We were thinking about solar for a while, SolarCit...

We were thinking about solar for a while, SolarCity said we were too small a user for them. Then got a cold visit from an American Solar Direct field reps. He was fantastic, knew his stuff, friendly and convincing. He had no problem with our smallish monthly bill. So we signed up. Then things slowed to a snail's pace. Maybe due to LA approval system reluctance. The installation itself was a snap, very good people, clean courteous and fast. Excellent job. Going online was another couple of months. Maybe due to LA. Finally after about six months the system runs and seems to run well. Not sure yet about how well LADWP is taking this.

The real downer for this company was and is customer service. Before the install, we got weekly emails telling us that we need to schedule a date for a visit, although that we set a while ago. Apparently a computer glitch that they said would be fixed. It never was. They lost a check and rather than send a reminder or call us, they sent an email that threatened us with a collecting agency and impact on our credit score. When challenged, the phone rep said 'the lawyers made me do it'. We have a 13 panel system, yet their 'portal' says 10. The rep says its a computer glitch and not important and in fact was not fixed even a month after I alerted them. The portal was supposed to give accurate information on what the system is doing. The portal in real life is something below the programming skills of a five year old.

I think they have a good product but a customer service problem. If I owned this business, I might consider bringing in a company that trains the people answering the phone and posing as customer service reps. They should be knowledgeable about the product the company sells and put the customer first. They also should get an IT person to modernize their system. Since we bought the system upfront, hopefully we will not have much contact with them over the next year or two and hopefully they will still be around in a bit if something should happen to the system....