Door-to-door rooftop solar array sales are mostly a scam, it's a high-pressure low-information sales tactic and a terrible deal for the average homeowner.
Installation issues are shockingly common. Lots of new, poorly sealed holes in the roof being the biggest concern.
In leaving this review I hope to save one family the frustration and financial pain that working with Alex Lake of Spartan Solar has caused us. Please feel free to reach out if you want specific details.
We did not do enough research - and ended up fronting the money for the project on a loan that gave a kickback to Spartan Solar. In conversations with us (and in all their marketing literature), Spartan solar states that you will not pay anything until your solar panels are up and running. For us - this is not the case at all. The project is 10 months old and we are paying both hundreds of dollars a month for electricity and the full monthly payment for the loan (which inconveniently removes any leverage we might have with the installer if we had dealt with them directly). We have been paying both bills for the last six months - Spartan has ignored my complaints about this misleading advertising to date.
Our Solar panels were installed 8 months ago and are still not functioning. This is a sellers market and it is hard to get time with the installer, the city, and utility company - so I’m not surprised about this insane delay- but I am literally doing 100% of the work I was assured I would not need to do if I worked with Spartan Solar. I was assured we wouldn’t need to worry about coordinating these events and the Spartan team would have our backs. Due to communication problems between Spartan and their subcontractors about the need for a new main electricity panel our project was delayed multiple months. Two days ago we finally received permission to operate our panels. When we turned on the switch, they are not working however Spartan have not returned our calls/emails about this issue and we have had to chase the subcontractor to try and fix the situation. The subcontractors are unable to come and look at the problem until next month, and so we are still stuck paying for a non-working solar system and racking up large electricity bills in the hot California summer months.
I’m today’s market, solar installations are a commodity and the most important way to offer value to a customer is through effective communication. Here is where we were frustrated most with this whole experience.
Make sure you do business with a company listed on the better business bureau.
That's the thing. The article makes them implicitly sound like heroes - they sacrificed SO much for a dream, the dream of serving the customers. They're solar evangelists. The new generation of motivated do gooders. Wish everybody's child was like that!
But it's bs, I'm sorry. There's a reason nobody trusts door to door sales people. There's reason they target the elderly. There's a reason why they have a book-rack of sales techniques. There's a reason they're pushy and persistent and chameleons. And they get a significant paycheque for no actual service to the client.
I work from home with my father in law who's a curmudgeony grouch, yet once a week I have to leave a work call as I overhear them penetrating his defences. And then three weeks later there's an article in the local newspaper about X number of elderly scammed by door to door salespeople selling driveway repeir or duct cleaning or solar panels or roof replacement or whatever.
There is NO alignment of interest between you and the door to door salesperson. They have one goal and one goal only and that is making the sale. Nothing else is real, they're not your new buddy, and they will not be there for you after you sign.
(source - various ; I've been a home owner, have had family scammed, read a lot, and oh yeah, was a poor immigrant and went for several trainings to be door to door sales person and saw the insides of the machine)
This is an important part. Any promises about help in future, if they are not in writing, they mean nothing. What actually happens when you later call the person, is either they no longer work there (and no, the person who inherited their place is not going to honor the promises they made, you must have misunderstood), or they tell you that the condition for their help is you need to buy another expensive product first.
Right. It's unfortunately extremely common - even in-store clerk for major telecom swill make undeliverable promises and assurances; when it's a random, subcontracted, un-accountable stranger at your door, there's no limit to what they can say in the inherently he-said/she-said scenario.
There's NO earthly benefit to consumer to signing something from a door-to-door salesperson. You don't have the context, you don't have comparison, you don't have background, you don't have information, you don't have assurance or proof or trust or anything that it takes for you to make a beneficial decision. All you have are eroding defenses against a targeted onslaught. At best, at BEST, you'll get something you could've gotten with less risk and less pressure through regular channels. At worst - well, there's no upper limit to the worst. You may get a slightly more expensive regular product, or you may get a slightly subpar product, or you may end up in any number of various nightmare scenarios. There's just no upside.
I'm the nicest, politest, most conflict-avoiding person in real life, and known for it. And I hate that they push and push and push and make me turn nasty before they'll hear a "No".
My grandmother suffered Alzheimer’s, but wasn’t ready to leave her home, so my uncle moved in with her.
She called him at work to ask for her checkbook… two men had knocked on her door, convinced her that a tree on her property needed to be cut down, proceeded to cut it and leave it there, then demanded $400.
Uncle rushed home and ran these guys off, refusing to pay, but it was a dangerous scam. All it would have taken is one to distract her while the other helped himself inside the house.
This is staggering to me for a different reason. Having a single tree cut down (and removed, which I guess they didn’t do) in our neighborhood costs in the vicinity of $4000-$10,000.
