The Rebate Cowboys Are Back: Don’t Get Taken For A Ride

The Cheaper Home Batteries Program is triggering a Wild West of misleading ads, dodgy installations, poor-quality products, and fake government websites. We’ve seen this all before with the solar rebate: here’s how to avoid falling for the same traps with the new battery incentive.

A Rebate Robber In Disguise

From all appearances, it is a helpful government explainer website.  Bearing the Cheaper Home Batteries Program name, website address, logo, and selected key details on the scheme, the site encourages readers to get more information and a quote (as long as they provide their full name, phone number, energy consumption details as well as home and email address).

The telltale sign not all is what it seems? The email address is a “.com.au”, rather than a government “.gov.au”. There’s not a single word on the site indicating what company is actually behind the page.

The website even lifted an image from an official government policy document, complete with a departmental logo.

The Battery Rebate Isn’t Our First Rodeo

The federal battery incentive has triggered a stampede of suspect practices like these, and it is all a familiar sight to SolarQuotes founder Finn Peacock. Working in the renewable energy division of CSIRO in 2008, he saw unscrupulous types rush to take advantage of the federal solar rebate that had just launched.

“The rebate triggered an influx of dodgy operators who would whack 1kW of cheap, nasty panels on your roof paired with a rubbish inverter, charge $500 total and still make a profit,” he writes in a column for The Guardian published over the weekend.

The consequences were extremely serious: a NSW review in 2012 found around 18% of the solar installations it inspected had major defects, and a further 63% had minor ones. Other reports from the time found as many as 2000 homes around Australia were at risk of fire due to shoddy solar installations related to the government subsidy.

The shonky offers made Finn so mad that he launched SolarQuotes to try and offer homeowners a reliable information resource on solar, and access to reputable installers.

Finn says he’s already seen suspect offers circulating for the federal battery rebate, which launched July 1.

How To Avoid Getting Lassoed Into A Bad Deal

Finn advises people interested in getting a battery under the scheme to take the following steps:

• Choose well-known brands;
• Use a local installer with a decent track record;
• Read an installer’s 1-star reviews;
• Think about sizing: don’t go for a battery that is too small or big;
• Check your solar capacity is sufficient to fill your chosen battery;
• Reward good installers if you’ve had a positive experience in the past;
• Slow down. The rebate isn’t vanishing tomorrow;
• Check the fine print: in one example, Victoria-based company Amazing Solar advertises a solar system for “free” in caps lock text on a red label, but the fine print of the advertisement clarifies that it actually involves a loan from a state government that will need to be paid back.

Don’t Get Caught In The Stampede

Its not hard to imagine what’s next based on how the solar rebate unfolded. The Cheaper Home Batteries Program has been hitched to the same scheme that the solar incentive uses, and similarly it will go down by a small amount each year.

Years after the solar rebate launched, we still see ads warning consumers they are about to miss out on the solar rebate at the end of each year, exaggerating the fact that it drops a small amount each year. The analysis of SolarQuotes fact checker Ronald Brakels finds that the battery rebate will reduce at a slower pace than the solar scheme, and battery price declines are likely to largely offset that anyway.

As I warned in an interview last week with Choice: “if you see an advertisement for a solar product that warns you to act now before the rebate ends, they are misleading you.”

Make Sure To Dodge These Battery Bullets

There’s plenty of red flags to spot a suspect deal before you put your name on the dotted line:

• Beware any promises of “free” batteries or “free” solar: if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is;
• Watch out for companies that don’t seem to understand their own product – i.e. confusing a kilowatt hour with a kilowatt;
• Be on guard when a company isn’t transparent about who they say they are, i.e. pretending to be an official government source;
• Be careful with anyone promising the exact amount you’ll save under the rebate, which will vary depending on the specifics of your requirements (we even saw companies promote the rebate as officially locked in back when it was still an election promise);
• Take care if someone knocks on your door or cold-calls you to sell a battery – these sales practices are usually not a great sign and have triggered plenty of complaints.

The Solar Broker has stuffed an impressive number of red flags into the one advertisement, from confusing a kW with a kWh to promising a free battery.

Installers Need To Ride With The Right Crowd

SolarQuotes’ in-house installer Anthony Bennett says it shouldn’t just be consumers scanning the horizon for cowboys. In his latest article he argues that electricians need to do their part to avoid a race to the bottom.

Bennett notes that with the huge amount of work on offer, installers can afford to pick and choose which retailers they work with.

“Let the rubbish collapse under its own weight. Stand firm. Resist the temptation to soothe the hip pocket nerve with a short-lived bargain. If enough of us do, the worst operators will burn out,” he says.

For more on the federal battery rebate, read our regularly updated explainer, and to do your own homework on whether an installer or battery brand is reputable, check our reviews page.