71–80 of 298 posts
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>The saying "caveat emptor" is thousands of years old. Yes, and the implication of "caveat emptor" is to take a very dim view of the ethics of folks who pitch in this way.
The implication of caveat emptor is to not to take the word of someone selling you something, period.
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>You're better off buying the system up front if possible or even financing it and claiming the tax credit yourself. Up front means no one is responsible for maintenance except you. As for the tax credit, you do get it in the form of a discounted price. Over here, that's how all the solar companies pitch it. They'll install it for cheap, but the condition is that you pay them a big fraction of the tax credit the foll…
Maintenance? I bought solar from a company in San Jose. They guarantee production, they warrantee the installation to be leak-proof, the panels and inverter have factory warrantees. I guess they won't come over and wash my panels for me, but, no kidding.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>You're better off buying the system up front if possible or even financing it and claiming the tax credit yourself. Up front means no one is responsible for maintenance except you. As for the tax credit, you do get it in the form of a discounted price. Over here, that's how all the solar companies pitch it. They'll install it for cheap, but the condition is that you pay them a big fraction of the tax credit the foll…
> Up front means no one is responsible for maintenance except you. Ok? That is standard practice when you own a home. You are responsible for all the maintenance on your home. What is scary about solar panel maintenance? I assume they have to be cleaned every so often. Anything else? Maybe you have an electrician come and retorque the connections once a year? It's not like they have a lot of moving parts assuming it'…
Bolting solar panels to the roof is not viable in the long run, IMO. The damage and the advancement of tech means these things will be obsolete in the near term.
I bought a house in CA a few years ago and had to assume the previous owner’s SunRun lease. I didn’t really want to but even if it ends up costing me slightly more in the long term (for now it’s unclear) it’s very minor in the land of $1.5 million housing. This article seems to be making a huge deal over a minor $30/month cost.
I wish I had the kind of income that made me call that a 'minor cost' !
FYI, this has nothing to do with solar panels and everything to do with a buying a house that has stuff with transferable contracts. Save up and buy your solar outright, companies don't lease things to you unless there is profit in it.
It has to do with solar panels to the extent that there's very little else that anyone would put on their house that uses a transferable contract. Solar panels are the most common instance in which anyone would run into this situation. I'm struggling to think of anything else, actually.
>One former Bay Area employee sent me a Sunrun training manual he said was current when he resigned in April 2017. It’s called “Power Play 2.0: The Guide to Successfully Sell Sunrun.” (The company confirmed its authenticity.) It instructs salespeople to sow distrust in and disdain for traditional utilities and appeal to customers’ emotions. Over 61 pages, pain is cited at least 31 times and fear at least a dozen. Whe…
Every company that sells anything - consumer, enterprise, whatever.. has sales scripts, which this is. If it's not something a live salesperson is walking you through, then there is a workflow you are stepping through to maximize your conversion through steps in a pipeline. This isn't worth getting mad over, and it's universal (it's just modern, quantitative sales best practices). The saying "caveat emptor" is centur…
Authority (City, Utility, etc.) typically push and constrain the installation at least 3-6 weeks and they rarely actually know Solar well enough to be a real 'Authority'. Lots of poorly implemented review procedures from untrained city officials and inspectors. Many unnecessary revisions, nitpicks, and expensive truck rolls surface here.
Then we also have Sales and Financing Providers who have the most leverage out of the stakeholders. High leverage also means they tend to get the biggest cut for a given Solar contract. High commissions and high fees or they leave the installation company who has to fulfill a 2-6 month-payout-delay pipeline. The fulfillment team also has the most people to retain, train, and coordinate over what is typically a multi-state field operation problem.
Not at all easy. Still, it boils my blood seeing some of these organizations fall prey to these pressures and turn to customer exploitation. What it amounts to is some deep-rooted systemic issues with the government-enforced monopolies of our utility companies, overly-simplistic incentives, and a market moving faster than the training and organizational development.
A few points this person probably didn't think about: •Nobody knows what California electricity prices are going to do in the next 20 years. By terminating the system, they just traded certainty for volatility. With that attitude I hope they financed using an ARM loan. •They whined about how expensive it was, but also expressed a desire to have one or two kids someday. When you have kids, your electric bills tend to…
> Nobody knows what California electricity prices are going to do in the next 20 years. That's true but with the way most utility costs have been dropping, the rates are probably not going to skyrocket. > using more power The problem is the rate being too high. More use doesn't help the problem. > duck curve Sure, but not very important to this choice. > A silent majority of people think PV panels are ugly. Like, hid…
With strict liability for wildfires, 'green deals', cap-and-trade or Pigovian tax proposals, California's classic policy insanities, grids potentially struggling with renewables and load sharing, you certainly cannot be >99% confident that there will be no large increases in the offing.
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We got a quote from sun run - it made us uncomfortable how all of their numbers assumed ridiculous utility rate increases. And our gut said we should just wait and purchase instead. A few years later solar prices came down and we made a purchase with an installer whose main business was purchase, not lease. edit: I responded below, but my complaint isn't with their price -- it's their scare tactics and fuzzy break ev…
To be fair, the cost of solar panels at the time you were considering them was what it was. Someone needed to pay for them. If that someone is Sunrun, they need to recoup those cost and make a return. You can be as creative as you want with the financing, that reality won't change. You could have gotten a bank loan too.