Review for SunPower

09/10/2014
Anonymous

Horrible Service and Support

We purchased our solar system through our builder - Meritage Homes. Sunpower subs its contract work to local installers. Initial system installed was wrong type of inverter - Had to take time off of work for their product swap. Post installation I had to constantly call to get the service operational. Installer came but took the wrong paperwork, left our home after another day of work taken off promising to call us to reschedule. Days went by, nobody would call, multiple phone calls to Sunpower and they finally told me to turn the system online. <br /><br />After turning online, nothing happened, their installers FAILED to test if it was even hooked up, Sunpower rep stated they must have forgotten the disconnect in the attic. Another week of no service and multiple phone calls, finally got the installer here, mind you they were working in our development the whole time but couldn't be bothered to call us or stop by. After an hour they determined it was a pinched wire - had they checked the system when it was installed they would have seen no power. System is finally online almost 30 days after installation. It worked for a total of 4 days before I came home to their system off again - no power. <br /><br />Called Sunpower repair line who couldn't find my serial number in their system, because unless you pay for their monitoring station which is the only way to even see what your system is producing power wise, they don't register the systems. After an hour of speaking to a foreign individual they told me the installers would have to fix. <br /><br />10 days later, multiple phone calls, texts to the sales rep, calls to the installer, they haven't even bothered to schedule an appointment to repair their equipment. <br /><br />$14,000 for a 10 panel system, and all we have experienced is faulty wiring, defective products, and countless promises of return phone calls or scheduling of an appointment but they do not follow through with anything. <br /><br />I have lost an entire month and a half of solar power in peak summer temperatures, 3 days of lost work, 4 hours of phone calls, and zero response from the company except empty promises. I have never in my life experienced such poor customer service and lack of any customer loyalty or interest in servicing their equipment. They are a scam once they have their money they have no obligation to repair or replace any service in any time period. <br /><br />Their website support chat is useless, it is likely outsourced overseas, the person I chatted with today who took forever to respond used the phrase "query" which is common with Indian tech support companies. Their service technical support when you call them knows nothing about the products or how to schedule service calls. <br /><br />The worst part is without a monitoring system I have no means to watch what my system is doing, and after this many failed attempts at even getting operational, I question whether it is even hooked up properly to offset my own power usage. When the system was "on" I noticed zero decrease in energy usage at my bi-directional meter, and the technical support reps don't know how it's supposed to work or how to check if it is working. <br /><br />I would not recommend this company to anyone looking for a quality product, or quality support, you will not receive it from Sunpower, so save your money and buy a paperweight instead, it's about as useful as our system is on our home and absolutely no end in sight for repair or quality of service even if the magic green light is ever to come online again. <br /><br />Mind you, I have been assured the entire sales management, customer service management and support management are aware of my issues for over a week now, and even as of today, nobody has even bothered to call the installer to have them come and even look at our system. They themselves take weeks to get back in touch with people if ever at all, so a terrible company with Sunpower and just as poor with their subcontractors.