wbhokie
Member
This is all very true. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying "Go Tesla or Go Home" here, but large companies in general tend to benefit from warranty claims where small companies tend to not last very long... especially in niche industries. Product warranties of course can be claimed either way, but who is going to actually do the work to replace it? The warranty through Tesla was a big reason I went with them personally, along with the powerwall and the entire system ingeration. If you can get a price match it is kind of a no-brainer. The parts a company uses are important too. Don't just look at a brand either, because some companies have different brand tiers which have evolved quite a bit. There are a lot of really good quality panels out there, so don't paint yourself into a corner thinking there is only a particular kind you want.
When I received some of my original "initial" quotes from some companies they literally took a satellite image of my roof and covered it in solar panels and said "Look what we can do!" But they completely ignored every exhaust vent, fire code setback, etc which completely negated some of the big numbers they were making promises about. Tesla was very up-front with me about the realities of those things from the start and I always appreciate straight talk. My energy advisor was a very smart guy and talked with me at length about any questions I had, and would write me long responses via email full of details containing thorough answers to all questions under the sun I picked through from the forums here as well as general concerns. As with all projects, communication is very important to me, and that is something Tesla has not been very good at historically with their cars, but in this case, my advisor was always prompt. His questions to the company would have delays (involving paperwork, etc) at times, but if he could answer directly, he did... even after hours.
I personally had no issue price matching, but I live in Virginia. Then again, I don't have a lot of the extra solar tax incentives that exist in California. From what I've read, adding a Powerwall to solar can almost be obtained free of charge in California after all of the tax credits which is amazing, and you get TOU credits on top of that. Even if your price per watt doesn't get quite as low as some other people, you do get much more sun than the rest of us, and better tax credits, so it might all work out. That being said, I'd still shop around. I'm amazed that the prices there are so much higher where there would seem to be so much more competition for the product. You don't need a great company to get a low quote and have a bigger company match it! Tesla loves to standardize their prices nationwide for their cars, so it's odd to me that their prices for solar vary so much nationally. I guess that it hasn't trickled down yet.
