Venture Solar

I decided in late 2021 I wanted to go solar. I met with 6 installers over a 3 month period including Sunrun, Trinity, Momentum, two small companies, and Ross from Venture Solar. Venture was the most professional, thorough, detail oriented, and did not make me feel pressured in the slightest. I ultimately chose Venture because of the value of the service plan and production guarantee they offer in addition to their track record and my general interactions with them. Wow, we was impressed! Everything didn’t go as promised— it went better! Communication was excellent, and the system is performing wonderfully. We look forward to producing clean energy and saving and would highly recommended Venture to anyone in the Massachusetts area considering solar panels.

I chose Venture Solar due to a relative’s excellent experience with then back when they used SunPower panels, their excellent sales (my relative’s sales agent’s protégé was our sales agent), for the best bang for the buck, their and their bank’s (Sunnova) incentives, and that they’d have dedicated teams to help with any aspect of service as opposed to third party for the life of the project/lease. Please save yourself, do not go with Venture Solar (VS), they are not the company they once were. Everything has been a nightmare for so long to the extent their own employees have been quitting in droves. We entered contract with them mid November 2021. (Bear in mind we did not live on the property until February 2022.) They called to setup the panels in December. The setup team came *without any panels* and did the prep work so once they had panels—whenever that would be—they’d be able to install them. The 1st red flag is that one day in December they finished installed the panels without anyone even informing us. They didn’t have the courtesy to let us know they’d be doing things on our property??? We have no idea what they did or when, but they left thick pieces of plastic, metal, large screws, alllll over my property, driveway, and street. We are still finding pieces to this day. Terrible. The first Department of Buildings (DoB) inspection also happened in December. The 2nd red flag… VS sends an agent of theirs for every DoB inspection. This agent was there and ready for the appointment but was never informed by VS that the DoB had already cancelled and rescheduled due to scheduled inspector having gotten COVID. The ridiculousness that ensued trying to get followup inspections and their status through December and January was excused due to the “holidays” and so many people being out. It’s now clear however they were an administrative disaster at that point already. We had multiple inspections in January and not a single person on VS could explain to me if we had passed or failed or what. Every single VS agent sent for the inspections were unqualified to be doing anything. All they would do is unscrew things. In the process, they ruined power to the house every time they played with the panel, we had to hire our own electrician to fix this before we moved in, and VS has absolutely no notes of us reporting this issue. They’ve already costed us hundreds of dollars. But you know what, let’s just get the solar going. Part of the contract is that we’d have a new panel they would provide. We were informed that was just there as a novelty. But it actually impacts the inspection. Was able to figure this out from the comments the inspector was making. I had to keep asking VS multiple times a week to send someone qualified to actually fix our panel to pass the inspection instead of redoing the inspection over and over. Eventually they sent an electrician… but he had no idea why he was there, what was the issue keeping us from passing. He literally spent the whole day on the panel, cleaned it up, did God knows what. And that was the last time I ever heard from VS. I kept badgering them to make a new appointment with DoB to no avail. We moved in on February 13th, 2022, the next morning the DoB was there with a VS agent that had scrambled to get to us because he had no idea about the appointment. I let them in. The DoB inspector laughed at VS because it’s not even the first reinspection and there’s still no significant change. Only one thing passed. DoB showed up again one morning with another VS agent I never heard of, and I didn’t let them in the house as they never fixed the problem nor did they tell me of this appointment (for the second time!). I called VS and Sunnova repeatedly and most front line support for VS don’t even take detailed notes if any at all. Eventually I got the regional manager’s number, his name is Luis. I called and left messages repeatedly. I had to get in touch with our sales agent who got on top of things internally after which Luis finally called us the third week of March. If not for sales he never even heard of me or my problems. He proved he is not checking support cases escalated to him nor voicemails. He set up an appointment with an electrician to fix the issue the same week and said he would set up DoB inspection for the next week. The electrician came and fixed the problem — the ground was connecting to plastic, ie the panel wasn’t grounded, it needed metallic pieces there. But we have never heard from VS since then. Not one single call returned. 1.5 months and counting. Not even a surprise DoB inspection which would be welcome at this point. I tried to go the sales route again but our awesome sales guy quit. The Customer Experience team can only escalate and give me names and apologize for the lack of follow ups and for being under staffed. The only change in my account is some manager guy named Scott noted he would call me. Never did. It is now May 2022 going on 6 months now, in what could have been done in less than 1 month. Why is it so hard to even get 1 call returned!?! Patently pathetic. Oh. Not to mention the promised critter guard. I have called about this since December, not sure why no one can answer me about this. The sales guy did confirm it was on back order but their CX team is radio silent. Honestly at this point I just want my life to be clean of VS altogether. I wish they would come and take their garbage off my roof. But I’m afraid that might 1. take years to do, 2. damage my roof in the process. I have absolutely no confidence in VS to manage the panels for the next few minutes let alone decades. I have alerts from Enphase (the app for their microinverters) having detected legitimate problems with the system and not a peep from VS. I just want this nightmare to be over. I wouldn’t be surprised if I have to remove the panels myself.