The solar gift that never started giving

The other day I came across a video made by a young lady who had a completely disastrous and agonizing story about how they attempted to go solar and got taken.

Names of companies and participants removed, at the time of writing this there were a little over 130K views of the video and I didn’t see any updates showing if anything had been changed.

Her story starts like I think most anyone would… She came home to find her husband and a solar sales rep in the kitchen talking about solar.

She was apprehensive about talking to the solar rep. She had that used car sales shark feeling about it. She was skeptical.

But her husband was into it so she agreed to get the power bill for them to look at.

I can’t quote the sales rep, I wasn’t there. I won’t try to quote the young lady’s video- but I’ll paraphrase and summarize only some of the highlights…

The sales rep apparently promised or stated that:

 

- The solar system would be sized to replace the energy consumption (over 100%) and that future electric bills would be zero.

- There would be an incentive check coming to them at the end of the year when they did their taxes.

- There would be a free one-time uninstall and reinstall of the system on the roof to allow for either roof repairs or moving to another home so they could take the system with them.

 

And many more things.

 

She wasn’t convinced, her gut told her things were a bit ‘off’ but she went along with her husband who felt like this was what they should do.

The system was installed very quickly it seems. (no surprise there, those sharks are all business and serious when it comes to getting across the ‘pay’ line- in this case they get funded when the system is ‘installed’)

The first month’s electric bill, want to take a guess? With the over 100% system, it should have been around 20 bucks for connection fee…

 

It was regularly sized at 300 bucks.

 

They called, the company accused them of upping their electric usage.

They called, the company said it takes time for the system to build credits with the power company- they needed to wait through the winter months to get that credit bank built up.

They called again, the company basically put them on a ‘harassing customer list’ and got hung up on and no-answer.

They called someone else to take a look- that person discovered the system was essentially missing nearly half the panels that should have been installed per the estimate.

They needed to do a roof repair so they called to ask to have panels removed to support the repairs. The company said that the removal cost alone was 4k, and hung up on them.

At the end of the year, their tax person had to break the news… there was no rebate check. That entire process was not what the sales rep said it was and there would probably never be any real money associated with that program.

The loan company however didn’t see it that way. The loan program that was used had a feature where the payments were a bit larger for the first several months until the rebate check came in and would be applied to the loan.

The loan company rep started calling after a few months to remind them to fill out the proper paperwork at tax time to get that check and hand it over to them.

Those calls became more insistent over time and eventually she had to have an aggressive conversation with them to stop calling and asking for a check that she wasn’t getting. 

After a while, a rep from the solar company called and offered to pay one month’s loan payment as some sort of restitution for them being unhappy with the transaction.

When they refused and mentioned that the husband was talking to lawyers about suing, things changed (sort of).

There was a manager that called. Insisted that the system was correct and that they should never have spoken to anyone else. Two months loan payments were offered.

The attorney they spoke to reviewed the contract and found that, get this…

There was a clause in the contract that basically stated that if the customer sues the company, that the customer would pay 10k to the company… 

At the end of the short story, this couple were left with an undersized solar system that didn’t have appreciable impact on their electric bill, a loan payment of around 200 bucks a month, a roof that needed to be repaired (they knew it was coming when they had solar but chose to delay because of empty no-fee remove/reinstall promise), and a lose-lose scenario if they chose to sue the company.

These were hard working Americans with children and a full life ahead of them. They are smart and took the time to explore solar as an opportunity to do their part to help with the environment and to have an impact on lowering their costs.

They were not aware of the slippery tricks the solar sales rep was using. They were not aware of many aspects of the solar system, how it works, the incentives, the clauses in the contract- and got taken by a sleazy solar sales shark.

If you’re looking into solar in Tucson, that’s great! Take the time to arm yourself with all the information they didn’t have… Grab a copy of my Tucson Solar Insider book “xxxBOOK TITLExxx”- click here

Be Good!

Curtis