If you have a chainsaw, you can pick the tree, and you're not worried about where the tree will land (it's far enough from anything important), cutting down a tree is pretty quick work. Making it land in a small area is difficult, and removing it is laborious.
$4,000 to $10,000 for a single tree removal is incredibly high. In a very high cost of living area I can have a very large tree removed by a licensed insured removal company, the best in the area, for $1,500.
Are you in the Bay Area? NYC? Those are about the only places I could imagine paying $4k or more.
I suspect over the pandemic and lumber boom, a lot of qualified/insured/bonded arborists ended up getting forestry jobs and in-city arborists became scarce, temporarily anyway. Kinda like what happened to shipping container prices.
>>Nothing about that story sounds like a scam to me.
I mean, that's just... naivete? Lack of experience? Wonderful but unwarranted faith in nature of humanity? I was there once myself, so I empathize and understand it, but it's also dangerous.
First, there's no reason random people would be knocking on your door to cut a tree right then and there. EVERYthing about that story should sound like a scam, from the get go.
Second, I'm sure you CAN have tree cutting and removal as different services. As a consumer, why would you, but sure. But - do you really feel this was explained to the buyer ahead of time? Do you believe this tree needed cutting, based on the random strangers' authority? Why were random people walking around with chainsaws?
I get these guys on a weekly basis. "They were just walking down the neighborhood and noticed that [my gutters needed cleaning | my driveway is in disrepair | my roof can use a quick fix | whatever]". Literally every time, as I mentioned, there's an article in local newspaper few weeks later about elderly being scammed.
What honest, reputable businessperson, especially a skilled tradesperson, wastes their time knocking on doors? They are in so much demand they don't even need to advertise, word of mouth and referrals keep them overbusy. We'd all kill for a reputable contractor. Whoever knocks on your door in the middle of the day is not of that persuasion.
Are you in Florida? Trimming and removing trees prior to hurricane season is a completely reasonable thing to do. It's very common here.
The equipment for tree removal is different. A big truck with a crane that lifts debris into the back vs a bucket truck and chainsaws. And stump removal is a whole other thing.
Not every operation is big enough to own multiple trucks.
To drop a, as far as we know, perfectly healthy tree and leave it in the yard?
We had a guy who was doing work in the neighborhood offer to take down a big beautiful Maple tree in our back yard. He tried to instill fear of the tree.
So many people are easily tricked into taking down perfectly healthy trees because they are big. What a loss.
I can echo your sentiment. My install is seriously delayed both by the city permits and the installers (who’ve now broken two panels). Luckily I only paid 25% upfront and the other 75% will be handed over on completion. So I’m sitting pretty with a new roof and uninstalled panels and while they have to figure out the cost issue.
I’m only able to say this because my deal was to pay upfront without financing.
For context, install and inspection were supposed to be done in July. It is now nearly December.
Installation issues are shockingly common. Lots of new, poorly sealed holes in the roof being the biggest concern.
Here's a review I found of Spartan (employer of the man profiled above): https://www.facebook.com/dodgyjanet/posts/10158647440200887
In leaving this review I hope to save one family the frustration and financial pain that working with Alex Lake of Spartan Solar has caused us. Please feel free to reach out if you want specific details. We did not do enough research - and ended up fronting the money for the project on a loan that gave a kickback to Spartan Solar. In conversations with us (and in all their marketing literature), Spartan solar states that you will not pay anything until your solar panels are up and running. For us - this is not the case at all. The project is 10 months old and we are paying both hundreds of dollars a month for electricity and the full monthly payment for the loan (which inconveniently removes any leverage we might have with the installer if we had dealt with them directly). We have been paying both bills for the last six months - Spartan has ignored my complaints about this misleading advertising to date. Our Solar panels were installed 8 months ago and are still not functioning. This is a sellers market and it is hard to get time with the installer, the city, and utility company - so I’m not surprised about this insane delay- but I am literally doing 100% of the work I was assured I would not need to do if I worked with Spartan Solar. I was assured we wouldn’t need to worry about coordinating these events and the Spartan team would have our backs. Due to communication problems between Spartan and their subcontractors about the need for a new main electricity panel our project was delayed multiple months. Two days ago we finally received permission to operate our panels. When we turned on the switch, they are not working however Spartan have not returned our calls/emails about this issue and we have had to chase the subcontractor to try and fix the situation. The subcontractors are unable to come and look at the problem until next month, and so we are still stuck paying for a non-working solar system and racking up large electricity bills in the hot California summer months. I’m today’s market, solar installations are a commodity and the most important way to offer value to a customer is through effective communication. Here is where we were frustrated most with this whole experience. Make sure you do business with a company listed on the better business bureau.