Here you can find Solar Panels and technological accessories related to Solar Energy: Click Here If you want to learn about Solar...
Here you can find Solar Panels and technological accessories related to Solar Energy: Click Here
If you want to learn about Solar Panels, to advise you before buying or to build your own Solar Panel: Click Here
this is a public service announcement and i say that because i'm hoping to help you to avoid being scammed in this energy crisis or energy price crisis whilst everybody's looking for alternatives many people are looking for solar power and other alternatives to avoid paying these spiking energy prices myself included i said in previous videos that i am equally affected by this as everybody else in that i am having to pay these higher prices just like everybody else and so like everybody else i started looking for other ways around it and instead of refusing to pay the bills or trying to pay half of the price of the fuel at the four courts where obviously i don't agree with that because it's frankly it's it's illegal but instead of that i try to look for solar power to replace the energy in my house so this is that story but it doesn't come without its difficulties and hopefully i can help you to avoid those so what happened is this i'm browsing i think it was on instagram and i received a advert and i thought yes that's me i'm looking for solar power so as i go through this story i want you to remember or even note down and make notes and and come back and re-watch if you need to make notes and watch it through the first time or whatever but make notes as to each step along the way because if you get caught on this trail yourself hopefully my purpose of this video is to help you to recognize these traits of what ultimately led to a a a shocking revelation for me so make note of each of these stages so that you can recognize if you get caught up in this trail so i'm on i think instagram nothing against instagram it's not instagram's fault this was just an advert being run okay so i see this advert would you like solar power or word to that effect and i'm yes that's me i would like to get quoted for solar power it's not really natural for me and i don't normally fill my details in on these kind of adverts but on this occasion i was like yes this is me i do want solar power so i filled my details in sure enough fairly quickly i got a phone call to say you've inquired about solar power yes i have well we'll get someone out to you know measure up and survey the house and this that and the other great i thought because they can come out i can have a chat i can learn a little bit about it it warrants saying at this stage that i didn't really know all that much about solar at that point because i just hadn't looked into it i just thought well i'll let them come out i'll have the chat i'll learn a little bit then i'll do my research then i'll decide if i want to go with it that's important for later on anyway so they come out i say they two men came out and this is part of where you you must remember these little details because they they might all be relevant to the situation that you might find yourself in which i find found myself in two guys came out and they told me because we're inquisitive they have to have two people come out because of the regulations which i later found out is nonsense right but they said two of them need to come out because it's a regulated industry i thought okay great it's a regulated industry now uh didn't used to be um i'm learning as we go along so i thought so the two guys said that they both need to be here because it's a regulated industry they sit down um well they discuss why we want the system and of course you know we want to avoid paying the electricity bills we want to harvest the sun power replace the electricity and so on and so forth etc etc they went through how much energy we use on an annual basis they asked me to dig a bill out and send them bills so we can talk about how much power we use then they said they need to measure the roof to see how many panels we could get on there depending on the size and so on and so forth we have a garage roof as well so it was well what if we use both uh both roofs let's measure it all up they measured it all up and they went through this whole sales pitch now this again is something that you might recognize they went through this sales pitch of these are different types of panels and there's different different materials they use is poly crystalline or mono crystalline you don't need to know much about it other than monocrystalline is better it's newer it's better then they went through this whole sales pitch about uh single face or bifacial bifacial obviously meaning there's solar on both sides of the panel on the top and on the bottom so there's any light reflects it can be absorbed by the rear panel so by facial monocrystalline panels were the best then they went into this whole pitch about only they can get certain panels and in my head i know that this is all a sales pitch um and i just think well whatever they they're giving me a sales pitch that's fine i'll listen to it i'm learning as we go along so that's all fine they say that they are the only ones that have these kind of panels and these power of panels and they said they're 540 watt panels uh bifacial monocrystalline um by a certain company uh in canada the part of the sales pitch is that these made in canada obviously you'd expect them to be better than those made in china um is what they said to me um then they said uh there's different budget range and there's the more expensive range obviously the ones they were telling me about was the expensive range and they came into what was a quite a horrendous figure by the end by the end of all this sales pitch they get got this fairly horrendous figure of how much i'm going to say how much it was but um what they did with the price then was they gave us a chart to look at and they said right energy prices are going up and they're going to continue to go up and so over that amount of time you will spend this amount on electricity so if instead you are saving that money this is how much you'll save over this period of time and coincidentally this turned out to be roughly the same as what this solar panel system was going to cost based on our energy usage and our energy bills and so on so that makes it look like an attractive deal because then they say after so many years you will effectively have the solar system pay for itself because of the amount of electricity bills you'll be saving so they go through this whole