SolarGaines

Project Poorly Managed

Beware of using SolarGaines. Their prices are low for the Baltimore,Washington area. However, as the saying goes, you get what you pay for. I had several issues come up with SolarGaines: 1. A price was agreed to in writing with their sales representative. This price was suppose to be all inclusive and it was agreed that I could charge the project to my credit card for no additional fee. However, 2 weeks later when it came time for me to pay, they charged me an additional 3% for using a credit card. By that point, they had already taken my down payment for the project. The sales rep basically told me I could pay the additional 3% or cancel the project. 2. When the panels were installed, I was told that the inverter they purchased was not working properly and would need to be replaced. I was promised my system would be up and running within a week. When I called the project manager 4 days later, he told me that "he forgot to order the new parts but he would try to get to it that afternoon." He said shipping the new parts would take about a week. When I requested that the replacement part be overnighted, they said "no". Kinda sad that I'm paying tens of thousands of dollars for solar panels and they won't spend a couple bucks to fix the faulty parts they ordered. 3. They left the room near my circuit breakers a mess. The framing around the circuit breaker box was half ripped off, and the wall was not fully repaired nor repainted. When the billing department asked for final payment, I said I was withholding payment until the job was finished. I guess that was an incentive for them to finish the job. I was promised they would come on Monday. I stayed home from work to wait for the crew, and received a call 5 minutes before they were suppose to come that they were not able to come that day because they were finishing up another project. I was told they would call to reschedule. The next morning at around 11am, I get a call that the crew is waiting outside my house...no warning or scheduling. My room finally got fixed (they did an okay job, not great), but the project was poorly managed from beginning to end. 4. Once the job is done and they are paid, the company seems completely unresponsive. I reached out to them for some assistance filling out the forms to sell SRECs and received no response. With all that being said, I gave them 2 stars because it seems like they did a decent job installing the panels. Just be warned that dealing with them is a pain.