{"id":90927,"date":"2025-04-08T09:17:03","date_gmt":"2025-04-07T23:47:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/?p=90927"},"modified":"2025-06-17T00:03:36","modified_gmt":"2025-06-16T14:33:36","slug":"good-brand-botched","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/good-brand-botched\/","title":{"rendered":"Brand Name, Botched Game: Cheap Installs Of Quality Solar"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Solar

Solar panels don’t keep working into the night, and neither should solar installers.<\/p><\/div>\n

Ever heard an installer promise a premium brand of solar panel, battery or inverter for an absolute bargain? As the old saying goes: if something seems too good to be true, it probably is. Here’s why good quality gear doesn’t always mean a good quality job.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

It’s easy to pick low-class equipment, which I explored the dangers of last week<\/a>; it’s cheap compared to top-of-the-line options like Fronius. <\/span>But if you have two quotes for the same quality hardware but company A is charging half of what company B does, why pay more?<\/p>\n

At 50 cents per watt, company A isn’t just boosting competition, they’re haunting the whole industry with horribly low margins which make everyone’s business unsustainable. When warranty problems arise, those companies will disappear.<\/p>\n

One NSW-based customer of such an installer, David, allegedly found this out after their fancy Fronius inverter failed and, 35 phone calls later, realised their installer was “good at taking money but when it comes to after-sales service they are a non-event”.<\/p>\n

David continued that: “This is a simple warranty fault (the inverter failed) and I need some paperwork to claim warranty. They were hard to understand. I also needed to know if they were going to send a technician out or I source my own technician. In the end I had to get a local company to do the work. The installation docket was not signed by the installer which causes problems with warranty … the technician from the repair company stated the the poor installation of the system was the likely reason for the Fronius failure.”<\/p>\n

\"An

A Fronius inverter displaying an error allegedly linked to poor installation.<\/p><\/div>\n

Borrowed credibility<\/h2>\n

A cheap installer using brand-name gear is just borrowing the credibility and reputation of an expensive brand.<\/p>\n

You can install cheap stuff well, it happens all the time, but good gear installed badly is still a terrible outcome.<\/p>\n

Ask anyone who bought a 1970s Jaguar assembled locally in New Zealand. British Leyland manufacturing with antipodean assembly was, er, just sublime.<\/p>\n

\"damaged

The poor Fronius Snap inverter has been vandalised. image credit South Australian Office of the Technical Regulator<\/p><\/div>\n

A Tale Of Two Installs<\/h2>\n

I recently asked a fellow installer, how do you judge a “cheap” job? His answer; mainly it’s about time.<\/p>\n

His business budgets for 3 man-hours per kilowatt of installed capacity. 6.6kW x 3 equals nearly 20 hours. Add a lunch break and you’ve spent 7.6 hours per person or roughly speaking, a metric day’s work.<\/p>\n

The example he cited was interesting though, two similar jobs, done serindipitously side by side. One was finished at 4:30pm while the other, which wrapped up at 11:30 am, is now headed for court.<\/p>\n

That other quick job involved a $200 deposit over the phone and was supposed to cost $4400 all up, but alarm bells should have been ringing when the install team asked for $4200 as soon as they arrived.<\/p>\n

Turns out the T&C fine print said pay before play but the customer refused, which is good because there’s a laundry list of defects:<\/p>\n