sales pitch um but nonetheless it's still a fairly horrendous figure then here comes another sales pitch which i want you to watch out for because this is ultimately i i think it's a bit deceptive for reasons that will come later on so you need to watch to the end to to get the full story here but here comes the next bit of the sales pitch they say if you are interested in helping us to market our company and our products we can discount well we can't discount the price they said but we can upgrade the technology free of charge which obviously it sounds a bit silly and it transpires to be nonsense but here's the sales pitch nonetheless they said we can't discount off the price but what we can do is upgrade the technology at our own cost is precisely what they said then they come up with some figures um which they could um produce this better technology but at the budget uh range cost so long as we agree to have liveried vans livery just means sign writing on the side of the van banners outside to say that this is the company that's installing the solar and so on and so forth so if we agree to do that and market their company they will do the upgraded technology for the budget range price now i at this point i'm thinking i don't really care how you do it as long as you get the better technology at a cheaper price because that suddenly sounds more more tempting so we get all of this uh worked up and calculated then they insist for regulatory reasons they said which obviously i've i've figured out is uh is not part of the regulations i'll come back to the regulation side in a minute but they then say that we must have a deposit today as in on that day and i said well i don't really want to pay a deposit today i would like to think about it and and check it out bearing in mind that i would be protected by consumer law i'll cover this in another video because the consumer law does protect you within a cooling off period for what's known as an off-premises contract which is essentially if they come to your house and sell you something you've got a cooling off period i'll come back to that in much more detail in another video but on with the story so i say i'm not really happy to to pay a deposit today um maybe monday after the weekend you know when we've thought about it and we we come to this decision to go ahead if we indeed decide to go ahead um they offer a finance option um which also requires the deposit or that sort of stuff um there might have been an option without a deposit i don't remember but nonetheless we're given all these different options then we said well ultimately we'll probably go ahead but um you know we do want to think about it or whatever but we will likely go ahead so they they went into the attic space they took photographs there they took photographs of the uh electricity board to you know make sure that they can do it get the engineers uh ready to do the install and so on and so forth we agreed to the contract as it happens we felt to be honest a little bit pressurized um here's my sort of long-standing advice after this never sign a contract on the day always think about it but in any event you are protected by this calling-off period which i'll come back to in another video me thinking well i have the cooling off period i know that if i want to change my mind i can so whatever i'll sign the contract so that i can get the ball rolling so if we do decide to go ahead at least the ball is rolling we thought about it over the weekend we did pay the deposit on the monday all seemed okay at that point one thing i missed out is that they they anticipated uh installation within the next two weeks they did that by calling through to check here's an important point actually they called through to check that they have the stock of the panels that we wanted they said the batteries needed to be until here's another point they said the batteries needed to be installed four weeks after because they need permissions and all of this sort of stuff to connect all the system up i thought maybe that's right so that's fine but they did call through to check that they have the stock of the panels that we'd agreed on which was these 540 watt monocrystalline bifacial panels made in canada they checked that they have the stock they said we have so many and it was one short they said but we can find this one from somewhere else i thought no big deal you can find one from somewhere else or we can wait for that one or worst case scenario you just fit them with this one missing but either way they'll sort it and they said because of that they can fit it within the next two weeks great so skipping forward as i said on the monday we paid the deposit then we were waiting for a good few days to get a confirmation of the install date meanwhile here's a very very important point that i want you all to if you don't write anything else down write this down they sent me a request to sign a contract for express service installation within the first 14 day cooling off period and waive my consumer rights to cancel this contract it goes without saying i did not sign this and i would suggest that you do not sign this because it removes your right to cancel the contract within your calling off period so don't do it however it gets worse from this point onwards so as i said i was waiting a few days for confirmation of the installation date then i received a text message saying i've emailed you a variation of contract could you please e-sign it and this will speed things up for you i looked at the variation of contract agreement which was very sparse in terms of detail it simply said it was changing the 540 watt panels to 410 watt panels but changing the quantity upwards so overall it was supposed to provide more power than the original panels however because i'd spent the better part of half a day being sold the 540 watt panels and all of the bells and whistles and the reasons these were the best and so on i was a little bit dubious as to why they were changing the panels and whether in fact the alternative panels were going to be as good or as suitable as those that i'd been sold to so i replied saying changing the number of panels with no change in cost but are they the same i.e the new technology panels question mark the reply was yes that's correct the same cells and everything no extra cost so i replied again and said well without looking a gift horse in the mouth why the change the response was we've paid for the 540 watt panels and due to border closures and various other factors we now can't take delivery of them until october that's when the price