One of our customers a rang up earlier to ask us some where their inverter was located. Was there a problem? we enquired. We ere told there was no problem, it was just that they were expecting a visit the following morning by someone who was going to a health check on their system.
The lady concerned was in her 70´s, and had recently lost her husband, who had dealt with the sort of thing before his passing. Two of the PV systems we fitted for them (one for their house and 20 yards away they let to a relative) were installed about 15 years ago, and so the equipment was mostly out of warranty, although working perfectly. But she told me that it was the system at her house that they were coming out to ínspect´.
I googled the ´cold calls solar health check´, suspecting a scam, and what do you know? So it appears that unscrupulous operators are ringing the phone book in the hope of finding people that had solar systems fitted in the past, in the hope of selling them over-priced and un-necessary kit or for other unnecessary maintenance.
I told the lady that we fitted a brand new, state of the art inverter, just a few months prior, when we installed their new battery storage system. As mentioned above, her late husband dealt with issues of that nature and she left it all up to him. She wasn’t even aware that the inverter was only a few months old, with virtually its whole life ahead of it. We’d advised that we´d have needed to fit a new inverter to make the new battery system work, -which we couldn’t have done with the old inverter alone- we´d have needed to install a new AC inverter alongside their extant grid-tied DC-AC one, which would be less efficient, and just as costly (nearly enough anyway), as installing a brand new hybrid inverter (which hadn’t really been available in 2011), and seeing as the original inverter was nearly 15 years old by then, it would be an opportune time to upgrade it for a superior product -something we definitely wouldn’t recommend doing just for the sake of it. The old one could have failed the next day, but it could have lasted another 15 years. Under the circumstances, it made more sense to opt for a new hybrid inverter, which would be more efficient than the old one, and it would come with another 10 years of warranty protection.
She replied by email that she had a look online herself and had read about various solar scams that all seemed to start in a similar way to what she had experienced herself just a couple of days earlier, and so she cancelled their visit and blocked their number. She said that she should have come to us first, but just felt pressured by their caller into a booking a visit. She was glad to have dodged a bullet though, and promised to get in touch with us if anything like that happened again, or if she needed to buy any replacement items. We responded that everything was under guarantee for 10 years or more, and would replace anything for free if it were to fail within that period, so she didnt need to worry. And besides, our engineers have their system monitored on an app, the chances are if any fault did arise, we would likely know before she did, and sort it out accordingly.
We’ve had several calls of a similar nature of the past few weeks from members of the public who also had solar (but which we hadn’t installed), who who had phoned up the office to ask our advice. Many of the calls were quite confusing at first. Because it wasn’t always clear straight away, as to what precisely we were being asked to do. “Could we come out to take a look at their system” – Did they want more panels, or some kind of upgrade, we enquired. Without exception each persons existing system did appear to be working as they should be. Why, then, did they call us. Because they wanted someone they could trust to give them a second opinion.
Of course its never to much trouble to help the public when we can, and it was nice to be able to reassure all those who’d called us that if they really wanted someone they could trust to come out and take a look at their system and give them advice thats genuinely in their interest, we’d be happy to do so, and they all thanked us for sitting their mind at rest that their system was OK -like they’d always thought- and told us that they’d cancelled the scammers visit the next day. At least we were able to set all their minds at rest.
It was only later it occurred to me, that when I was running Green Energy Solutions, this sort of thing happened all the time -ie, members o the public -at least throughout South Wales- got in touch for advise on all sorts of renewable energy issues, and solar in particular, as though we were the Energy Saving Trust or something. GES were pretty much established as the go to place for good advice and information, and a reputation of being honest and trustworthy. Although we’ve been going 4 years now, and all of our customers know there’s no one else worth bothering with, for anything renewable energy related, its nice, in a way, that we are at last gaining that kind of reputation more widely throughout the region.