The Solar System

Todays post wasn't going to be about solar panels or evacuated tube solar collectors or anything as complicated, but... well...

A leaflet came through the door a few weeks ago advertising solar heating. I know its not a cheap option, and there are other much more cost effective things we can do to the house first, but it is something I am very curious about, along with Solar PV and Wind. However I have absolutely no concept of how much it would likely cost, so this seemed like the ideal opportunity to find out! The fact that the new house is still empty whilst we have some work done prior to moving in made it an ideal time to contact them - particularly as we need a new hot water tank!

So I phoned the number of the leaflet, and 3 days later a salesman arrived! I'm sure they can smell blood.... I was vaguely hopeful that it wasn't going to be a hard sell, but to be fair we'd still be interested if the price was right! So the system was explained, along with the benefits of such a system. Like all good double glazing sal.... umm sorry... solar heating salesmen, he had a jolly nice carrot to dangle in that they offered to make us one of their "solar homes" which would attract extra discounts (assuming the house and area was suitable), and if we managed to encourage enough people to get surveys, and enough of those people also purchased a system, we might even get a full refund! WOW!!!!!

Alas we had to put the chap off as we were running out of time, but that jolly nice sweet juicy carrot was dangling.... He gave me a call at work today and let me know that a slot had "conveniently appeared in his schedule for tonight," so could he pop round and go over the costs and benefits with us... It would only take half an hour! Bang on 7.30pm came a knock on the door, and so began the hard sell.... You know they have to go through their sales patter, so you nod and grin at all the right points as they explain the things you'd already figured out and wait for them to cut to the chase and tell you how much its going to cost! Funnily enough, and AMAZINGLY, our house was an ideal candidate for a "solar home" so we were entitled to a big discount! There's a surprise....

"Well Mr Blonde, the retail price of your system will be £11000.... how does that sound?"

GULP!

"Now Thats the retail price... obviously we would be offering you a discount.... We can take this off, and give you a £400 government discount, and a nice marketing bonus.... so the price you would pay would be..... £7500! I'm sure you'll agree that's much more affordable!"

GULP!!!!

To be fair, I had expected (call it intuition, or very superficial preliminary research) a solar heating system to be in roughly that ballpark, but its still £7K we don't have... but the temptation is still there! What to do..... Bank loan? Add to the mortgage? All would take time, and shockingly it turned out that he had 2 appointments in our town for tomorrow!!!!!!! That would mean if one of them signed up, we wouldn't be a solar home and attract the discounts!!!!!!! NOOOOOOO!!!!!

OK, OK, its all standard sales patter, I know perfectly well he is playing a game with me, but I need to do a bit more research, so we explain to him we'll call him back first thing once we'd done a bit more investigation, and I give my plumber a call.

"Mike, how much would you expect a solar heating system, twin coil boiler, fitting, etc to cost?"
"Oh I dunno, maybe £3500-£6000?? Certainly not much more than that - my mate does solar, do you want me to give him a call for you?"
"Ooooohhkay....! Yes please!"

So perhaps I won't be calling the salesman back tomorrow accepting the kind offer of a solar system for £7.5 - £11K!!!!

Moral of the story? They are the obvious ones - Do a little research, and don't accept the first offer that comes through the door! If it looks too good to be true, it usually is! Don't get me wrong, the salesman didn't lie to us, was friendly, and did tell us to assume there would be no discount, however many things were implied. A door to door salesman will always go with the hard sell - its their nature!

Interestingly, and perhaps unsurprisingly, Old Folk are the biggest customers for this company (and I'm sure companies like it!). The marketing did seem targetted for people less willing or able to do a bit of digging themselves. However, these are people who are less likely to see a return on their investment, people who are possibly more vulnerable to the hard sell, are less likely to do any research, and who perhaps are in the worst position to afford such a large investment! These are exactly the sort of people who live down our street, and out of whom we could possibly have gained a full refund if we didn't have any morals!

However Solar is certainly something we will be looking into again. I don't think anyone doubts its capable of producing 60% of your hot water, and 30% of your heating needs. Behind insulating your home and upgrading your boiler, its probably the next best upgrade to make, and from what I've read, the best of the renewables. Perhaps this time it was all a bit rushed and last minute - not giving us enough time to do proper homework. Just the way a good hard sale (almost) works!