rises come in and we wanted to do our best for customers and beat the deadline so we changed to the 410 watt panels keeping customers happy and keeping the fitters happy so it's a win-win for everyone now bearing in mind they had already told me that they had these in stock in fact they made a phone call in front of me to quote check that they were in stock because they didn't want to sell us something that they couldn't deliver on i was a little bit dubious as to why these are now at risk of border closures and all of these sort of things which is delaying the delivery and therefore won't get them till october that was the first sign that i'd been misled because in fact as i said just to reiterate i was told that these were in stock and clearly that was not the case but nonetheless they'd offered the alternative panels which apparently could be installed within a short period of time but still very slightly dubious at this stage i said well do you have the model numbers for the 540 watt panels and the fault 410 panels so that i can compare it seems odd i said because mr x said you already have the panels the response was we had a delivery date we've paid for them already it's just delivery issues at this point holding everything up so then i received the specification for the 410 watt panels by text message they were actually different they were a poly crystalline not a monocrystalline as i said the only thing you need to know is that monocrystalline is better than the polycrystalline the 410 panels were poly crystalline so not as good a lower power but otherwise broadly the same but just older technology not as good as the ones that i'd been promised sold to agreed to and agreed to pay for and so on so i respond and say well what about the 540 panels because at this point i wanted to make doubly sure that i'm comparing the two properly with the full specs because at this stage i'd just been told all of the details when i was having the initial meeting so then they send me the specification for the ones that i had agreed to and then i take a very close look at them and i respond and say sorry but i don't think those are the same these ones the ones they wanted to give me are polly but the other ones are mono and i'm put off by the fact that you specifically confirmed that these panels were in stock whilst i was here and insisted that we paid a deposit which we did on that basis only to be told that in fact the panels are not in stock around three working days later i said why are you now saying that you don't have the panels when we paid the deposit on the basis that you had them in stock and i had to pay the deposit to reserve them then i took a few moments to think about it and i thought no this is not right i want the panels that i've agreed to and paid the deposit for so i responded and said please just sort it with the panels this is all by text message i responded to say please just sort it with the panels that we'd agreed or return my money a few minutes later i received a phone call to say we've pulled them off another job which in itself i found a bit strange because they were supposed to be in stock not on another job i said what do you mean you pulled them off another job they said well they were going to another job but we've now offered them the 410 panels and they are happy with them so we're giving you the 540 panels and i thought well that's a bit strange but whatever you've sorted it and so you're now going to deliver the panels that i want fine please confirm when you're going to install this stuff and let me know the following morning i send a message to say can you confirm the install date then i get a phone call back to say it's probably next week or the week after a few days later sure enough i get a couple of more phone calls to confirm that that's the install date and so on so now i'm just waiting for them to come to install meanwhile i still want to know the specification of the batteries and the inverters all of which i will explain very briefly in a little while so that if you want solar power you can understand the basics and exactly what you need to ask so that you are not to put it bluntly ripped off by being sold something not knowing what you're buying committing to maybe finance agreements and all this sort of stuff or committing money to something when you're not really told what it is so i was insisting that i want to know the specification of the battery the specification of the inverters i sent two or three emails to that effect and i received no response to that they just ignored the question they did tell me that it would be installed in the next week or so but they didn't respond to my request about the batteries or about the inverters which i will tell you now is probably one of the most important things besides the solar panels because that really is the system it's the panels the inverters and the batteries briefly speaking the inverters convert the power from the sun into a form that you can use in your house and then into your batteries and the batteries store it you don't have to have the batteries but if you want to store power that you can use at night then of course you need to use the batteries but you can have what they refer to as a solar only option which is not with the batteries but you still need the inverters anyway they didn't tell me anything about the batteries or the inverters they just didn't give me those specifications i wasn't too worried at that stage because if you remember they said that they would be installed at a later date so i thought well i will just insist on the specification later knowing that i will still have my cooling off period to cancel the contract if indeed they are delivered and it's not what i'd agreed to in terms of power and so on and again as i said i will do a full video on the law about consumer rights and cooling off periods in another video but this is just the story so that you can recognize this whole sales process and know exactly what's going on anyway then uh they turn up to deliver these panels and the scaffolding's been put up by this point and all seems set to go two really nice guys turn up to install the panels and they said did you buy through xyz company we said no um are you not from this company that we ordered it from they said oh right you've ordered it from them so straight away we know that they are a subcontractor it turns out a sub subcontractor but that's not really the point safe to say that part of the sales pitch was that they will upgrade the technology so long as we agree to have liveried vans on the drive remember