The Art of the Phoenix

There’s a business model in the solar industry I’d love to see burn to the ground. Trouble is, fire is how it survives.

It’s called phoenixing. A shonky company racks up debts, dies owing everyone, then pops up a week later with the same team, the same phone number and a slightly different name. Like the mythical bird, it rises from its own ashes. Unlike the bird, it sets everyone else on fire first.

If you’re buying solar or a battery, you need to know how to spot these grubs, because when a phoenix rises, your warranty stays in the ashes. It takes five minutes and a free government website.

Phoenixing explained in 60 seconds

A company is its own legal “person”. When it goes broke, its debts die with it, and the directors keep their houses. That’s limited liability (the ‘Ltd’ in Pty Ltd), and it’s the reason anyone dares to start a business.

Phoenix operators abuse it on purpose. They run up bills with suppliers, subbies and the tax office, shovel anything worth having (the brand, the website, the phone number, the customer list) into a fresh company for peanuts, then liquidate the old one with an empty bank account. Monday morning, business as usual.

Why solar cowboys love it

Solar is phoenix heaven. Anyone can start a solar retailer with a few hundred bucks in ASIC fees, some bought leads from a dodgy lead-seller and subbies. The customer pays up front. The wholesaler and the subbies wait 30 days or more.

The wholesaler who supplied the panels pays for it[1. Technically, their insurer does – who charges 1-2% of the invoice as a premium, which we all pay in increased costs, so does the two-man install crew still chasing 15 invoices, and so does the ATO, which means you and me. A 2018 PwC report put the cost of phoenixing at up to $5.13 billion a year, most of it unpaid bills to other businesses.

And then there’s you. Your workmanship warranty was a promise from a company that no longer exists, and the new outfit with the same logo owes you nothing. Your panel and inverter warranties survive, but good luck finding a decent installer keen to adopt someone else’s dodgy job. The Australian Consumer Law right to compensation I wrote about recently is worth what’s left in the company’s bank account. Nothing.

How they get away with it

Phoenixing is illegal, and laws passed in 2020 tightened the screws. But they usually get away with it anyway, for some depressingly simple reasons:

• Liquidators get paid from what’s left in the company. A phoenix leaves nothing, so often nobody digs.
• Nobody sane spends $100,000 on lawyers to chase a $30,000 debt.
• The director on paper is often a spouse, a brother-in-law or a mate, while the real operator pulls the strings.
• The slick ones put the company into administration with a friendly administrator, who sells the brand to a relative for a pittance “to raise money for creditors”. The 2020 claw-back rules don’t apply to sales made by an administrator.

Even when ASIC nails one, the maximum ban is five years.

The regulators won’t save you.

How to spot a phoenix before you sign

Grab your quote and open ABN Lookup, the free government register.

1. Get the ABN. It should be on the quote. If it isn’t, next quote.
2. Check when the ABN went active. It’s on the “ABN status” line. If the website says “Proudly serving Aussie families since 2009” and the ABN went live last year, someone has some explaining to do.
3. Check the business names and their “from” dates. If the brand on the van only got attached to this ABN recently, the brand has moved house. This also catches the crafty ones who park the business in an old dormant company to make the ABN look respectable. Since November 2025, ABN Lookup only shows registered business names, so if the brand on your quote isn’t there at all, ask why.
4. Search the brand name with “Include cancelled ABNs” ticked. This is the money step. A trail like Ronald’s Solar Pty Ltd (cancelled 2021), Ronald’s Solar Group Pty Ltd (cancelled 2024) and Ronald’s Solar Australia Pty Ltd (active since 2024) is a bird that’s been on fire before. So is a dead company renamed to a number, like “ACN 123 456 789 Pty Ltd”, formerly Ronald’s Solar Pty Ltd. That often means the name was flogged off before the company died.
5. Look up the dead ones on ASIC’s free company search. It shows their status and the documents they’ve lodged, including any liquidator’s appointment. For a few bucks, an ASIC extract tells you who the directors were.
6. Compare the old directors with the new ones. Same names is a red flag. So are matching surnames and home addresses, because the “new owner” is often family.
7. Run the directors through ASIC’s free banned and disqualified register.

Alternatively – paste the above into AI and get it to check for you.

A new ABN isn’t always dodgy

Before you write off every installer with a young ABN, a caveat. An ABN belongs to a legal entity, and honest businesses change entities all the time. A sparky who’s been a sole trader for 15 years incorporates. The accountant moves the business into a family trust. The business gets sold. Each of those means a new ABN.

SolarQuotes would trip my own check. When I sold to Origin, I sold the assets, not my company. Peacock Media Group Pty Ltd is still mine, still registered, and it paid every debt from my years of ownership after the sale. Origin put SolarQuotes into a company it already owned and renamed it SolarQuotes Home Electrification Pty Ltd.

So the real test is what happened to the old entity. If it’s still alive, or was wound up with every bill paid, fine. If it went into liquidation owing money and the new mob popped up weeks later wearing its logo, that’s your phoenix.

Give your money to the honest ones

I’ll finish by sticking up for the solar companies that never make the news. Same ABN for 15 years. They’ve survived feed-in tariff cuts, rebate changes and more market slumps than I can count.

They’re not the cheapest quote because their price includes paying their bills and setting aside money for warranty claims. The phoenix quote is cheaper because someone else is paying for it: the wholesaler’s insurer, the subbie, the taxpayer, and eventually you. And every job the phoenix wins is one that an honest installer lost.

An old ABN isn’t a guarantee, and a young company with a clean record and straight answers deserves a fair go. But do the five-minute check before you sign anything. If the dates don’t match the story, get another quote.