My Sunpower Dealer/Installer has gone belly-up - guess I dodged a bullet!

Ian S

Fortunately, my prepaid lease system was installed in May and has been working fine but a couple of months ago there was a local Phoenix newspaper article about the financial mess PerfectPower Solar, my dealer/installer, was in and the customers who had been left high and dry. I got curious the other day about how they were doing and apparently they've vanished - no website and no listing on Sunpower's website. Just called Sunpower and they are in the process of assigning me to another dealer so that I'll have someone to contact in case of issues. Before I opted for the Sunpower lease, I briefly considered going with PerfectPower's own in-house lease which apparently caused their problems and was the source of their downfall. Many folks ponyed up large deposits for systems that they never got. That was a big selling point of my Sunpower lease: no payment until after the system was up, running and connected to the grid. Still, I experienced major delays in getting the system installed. Even had to apply for an extension of the APS rebate timeframe. Now I know why.

I would urge anyone looking into solar to consider carefully the timing of payments for their system. It's not good enough to look into a company's background - after all PerfectPower had been around for a long time and had been something of a local success story. It went from an accredited BBB business to an F rating in the blink of an eye. Be careful folks!

BB.

Re: My Sunpower Dealer/Installer has gone belly-up - guess I dodged a bullet!

"Fancy" financial schemes will be (or already are) the downfall of western civilization.

Hypothecation
MF Global and the great Wall St re-hypothecation scandal

-Bill

Juram

Re: My Sunpower Dealer/Installer has gone belly-up - guess I dodged a bullet!

I knew that company was garbage from the get-go. A self-important bunch that liked to puff themselves up with a bunch of purchased awards and slick salespeople. Nobody there had an ounce of technical expertise. You had a company run by marketing folks, going around glad-handing the locals, pumping up their own name all the time, good riddance to bad rubbish.


Also, BBB rating is meaningless, your BBB rating is about as good as you can afford to pay until there's finally too many complaints stacking up for them to look the other way.

BB.

Re: My Sunpower Dealer/Installer has gone belly-up - guess I dodged a bullet!

Here is one article from August about Perfect Power:

Arizona solar-power clients in lurch

Could not find anything about when they closed their doors.

-Bill