from earlier in the story well it was a plain white van that turned up and nothing to do with a discount or upgrade or anything like that it was just part of the sales pitch so in my view that was a little bit misleading if you relied on that statement of fact that they will upgrade the technology based on having livery vans outside then that's a misrepresentation but as i say more on the law in another video so anyway these two guys really nice guys are here to install the panels the panels are delivered by a separate guy who's just the courier in his words they come out the guys get up on the roof they're checking things out getting ready to install these panels then i take a look at them and just think i'd like to just have a look at these panels now they've been delivered they were the correct size ie the length and the width so it seemed to be that they would be the correct panels but something inside just said check the panels and literally check the model number and google it to find out what it is and double check that it's right i spoke to one of the guys and checked the brand on the panels which i'm not going to mention because it would be unfair because it'd be unfair criticism of the panels because there's probably nothing wrong with the panels it just turns out as you might have guessed not what we ordered so i looked at the manufacture of the panels and the model number i came in to google it to check whether frankly whether they're any good whether they matched what we had ordered in terms of quality and technology and everything else only then while i'm literally sitting at this desk googling this i had a flash in my mind that the back of the panels were white and then i thought ah they are not by facial panels which was what we'd agreed to so i thought i have to go out and double check physically double check this for myself so i walked back outside i checked the back of the panels and sure enough full white on the back of the panels they are not by facial panels it transpires that almost no one in the country has stock of these by facial panels but that's another story so i call the installers back over again and i say i'm not being entirely stupid am i the back of this is just white and these are not bifacial panels that that's right isn't it and they said yes these are single face solar panels now obviously that's not what i'd ordered so bearing in mind all of what's gone before and the sales pitch and the premium on the price and so on and so forth i felt once again misled i'd like to give them the benefit of the doubt to say that it was a mistake but given that these were in their words the only 540 watt panels left in the country or certainly in their stock i felt that they probably misled me i might be wrong but my feeling in my interpretation based on the sequence of events was that i had once again been misled had it been another few hours later these panels would have been on the roof and i don't think i'd have been climbing up on the roof anytime soon to look underneath to discover that they're not by facial panels and i send a message saying wrong panels delivered please call i have a phone conversation with them a few minutes later and i said these are not the panels we ordered these are single face panels the response and this is what i really took issue with the response was no these are the panels we ordered these are the correct ones twitch i said no these are not by facial panels bifacial panels were the specification that we ordered these are not bi-facial panels these are single-phase panels and it's not the same brand he said well what must have happened is someone looked at them when they were pulling them off the other job if you remember and must have assumed that they're the correct ones because they were the right size and so i said well i don't really know what you want me to say to that because these are not the correct panels so i i don't know what to say but these are not the panels that we wanted these are not the panels that we ordered he said give me a few minutes let me ring around and see what's happened a few minutes later i get a phone call to say those panels that you wanted are due for delivery you guessed it sometime in october at this point i said okay i've had enough i'd like my money back and you can come and pick these panels up at this point to be fair he was very apologetic sorry to lose you as a customer sorry it went wrong and so on and so forth and i told him i was honest i said that i felt like i'd been misled two or three times because you checked that they were in stock when you were sitting here selling it to me you checked later on that they were the correct panels and so on and so forth and when they were delivered you told me they're the correct panels but they're not the correct panels because they are not the same spec they're not even the same manufacturer so i felt like i'd been misled and for that reason it was just beyond the point of salvage i might have said otherwise you know if that was the only hiccup i might have said give me some discounts and just install them or whatever the case might be but given that remember i still hadn't been given the specification of the batteries and the manufacture of the batteries and everything else let alone confirmation of when they were going to be delivered i just thought this was too much too much risk for too much money please give me my money back and we'll draw a line under it later on in the day i send a message to the same guy and say any update on the refund please because now i'm getting slightly concerned that they've got my deposits they're going to pick up the panels and i need my deposit back because obviously i need to make alternative arrangements the response came back and this is another thing you need to watch out for which again i'll cover in great detail in another video on the law but this said i've generated a cancellation and been speaking to the admin department they'll process it today and send you a check that's not my department i've got no sway over it and that's just what they've told me um thanks so just a brief word on the law which i'll explain in great detail in another video but a brief word on the law is that in these situations the refund upon a cancellation within the cooling off period remember must be by the same method that you paid with whether it's a bank transfer or whether it's a card or whatever it might be it's got to be returned to you in the same method that you paid with or if you agree specifically expressly to a different method i.e i expressly agree to a bank