Solar panel installers are employing "cowboy" tactics when selling their products to consumers, an undercover investigation has found.
Which? consumer magazine found that 10 out of 14
solar thermal installers it investigated had exaggerated potential savings, while two it said may have even broken the law.
Which? went undercover after seeing a rise in complaints about the solar panel industry. It found all 14 companies investigated failed to make all the necessary technical tests for installing solar thermal systems – such as checking roof space and existing gas boilers – before providing a quote, and five provided a quote over the phone without even visiting the property.
It found two installers – Everest and Ideal Solar Energy –went even further, over-stating the potential savings of installing a solar thermal system by a big margin, and potentially breaking the law.
Southern Solar found to be "helpful"
Which? found just one company, Southern Solar, to be "helpful and provide sensible advice", and to have identified most of the technical challenges for installation.
"Most of the firms in our investigation behaved like true cowboys – they promised huge savings that bore no relation to reality, and some really piled pressure on the homeowner to sign up immediately or risk losing a one off 'special offer’," said Peter Vicary-Smith, chief executive, Which?.
As part of the investigation Which? asked the 14 companies to quote for the installation of a solar thermal system at a property in south east England.
Solar Energy and Everest quoted savings of more than 40 per cent
Its own experts calculated that a typical solar thermal system would cut the total gas bill in the property by about 10 per cent, but Ideal Solar Energy quoted savings of 50 per cent, while Everest quoted a 43 per cent cut. Everest also claimed the home owner would save £35,000 over 20 years.
Which? said both companies also used hard sell tactics of offering huge discounts if the buyer signed up on the day.
Which? said the 1,000 complaints the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) received last year was far too high for an industry with under 100,000 installations in UK homes and it would be sending its research to the solar trade bodies and the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC).
Vicary-Smith said: "The solar industry is too important to our long-term energy needs for things to drag on like this. It needs to clean up its act, and if it won’t, the OFT and the Government will have to step in."
The Government estimates the growing UK
renewable energy sector will create 160,000 jobs by 2020. Many of these are expected to be created in the microgeneration installation sector.
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www.which.co.uk