Review for Sunrun Inc.

Office location: 14340 Carlson Cir Unit J5, Tampa FL, 33626

04/27/2023
St Pierre Lakeland, FL

Misleading and not worth it

I started my solar journey in May/June of '22. Our solar was just installed in Feb of '23. This has been a grueling progress. I'm still unsure if the fault lies at the feet of my city or with Vivint's team. In the beginning we were sold on the idea of not relying on the grid, in an event of a power loss we would have the battery to power our house overnight and during the day the panels would produce what we needed. We live in FL so our PRIMARY purchase decision was based on the fact of having A/C in the event of a grid outage. We were told some stuff about being locked into some deal with the city electric for 15-25 years for getting some sort of better rates and other things that have proven untrue. After SEVERAL months of conflicting information and getting closer to buyers remorse came the install date. Freedom Forever nailed it, they were on time, super polite and did a great job installing everything. FF's electricians informed me that my AC, Stove and Water Heater were not on my battery that I purchased. Upon learning more from that electrician I found that I would need a second battery to operate the AC during an outage. This is the literal reason we decided to go solar, and upon more conversations I found that in the event of a grid outage, the solar would ONLY power things linked to the battery even during the day. So not only were we sold on the fact we would have A/C in an outage, we were sold on the fact that we wouldn't need to rely on the grid unless we over used our panels/battery. This turns out to be completely false. In the event of an outage ONLY breakers linked to the battery will be useable AND the panels can't power non-battery linked devices during day light if grid is down. The sales rep claims "Your power will work, the main thing that I always tell people does not work on a battery is the air conditioning, so that’s something I would have gone over with you regardles of whether it’s on a separate breaker not, typically batteries are not going to power an air conditioner as they draw way too much power, it keeps the important things on like your lights, Wi-Fi, fridge, etc." I know this is not true as we would have full stop not made the solar purchase if we knew there would be no A/C in an outage. Living in FL that completely defeats the entire purpose of solar for us. I reached out to Vivint regarding this and they pushed me off to Freedom Forever in regards to essentially being lied to and not being given the items needed that we were sold on. Freedom tried to be helpful however there is nothing they can do as they are just the installer and they agreed Vivint needs to supply us a 2nd battery and FF will gladly work to have it added onto our system. Freedom told me to contact the Regional Sales Manager regarding this lack of transparency and poor sales tactics and we are going on 3 weeks of no answers or call backs from this Vivint associate. The most devastating aspect of this whole scenario is that we've had Vivint Security for over 6 years now and they have always been good to us, anytime we have any device issues they are very helpful and great to work with. When we found out Vivint offered Solar my wife was excited stating that she TRUSTS Vivint to not rip us off like you hear so often about solar companies taking peoples rebates and then filing bankruptcy to get out of warranties. So we were very glad to be going through Vivint and after this near year of issues and the end product not even what we signed up for leaves a very bad taste about Vivint in our mouths. I have stopped recommending friends and colleagues to Vivint Security as well due to this entire issue. I do not recommend Vivint Solar to anyone and for anyone looking to Solar companies, get what you are expecting in writing and read EVERYTHING they give you prior to signing. Vivint makes you sign a form that essentially claims you are buying solar because it is what you want and NOT based on what the sales rep is telling you what you will gain. Had I noticed that in the beginning I would have walked away. Very shady tactics and willing to withhold information for the sake of a sale. Vivint is not the company I thought they were.