My site inspection was last Tuesday, 2/23. The day before, I requested a design change to go to a larger system than 4 kwh. It's been silence from the Project Advisor after I requested the design change on 2/22. Should I escalate this delay? Or, is this even a delay? I get the daily SMS that I have pending items in my accounts which is due to me not accepting the 4 kwh design.
-
Want to remove ads? Register an account and login to see fewer ads, and become a Supporting Member to remove almost all ads.
Crickets - Do I escalate?
- Thread starter whydontwe
- Start date
Road.Runner
Member
wake up early, call exactly at 8am (when their call queue begins) to the customer service line, say you want a bigger system and they will initiate a request to the design team. otherwise it may take hours on hold.
Uncle Paul
Well-Known Member
Tesla is super busy right now due to their recent Solar pricing reduction.
If you make changes at the last minute it will take them a while to get you back into their system.
If you make changes at the last minute it will take them a while to get you back into their system.
After initial layout was designed, I requested more six more panels. Took about 10 phone calls/emails and 45 additional days but they redesigned and installed additional panels. I am sure happy they did. Be persistent and they will do it.
Just reading this stuff makes me really happy that I didn't go with Tesla. Cost me about 10% more. But the inability to talk to anyone to straighten things out must be infuriating.
I shopped around and would had paid about $10k more going with another company. It’s been a headache for me dealing with Tesla and I knew about this before heading in. I would of definitely gone with the other company if it was only 10% more than Tesla.
How many times does one hear about someone who has gone with the cheapest bidder is not happy with the product. Cheap price,
no customer service. Seems fair to me.
I would still do it again. Saving $10k was a deal breaker for me. I’m happy with the product, just not happy about the customer service. Like I said if it was only 10% savings, I would of gone with the company.
Yeah this is why I'm torn about my experience with Sunrun... they actually were very communicative with me and had some really nice people on my project to try and get things figured out. Their problem was a lack of preparedness in terms of dealing with the ever-changing AHJ rules and PG&E red tape around ESS. And the Sunrun designers that are sequestered in some dark corner someplace constantly made things worse with their idiotic designs and decisions.
Every shop purports to provide great products and services... but since solar and ESS are like once-in-a-lifetime type of purchases it's tough for a newbie to really discover who has the good reputation and good knowledge-set.
Every shop purports to provide great products and services... but since solar and ESS are like once-in-a-lifetime type of purchases it's tough for a newbie to really discover who has the good reputation and good knowledge-set.
Uncle Paul
Well-Known Member
Believe people are not so much upset by the lack of communication, but the lack of being able to control the process.
Tesla usually gets the job done, but with little hand holding or ability for consumers to ask them a million questions.
Tesla usually gets the job done, but with little hand holding or ability for consumers to ask them a million questions.
Its a bit more than that, in general, with these projects, unless ones home is very "standard"... however I am not going to get into that much here in this thread.
I would say that, in general, the installers who show up tend to be good to great, and in general, the people who support your install from a paperwork / contact perspective tend to be average to awful.
Here’s my take. Tesla Energy is super busy with more demand than probably other companies out there. They are earnest about focusing on this division this year. For battery storage they have a great in-demand product that works very well and their app software is easy to use. They have maybe the lowest pricing on solar panels and getting Powerwalls through them can also save you money where they might offer bundled pricing or discounts from time to time.
I think speed of scheduling of installs will be dependent on your area, how many teams of installers they have there and how complicated the job is (ie. just solar or solar and PWs and since each home will be different how much electrical work needs to be done). When our install was scheduled back in August, our SF Bay Area I think had 5 teams that were working 6 days a week and one guy said he even came back on a Sunday to finish up a job. The Bay Area with our PSPS blackouts has been a real motivator for people wanting to purchase. I understand Texas has seen a real uptick in people either wanting to add PWs or get a whole system after this polar vortex event. Florida is another big area for installs. You’ll also notice on the forum an increase in members from other States.
