SolarCity

To add to the chorus of negative reviews of Solar City's aggressive/deceptive business tactics: On our first in-person meeting, the sales rep said that in order to work up a detailed proposal for my solar system, I'd have to sign a contract right away - which, he assured me, was completely changeable, nothing final; he knew that I was still gathering estimates from other potential installers, nothing here was binding, etc. When I, very stupidly, expressed willingness to sign, he flipped through the document on his computer to bring me straight to the places I was to sign, i.e. did not show me the whole contract (much less encourage me to read it); very exceedingly stupidly, I signed where I was told without insisting on seeing more. (I do not come off well in this story either, I admit.) A few days later, I sent him an e-mail asking to change our next meeting to a later date, to which he agreed - adding, "Have you had time to fully read the contract you signed?" This struck me as both an odd thing to say in the context AND a good idea, so I went back and read it - and discovered that indeed, the contract could be changed or cancelled, but with a $250 fee if done more than 10 business days after being signed. To my mind, his failure to mention this fee in our initial meeting pushed his already-aggressive selling tactics into the realm of deception; even worse, he continued to pointedly not mention the fee even while changing the date of our meeting to past the 10-day window, thus ensuring that I'd have to pay $250 if I ended up wanting to cancel. In my first un-stupid act of the whole episode, I immediately cancelled the contract, and will have nothing more to do with them. Since these aggressive/deceptive tactics are exactly what all the negative online reviews say about Solar City as a whole, it seems to me that this must be their corporate strategy - the sales reps are actively trained to do this sort of thing. I encourage everyone to avoid them, and spread the word - friends don't let friends get duped by Solar City!

It did not go well for me. I would never use them. They come out to the house and tell you how many solar panels you could put on your house and how much money you would save and they give you the options for, if you want to lease the solar panels or buy them outright. While all of that went well, when it was time to sign an agreement, they wouldn't answer any of my questions about the installation, prior to me signing the agreement. Since I have a very old electrical system, I don't have breakers. I have fuses. They refused to answer any questions until I signed a contract with them, which I refused to do because basically I could be charged the price of this project and they might not have been able to do it. So, I was very uncomfortable with moving forward with anything with them. They're installing something on your roof, which would penetrate your roof and they wouldn't answer any questions about that either. It should make any home owner extremely uncomfortable, really. I just think that they're not a very solid company to work with if they can't answer questions before you sign a contract. The technicians were very nice in the beginning. I would tell friends or family to use somebody else.