Last week someone asked on Facebook whether he should proceed with a particular installer.
“Has anyone dealt with this company? I can’t find out much about them.”
Someone did a quick Google. The company has 31 reviews on SolarQuotes, averaging 4.9 stars. Twenty-nine five-star reviews. One four-star. One one-star review.
The thread filled up with encouragement. Someone noted the installer’s ABN had been registered since 2021. The consensus was: great price, great reviews, looks legit, go for it.
Nobody Asked About The One-Star Review
Conventional thinking says: one bad review out of 31, basically irrelevant. The average is still 4.9. Move on.
I’d argue the opposite. That one review is the most informative data point in the entire profile. It showed how the installer behaves when things go wrong.
Here’s a paraphrased summary of the one-star review in this case:
Installer smashed all existing hot water tubes he was paid to remove, dumped the broken glass in the yard and drove away without a word. Customer asked for compensation for the property damage, the company threatened to rip out the whole system. When the customer pushed further, the sales team threatened to report them to the police for harassment. Photos of broken glass all over the yard were included with review.
I don’t think 29 five-star reviews can compensate for this.
And there’s a deeper problem with many five-star solar reviews.
A new solar owner can tell you whether the panels look straight and the installer was friendly. They cannot tell you whether the wiring is compliant, the isolators are water tight, the string design is optimal or the battery is configured properly. They have no idea or whether the install is likely to fail, excessively degrade or worse – become a fire risk in ten years.
An initial, five-star solar review usually means: nice installer, system turned on, looked tidy, panels generating, battery got through the night. It’s a review of the experience, not the install.
This is why – with SolarQuotes reviews – we ask for the initial review after 60 days and then follow up with customers 12 months after that.
On the SolarQuotes review platform you can apply a filter (as highlighted in yellow above) to show only one-star reviews – try it for yourself.
But Not All One-Stars Are Equal
There’s a fair counter-argument: plenty of one-star reviews come from unreasonable customers. If you treat every one-star as a dealbreaker you’ll rule out plenty of excellent installers.
So you have to read the one-star, not just find it. Ask: is this a character failure or a preference failure?
A preference failure: “they were late,” “took two days to return my call.” Annoying, but shallow.
A character failure: “smashed glass everywhere and refused to clean it up.” There’s no version of that story where the installer is the reasonable party.
Some one-star reviews are more of a red flag than others.
The Practical Upshot
Don’t average the reviews. Read the one-stars first and ask what they tell you about how this installer behaves when something goes wrong.
An installer with 200 reviews and a 4.7 including a few grumpy one-stars about communication? Probably fine.
An installer with 29 five-stars and one smashed-glass incident? You only get one roll of the dice.
Be tolerant of small negatives. Be very intolerant of any evidence of catastrophic ones. Solar is exactly the domain where that rule applies.
Read the one-stars first.
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.
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Finn,
Where are the customer protection agencies?
Where is CEC?
Why aren’t this people weeded out of solar industry?
I think that the responsible government agencies are sleeping at the wheel!
It should be an efficient system of checking the customer’s claims and if found true, installer be given a big fine and popularised, so other dodgy installers be warned.
Also the prices the ask for repairs and maintenance is out of the charts.
I was asked for a single microinverter replacement $3500, instead of $225 – $350. And this is from a company recommended by Solar Quotes, not a corner street cowboy.
This is solar Wild West!
Good advice.
On the topic of reviews, your Wallbox EV charger review has two 2-star reviews pointing out that there is no local support for these chargers (just email support from Spain). However your summary at the top of the page does not mention this.
This could be an important purchase factor for all brands of EV chargers.
In the Wallbox case I am guessing those reviews are more recent. This is probably because they did have local support, but seem to have pulled back. Might be time for them to update it.
Most Online review systems are rubbish.
There are ways to put high count of good reviews and the ability to delete bad ones.
Other product scams have good reviews on a good product and then a product switch as an update. Ever see reviews like
“Good product, delivered quick, have not used it yet.”
Need to build a community group of owners who are willing to respond to questions. One of the installation company and the other for the equipment installed. But if so, how to limit this not to be just a group of unhappy customers as the happy ones may not be bothered joining.
The “Andrea” incident this article includes, indicated that the apprentice had a medical emergency accident and they left the installation due to that.
The 1 star review was marked against the inverter. Not the installation company, not a out of the ordinary incident.
The arise solar review is from 2007, where is the follow up? If this company was taking $200, deposits for 19 years and no 60 minute episode…….
Hi Bernard,
While dodgey operators might be able to raise their average score by buying hundreds or thousands of 5 star reviews from bot farms or call centre type operations, the reviews on SolarQuotes are very difficult to game because we eyeball every one of them before they’re published. We see the web domain they come from, we cross check with our own information and for quotes we’ve arranged, we can even ring up and verify the people by phone.
Look at the one star reviews and read the pages and pages of buyers regret here.
“the reviews on SolarQuotes are very difficult to game because we eyeball every one of them before they’re published.”
It’s good to know you do make an effort, but unfortunately the whole review process on the internet has been so badly corrupted that I no longer bother looking at them. It’s gone the way of almost every other promising concept that the internet has introduced…. that is, enshittified.
Bernard, where do you get 2007 from? The review is clearly dated 02 June 2026. The postcode for Michelle is given as 2097. I hope you are not an installer!
Always remember that with companies that have lots of good, believable reviews, and just maybe one or two bad, that some customers are the customers from hell.
They’re around!
Never mind the old line “the customer is always right”. No they’re not, some are a total nightmare.
A good friend was a builder for many years, and for the last decade or so has been an inspector with QBCC, and boy does he have some total horror stories, about builders but also about some customers!
Well put David,
We’ve had some customers who are pretty hard to please, they occasionally get their own article.
Anthony,
Apropos your point in that article: “… south shouldn’t be discounted, but it’s almost always the last option.”, I’m seeing 5.4 times the yield from my 40° tilted north-facing panels, compared to the identically sized array tilted 17° south. OK, granted, I’ll concede that in mid June the sun is as low as it gets, and I’m at 38° S latitude, but my decision to whack just as much on the south roof has a much bigger payoff in summer – when it’s not needed nearly as much.
Oh-oh, now the yield ratio is 8.9 times better for the north side. Battery SoC is already back up to 98%, with just 3 kW going in. Maybe the controller isn’t throttling strings equally? That would muddle the comparison. Those two are off the same MPPT, though. And the array with 3 panels facing east, and 9 panels west, is yielding 3 times as much as the south array with ~14 panels.
I’m not going to tilt the underperforming panels up though – catching too much wind makes me nervous.
Really good point. The other thing to consider is the reasons many other possible one star reviews do not get written. You slam a dodgy installer who is then responsible for warranty? Intimidation by the business so you can’t be bothered. It takes so long to get issues rectified you have had enough and don’t write it.
Imagine there are plenty of 5 star reviews written in haste as well as those pushed for by the installer.
When I started my apprenticeship (at age 35), I got told something very valuable:
“You are only as good as your last job”
Sadly too many installers take 0 pride in their work… just want to get is done ASAP and go home by 2PM to show how fast they work. Hmmm…
On the flip side, now that I run a solar business, there is a quote that sum up very well this article:
“Some customers will say we’re the best tradesman in the World. Others will say we never called them back… Believe them both. They got the version they deserved.”
Not a new problem!
https://xkcd.com/937/