Then of course there’s the product supply inventory, another constraint when demand has exploded. Many people found installs delayed because PWs were in such short supply. Heck in our area even certain circuit breakers simply weren’t available due to installs like this, construction in general picking up, and factories affected by covid.
One area of the company that I think may be unfairly criticized is the design area. No idea how many people work on the plans but each time a change is requested on a job by the client, city or utility, possibly several pages of plans need updating and then sometimes require new approvals. Even adding a few panels would require changes to layout, the part list, calculations redone, etc. I don’t think any customer gets to speak with the designers, probably due to their high level of skill and the vast number of detailed jobs they are responsible for handling. For the majority of customers this is okay. From what I’ve seen a number of members here want more control of their job and generate the posts about it.
Any of the above areas can affect your job, and people’s level of patience will vary. You’ll see some jobs completed fairly quickly all the way to PTO and others not. Unfortunately as much as a cookie cutter process as TE might like this to be, it’s not for a multitude of reasons. From our end we’ve been very happy. Didn’t think when ordering last January it would take until end of October to get PTO but it did (covid, main panel upgrade, wildfire air quality and availability of PWs affected it too).
I don’t think OP’s delay in the design team getting back to them is unexpected or inordinate long so far. Your job is probably one of dozens the designer assign to you is working on at this moment.
I think speed of scheduling of installs will be dependent on your area, how many teams of installers they have there and how complicated the job is (ie. just solar or solar and PWs and since each home will be different how much electrical work needs to be done). When our install was scheduled back in August, our SF Bay Area I think had 5 teams that were working 6 days a week and one guy said he even came back on a Sunday to finish up a job. The Bay Area with our PSPS blackouts has been a real motivator for people wanting to purchase. I understand Texas has seen a real uptick in people either wanting to add PWs or get a whole system after this polar vortex event. Florida is another big area for installs. You’ll also notice on the forum an increase in members from other States.
Then of course there’s the product supply inventory, another constraint when demand has exploded. Many people found installs delayed because PWs were in such short supply. Heck in our area even certain circuit breakers simply weren’t available due to installs like this, construction in general picking up, and factories affected by covid.
One area of the company that I think may be unfairly criticized is the design area. No idea how many people work on the plans but each time a change is requested on a job by the client, city or utility, possibly several pages of plans need updating and then sometimes require new approvals. Even adding a few panels would require changes to layout, the part list, calculations redone, etc. I don’t think any customer gets to speak with the designers, probably due to their high level of skill and the vast number of detailed jobs they are responsible for handling. For the majority of customers this is okay. From what I’ve seen a number of members here want more control of their job and generate the posts about it.
Any of the above areas can affect your job, and people’s level of patience will vary. You’ll see some jobs completed fairly quickly all the way to PTO and others not. Unfortunately as much as a cookie cutter process as TE might like this to be, it’s not for a multitude of reasons. From our end we’ve been very happy. Didn’t think when ordering last January it would take until end of October to get PTO but it did (covid, main panel upgrade, wildfire air quality and availability of PWs affected it too).
I don’t think OP’s delay in the design team getting back to them is unexpected or inordinate long so far. Your job is probably one of dozens the designer assign to you is working on at this moment.
What I did was I got a quote from Tesla and used it to bargain down the price of my 18.36kw system so it was $2k more.
The reason I didn't go with Tesla is that I asked for a redesign and it fell down a black hole. It just seemed a sign of things to come. $2 or 3k seemed worth it. However a lot of quotes I got were 30-40k more. I would have put up with Tesla for that.
The reason I didn't go with Tesla is that I asked for a redesign and it fell down a black hole. It just seemed a sign of things to come. $2 or 3k seemed worth it. However a lot of quotes I got were 30-40k more. I would have put up with Tesla for that.
nice work on your part! A 2-3k difference on a system that size is not that much... and I think a lot of us would have gone with a competent third party for that difference. When I was looking at just 2 powerwalls, without solar, the difference between tesla installing 2 powerwalls and the 2 other bids I got were about 7k
charlesj
Active Member
Similar threads