transfer they can send a bank transfer to refund your money so i responded and said sorry no checks no good i mean i don't use checks anymore my banks charge me a percentage just to cash a check i said the regulations require the same method of payment as that i paid with to make the refund i said a bank transfer is okay because that's immediate but not a check so sorry no that's unlawful i sent a follow-up message please don't make this difficult then the guy responded and said i've spoken to the admin department they said to read term 3.3 under section 3 in the terms and conditions of the contract so i have a look at section 3 clause 3.3 which broadly says they can use any refund method that they like but because that's vague for one and secondly doesn't expressly specify a payment method other than the one that you've used to pay it's not enforceable so i responded both by email and by text message to say that please note that clause 3.3 of the contract under section 3 the phrase whatever means of payment is vague and fails to specify an alternative payment method and is thus unenforceable as a matter of law because the spirit of the law is that if you agree as the consumer to a different payment method expressly then that's okay it doesn't mean they can slip a term into the contract to say that they can use whatever refund method they like that's not how the law works and as a matter of law if there's any ambiguity in a consumer contract the determination and the interpretation is going to be that which is more favorable to you the consumer so i sent those messages fairly robustly saying you must refund it in the same method that i've used to pay because otherwise it is unlawful a little while later i did receive a phone call to process the refund there and then as i paid for it back to my card which i can now confirm is back in my account safely then begins the second half of this whole story which i will probably cover in another video now which was me then going in to investigate precisely how this solar powered system works because i decided that i'm going to source and buy the equipment myself and pay some guys to fit it myself and in part two of this video i'm going to explain how solar power works so that if you are interested in it you are not going to be sold or dare i say miss sold any of this information you will know how that it will help you you will know how to spot all of the pitfalls that you could get burnt by if you don't know the information that you need to know all of the relevant facts and the the really important details such as the expensive bits of the equipment you will know what they should cost what they should be and not just leave it to chance which to be perfectly frank i did not deliberately and not willingly i was asking for the specifications of these batteries for example the sales guys didn't even know what material the batteries were made of i.e they are lithium-ion batteries which i expected them to be but i wanted them to confirm that and they couldn't quite frankly they couldn't confirm what material was in the battery let alone the manufacturer and the power and everything else so i just wanted to tell you this story so that you can see just how even i can get caught up in this whole charade of a sales pitch part with money and then have to claw my way out of it because they've tried to in my view they've tried to miss sell me or mislead me into one product or another and then only to find out the the facts of the matter learn about it and then now i know a lot more about this industry than i ever thought i was ever going to know so all of that's coming in part two of this video so if you want to get solar power and cut your energy bills and because this will ultimately the whole point of the sales pitch is this will pay for itself after a number of years because otherwise you're spending the money on the electricity and instead you could be buying this solar system which is going to provide you energy for 20 or 30 years so without making this far far too long i hope that has been enlightening for you and perhaps showing a little bit of vulnerability on my part because we do tend to trust people and sometimes a little too much and even with my questions and my probing i still wasn't given the information before signing a contract and before partying with some money it just so happens that i am confident because i could have frankly just sued the company if i needed to i would have used a third-party firm of solicitors or a fellow barrister or something to do that because i wouldn't do it myself because there are certain rules against doing it yourself but overall i knew that i'm protected by the law i'd already checked the company out it was a fairly big company they've got a lot of money in the bank and that sort of thing so i wasn't really worried but if you go with a smaller company and you do exactly the same thing and then they take your money and then they run off and then if you try to sue them they just go bust then you lose your money and they've misled you mis-sold you kept your money and believe me i deal with lots of clients that are in exactly that position exactly the position that i was in the only thing that really saved me really they're well don't have two things one is i knew that the company was a big company with lots of money in the bank because i checked them out and secondly i know the law i know that i'm protected and i know that i can sort it out if i need to and it was only really because i was quite pushy and said this is the law what you're doing is unlawful please just give me the money back the way that the law requires they did ultimately give me the money back in that form and quickly so i hope this video gives you quite a few lessons and hopefully it will help you to avoid this sort of sales pitch but moreover hopefully video two is going to help you much much more into getting solar power if that's what you want and with two guys that i've found that are going to install my system now that will probably be explained in much more detail in video two where i'll probably even bring on one of these guys to talk to you about solar because i've been fascinated to learn about it but these guys live and breathe it they they love it and i'm excited to introduce you to these guys that will come in video two so in the meantime please hit the like button if this has been of any use to you whatsoever please do subscribe i really appreciate that and helping my channel grow and as always thank you so much for watching ...
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