator. Recently my alternator died a natural death and so, being a member of River and Canal Rescue (the waterways version of AA or RAC), I called them out. A very nice young man came and fitted a new alternator. However he neglected to tell me that he had disconnected my Adverc.

Over the next couple of weeks I noticed that the performance of the alternator was disappointing, especially considering they replaced a 55amp with a 70amp alternator. I contacted RCR and another, not so young man came out and replaced the first alternator but also mentioned that the Adverc had been disconnected by the first chap. When I asked him to reconnect it he refused, saying it would void my alternator's warranty. He then went into great detail as to why Advercs are a bad idea and would shorten the life of my alternator by a third. He said if I really wanted it reconnected I would have to take my boat to a boatyard and pay.

I accepted his explanation, but was disappointed as I am not getting as good a charge into my batteries without it.  A couple more weeks went past and then I received the RCR newsletter. Blow me down with a feather; there on the front page was a whole article praising Adverc to the skies and saying that their engineers were now trained to diagnose many common Adverc faults!

I got on the phone to RCR and was first told that 'our engineers don't deal with Advercs'. When I drew their attention to the article in their newsletter, I was swiftly passed on to someone else. He told me that they do like Advercs and that their engineers are being trained to diagnose problems, but that they still couldn't reconnect my Adverc as it was 'too complicated to do on the bankside and needed boatyard services'. That confused me further as their engineer had told me that it was a simple matter of reconnecting one wire, but that it needed soldering.

I have a horrible feeling that I am being given the run around to avoid them having to come out to me again - even though I have just renewed my membership at the cost of around £150. So my next step will be to contact Adverc and see what they have to say about all this.

Boats... who would have them?!