Don’t Let An Uber Driver Install Your Solar

My son asked me the other day how he should get to the airport for a 5am flight.

Easy, I said. Book a proper taxi with a longstanding local firm. Whatever you do, don’t pre-book an Uber.

He looked at me like I’d suggested he send a fax.

But I meant it. I have never once been let down by a proper taxi booked for an early airport run. Not once. Uber, on the other hand, I don’t trust for a pre-booked pickup at all. Read the complaints online and you’ll see the same story over and over: driver accepts, driver cancels, and you’re standing on the kerb at 4:50am watching your flight leave without you.

So why is the boring old taxi firm more reliable than the slick app?

I reckon it comes down to accountability. The taxi driver is tied to a firm with a name and a reputation to protect. Mess a customer around and there’s a boss, a dispatcher, and a local reputation that all feel it. The Uber driver is a subcontractor. They’ve got almost nothing to lose by bailing on you at the last second, because Uber HQ in the States genuinely does not care whether you make your flight. Your one-star review vanishes into hundreds of thousands of others. And nobody reading it cares anyway, because they reckon their next ride will be a couple of dollars cheaper.

A bad review of the local taxi firm stings. A bad review of Uber is a raindrop in the ocean.

This is exactly the problem with many big national solar retailers.

The Subcontractor Trap

Plenty of big solar retailers have come and gone in this country over the past 15 years. Origin was the biggest for a while, until they pulled out of solar retailing just over a year ago. But they’ll be the first to tell you how brutally hard that business was to run. It’s a big reason they bought SolarQuotes in the first place. Getting quotes from good local installers is simply a better way to buy solar than going with one giant national brand.

So why do the big retailers struggle so much?

It usually works like this. A national sales team lands the order. Then someone has to find a local install crew to actually put the system on your roof. And in most cases the number one criteria for picking that crew isn’t installation quality, or experience with your particular battery or panel brand. It’s simple availability. Who can get there next Tuesday.

That crew has no relationship with you beyond the few hours they’re at your house. If the system falls over the moment they switch it on, fair enough, they’ll probably be the ones sent back to fix it. But if it fails six months later? They’re long gone. They don’t care whether the retailer gets a good review. And if the system that’s been sold to you is plain wrong for your property, they’re unlikely to down tools and refuse, because then they don’t get paid. They’ll just get it up there one way or another and let the retailer wear the consequences.

Sound familiar? It’s the Uber driver on your roof.

Sometimes You Strike Gold

I’m not saying every subcontractor is a cowboy. Far from it. There are install crews out there with genuinely high standards and real ethics.

The thing is, those crews usually steer clear of the big cheap retailers, because they know that game increases the odds of grief. They’d rather build a relationship with a small number of quality local firms. The exception is when they’re just starting out and the big-retailer work is plentiful and easy to get.

So if you go with a big national retailer and happen to land one of these crews, you’ve struck gold. Cracking install, bargain price. But you’re rolling the dice. And forget about long-term customer support.

The other way to get a reasonable result out of a big cheap retailer is to know the standards yourself, or bring a mate who does, and hover over the crew the entire time. Then pay a licensed inspector to check the job the moment they’re done and drag them back for anything that’s not right.

But think about what you’re actually doing there. You’re doing the retailer’s quality assurance for them. That’s not a great sign. And if you do happen to land one of the good crews, hovering over their shoulder all day is a brilliant way to make sure they never want to work for you again.

The Rare Exception

A very small number of big retailers do pull it off. National reach and quality installs, year after year. Solargain springs to mind.

I think their secret is lots of smaller, autonomous dealers spread around the country who take genuine ownership of their own sales and their own quality, backed by solid national tech support and wholesaling behind them. It works. But it’s rare, and it’s hard, which is exactly why so few manage it.

So none of this is me saying all big retailers are evil. It’s me saying solar retailing is really, really hard to get right at scale.

The Bottom Line

If you’re buying solar from a big retailer, do a bit of homework on whether they subcontract the install, and how they manage it.

And if the local mob with fully employed installers quotes a bit more than the national brand, have a think about how much that difference is really worth. Same question my son had to answer at 5am. How important is it to actually get to the airport on time?

Except with solar, it’s not one flight. It’s the system powering much of your life for the next 16 to 20 years, installed by someone who’s either directly accountable for it or already halfway to the next job.

I know which driver I’d book.

Phase Shift is a weekly opinion column by SolarQuotes founder Finn Peacock. Subscribe to SolarQuotes’ free newsletter to get it emailed to your inbox each week along with our other home electrification coverage.