Great Article on Sunrun Leasing downfalls

[peakbagger]

I expect the regulars know the issues with leasing versus owning. This pretty much hits all the bases on how not to install solar. There should be a mandatory disclosure when people sign up for these deals but I expect the solar leasing lobby would make sure that law never got passed.

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2019-sunrun-solar-panels/

I am curious why the homeowner did not force them to restore the roof?.

[Paul Land]

There is discloser it's in there iron clad lease. How many people read there i-phone lease agreement maybe 3 out of 100. That takes 1 hour +- .
Closing deal on solar takes approximately 40 minutes for site evaluation. then the pitch plus product, benefits, cost analysis ie: looking at electric bill then the close there is an average of three NOs total time about 3 hours. I know because i did it. My first commission check was 4500.00$$$ for 1 week doing 2 leads a day mon-sat. My monthly sales totaled $275.000.00 and there were 7 salesman in our office with sales averaging from $45000.00- $300000.00 Mo.Any one doing under 50K in sales per month for 2 consecutive months was out. End of year bonus for highest salesman a trip to Hawaii for him and his family.
Coming to a neighborhood near you !!!

[J.P.M.]

A pretty good and to my experience with Sunrun, pretty representative description both of Sunrun's B.S. and also what is at least one big root cause of the problem: Buyer ignorance.

This ought to be a sticky.

Thank you.

[solar pete]

Hi All,

I think this proves the value of consumer reviews sites like our site sponsors, https://www.solarreviews.com/installers/sunrun-reviews/

[J.P.M.]

Hi All,

I think this proves the value of consumer reviews sites like our site sponsors, https://www.solarreviews.com/installers/sunrun-reviews/

Shameless plug !

But on a more serious tone, while I agree with and think I've seen a lot of similar B.S. to what the piece writes about, and I sure don't think Sunrun or the other slugs Vivant and Tesla/SolarCity are helping their victims or alternate energy by their deceptive practices, I'm not sure the piece qualifies as or reaches the level of proof.

Still I agree with it enough that I'd make it a stickie. Might do some good or incite some conversation moving forward.

Anyway, as long as there are people dumb and na

[solar pete]

Shameless plug indeed, guilty as charged, J.P.M did your last post get cut off or was na the last word? I thought we had fixed the posts getting truncated or apostrophe issue ??

[J.P.M.]

Shameless plug indeed, guilty as charged, J.P.M did your last post get cut off or was na the last word? I thought we had fixed the posts getting truncated or apostrophe issue ??

My stuttering was about to take over my fingers so I jumped ship to save embarrassment.

Actually, there was no apostrophe. This post may get cut off again as the other one did when I type the word "n a i v e". Looks to me like the dumbass software being used doesn't like diaeresis any more than apostrophes.

[inetdog]

My stuttering was about to take over my fingers so I jumped ship to save embarrassment.

Actually, there was no apostrophe. This post may get cut off again as the other one did when I type the word "n a i v e". Looks to me like the dumbass software being used doesn't like diaeresis any more than apostrophes.

Not at all surprising, since the diaeresis, like the smart quote and smart apostrophe has to be represented by a multi-character sequence using UTF-8 encoding to represent a Unicode character. The easiest solution would probably be to filter out (reject or replace with placeholder like "?") or otherwise avoid multibyte characters.

[daniel13]

I am surprised the author didn't take the option of forcing them to prepay and then just using the system for free at that point. Seems like there is very little knowledge of how these lease deals truly work right now.

[azdave]

My mother-in-law got talked into signing up both of her homes with Solar City leases before she even mentioned anything to her daughter or I about it. She's too proud to admit she got snookered twice but the salesman sure saw an opportunity x 2. What is sad is that she had the cash to buy them both outright if she only understood what she was getting into before leasing. She's not that young so we will likely have two homes to sell in the future with those leaches tied to the sale.

[daniel13]

My mother-in-law got talked into signing up both of her homes with Solar City leases before she even mentioned anything to her daughter or I about it. She's too proud to admit she got snookered twice but the salesman sure saw an opportunity x 2. What is sad is that she had the cash to buy them both outright if she only understood what she was getting into before leasing. She's not that young so we will likely have two homes to sell in the future with those leaches tied to the sale.

Sorry to hear that, Dave. We were unfortunately naive several years ago and got a solar lease as well, from SolarCity of all places. The only good news is that we don't plan on moving anytime soon, so we may be in the house for the lease duration and will never have any real problems with it. I'm working on saving up the cash to cover the liability though, just in case. Hopefully you could do the same with equity from her houses, at the very least.

[sunpoweredev]

I'm so glad the days of random door knocking and harassment when visiting a big box store are over, at least where I am. I've even had couple of neighbors who have PV systems come knocking. They all lead with the "free money" pitch, and I always replied with thanks but no thanks as nothing is free, before I even knew about solar leasing and PPA.

Probably not relevant in this thread, but a quick note about Tesla. Even when purchasing your PV system outright from Tesla, you'll be signing away your SRECs to them. The sales rep I talked to never made any mention of it. All there was was a one line fine print on my agreement. I know there aren't many SREC states, but in New Jersey, over the 10yr SREC term (NJ has begun to scale back, it was 15yrs last year), my proposed system can earn over $24k within that 10yr SREC term. Plus they were by far the most expensive, nearly doubling the other quotes I've received accounting for giving up my SRECs to them.

On another forum, couple of members who considered Tesla did not even realize that. Undoubtedly there are Tesla PV owners signed away their SRECs unknowingly. Very dishonest.

[J.P.M.]

I'm so glad the days of random door knocking and harassment when visiting a big box store are over, at least where I am. I've even had couple of neighbors who have PV systems come knocking. They all lead with the "free money" pitch, and I always replied with thanks but no thanks as nothing is free, before I even knew about solar leasing and PPA.

Probably not relevant in this thread, but a quick note about Tesla. Even when purchasing your PV system outright from Tesla, you'll be signing away your SRECs to them. The sales rep I talked to never made any mention of it. All there was was a one line fine print on my agreement. I know there aren't many SREC states, but in New Jersey, over the 10yr SREC term (NJ has begun to scale back, it was 15yrs last year), my proposed system can earn over $24k within that 10yr SREC term. Plus they were by far the most expensive, nearly doubling the other quotes I've received accounting for giving up my SRECs to them.

On another forum, couple of members who considered Tesla did not even realize that. Undoubtedly there are Tesla PV owners signed away their SRECs unknowingly. Very dishonest.

It may be unethical and the work of scumbags like Musk and his crew, but if it's in a contract, I doubt it's illegal.

Folks have some responsibility to look out for themselves, read contracts and understand what they are getting into before they commit.

Where does personal responsibility and common sense come into the picture ?

Why is all the fault always with the perpetrator when people too lazy to do their homework get screwed ? Any culpability on the part of the other party to the contract ?