System issues in very hot climate locations this summer?

[aswami]

Are there many people experiencing solar system / solar production issues in locations that have very hot climate this summer?

I am in Arizona and my system stopped production on May 14th. It's taken a long time to get through level 1 customer support, then level 2 remote investigation, and finally in-person service appointment. In fact, my in-person appointment is on July 10th, almost TWO months after the system went down. They are claiming no earlier appointments are available. Ridiculous!

What would cause service appointment to not be available for over 1.5 months? They either have a lot of issues keeping their crews busy, or they don't have enough crews, or both. They should at least hire extra crew during the peak summer months. If they wanna be a utility scale player, they better have utility scale response times for outages and issues!

 

[Vines]

Are there many people experiencing solar system / solar production issues in locations that have very hot climate this summer?

I am in Arizona and my system stopped production on May 14th. It's taken a long time to get through level 1 customer support, then level 2 remote investigation, and finally in-person service appointment. In fact, my in-person appointment is on July 10th, almost TWO months after the system went down. They are claiming no earlier appointments are available. Ridiculous!

What would cause service appointment to not be available for over 1.5 months? They either have a lot of issues keeping their crews busy, or they don't have enough crews, or both. They should at least hire extra crew during the peak summer months. If they wanna be a utility scale player, they better have utility scale response times for outages and issues!

It sounds like you got an appointment 30 days ish after you reported the issue which is a while.

However why as a business would Tesla want to invest in more Tech teams to fix these issues faster? This delay is part of how they got your system installed so cheaply. You likely did some research and knew that Tesla would be the cheapest but also would be hard to get a hold of for issues, and might not communicate great around those issues.

Currently, almost nobody can match Tesla price, so everyone looking for the cheapest possible system lands there. This lean business model means that some people wait a month or more for service.

In exchange, the buyer saves several thousand on the system cost. Buyers who want better and faster service will go to smaller providers with great service, as those companies still need to impress every customer and so work hard to earn the business and possible referral.

 

[aswami]

> It sounds like you got an appointment 30 days ish after you reported the issue which is a while.

Math fail?

I see you are one of those guys. In every forum where someone raises an issue with a substandard product or service, there is always someone who is keen on defending the company as if the issue is a personal complaint against them or their family member, and fixing the issue will cost them something personally. On the contrary, if the company were to improve their product / service, everyone benefits, including the person who was defending / explaining the substandard product / service. Yet, the person has an irresistible and irrational urge to defend the company. Such defense of the company adds absolutely no value to the discussion, except nuisance value.

Did Tesla say or claim at any point of time that their customer service is going to be substandard due to their low installation cost? Did they set expectation about exactly how substandard it is going to be? No. Who decides if 2 weeks or 1 month or 2 months is acceptable level of wait for Tesla's cost of installation? No one. So, please let us not even go there.

More importantly, the main point of my post is to find out if there is a greater occurrence of system failures, which might suggest a product issue, and not a service issue. NO ONE, least of all Tesla, will suggest that the product itself is substandard due to lower cost. That is the issue why I chose a particular title for this discussion thread. Your response deflects away from this main point.

Protip: It is okay to sit out a discussion where we add no value.

 

[BGbreeder]

> It sounds like you got an appointment 30 days ish after you reported the issue which is a while.

Math fail?

I see you are one of those guys. In every forum where someone raises an issue with a substandard product or service, there is always someone who is keen on defending the company as if the issue is a personal complaint against them or their family member, and fixing the issue will cost them something personally. On the contrary, if the company were to improve their product / service, everyone benefits, including the person who was defending / explaining the substandard product / service. Yet, the person has an irresistible and irrational urge to defend the company. Such defense of the company adds absolutely no value to the discussion, except nuisance value.

Did Tesla say or claim at any point of time that their customer service is going to be substandard due to their low installation cost? Did they set expectation about exactly how substandard it is going to be? No. Who decides if 2 weeks or 1 month or 2 months is acceptable level of wait for Tesla's cost of installation? No one. So, please let us not even go there.

More importantly, the main point of my post is to find out if there is a greater occurrence of system failures, which might suggest a product issue, and not a service issue. NO ONE, least of all Tesla, will suggest that the product itself is substandard due to lower cost. That is the issue why I chose a particular title for this discussion thread. Your response deflects away from this main point.

Protip: It is okay to sit out a discussion where we add no value.

This is not a shill for Tesla, or Musk.

Tesla may not have advertised that their customer service is not A+, but even the briefest of reads of the internet would make that clear. Musk is on record saying that customer service is a waste of money. You can see it in the customer service for cars, Tesla energy products, and Starlink. It is what you and I get.

Bottom line: Tesla offers cheaper solar for a couple of reasons, e.g. cookie cutter installations and reduced customer service. I don't want to say anything like "I told you so", but at some level, you get what you pay for.

My $0.02: work the system such as it is. Call, be polite, get an appointment, and stay on top of the project until it is resolved. Or don't, and see what happens.

BG

 

[BGbreeder]

Are there many people experiencing solar system / solar production issues in locations that have very hot climate this summer?

I am in Arizona and my system stopped production on May 14th. It's taken a long time to get through level 1 customer support, then level 2 remote investigation, and finally in-person service appointment. In fact, my in-person appointment is on July 10th, almost TWO months after the system went down. They are claiming no earlier appointments are available. Ridiculous!

What would cause service appointment to not be available for over 1.5 months? They either have a lot of issues keeping their crews busy, or they don't have enough crews, or both. They should at least hire extra crew during the peak summer months. If they wanna be a utility scale player, they better have utility scale response times for outages and issues!

A faster time to repair may be the solution that you want, but Tesla runs, and has run, its business otherwise. Full schedules for service technicians means lower cost for Tesla, which means lower costs for customers. It does mean that yes, customers will be unable to use their solar/car/Starlink for the duration. All part of the cost of doing business with a Musk run company. If you don't like it, start a competing business to do a better job. There is clearly a market for at least a couple of customers.

If it were me, I would remind myself of how much I saved going with Tesla in the first place, and what the ROI has been on the savings, and total it against the cost of lost power, and my cost(s) for my time to project manage the solution are.

I do do business with Musk companies, but always with knowledge that time to repair is going to be long.

BG

 

[sunwarriors]

> It sounds like you got an appointment 30 days ish after you reported the issue which is a while.

Math fail?

I see you are one of those guys. In every forum where someone raises an issue with a substandard product or service, there is always someone who is keen on defending the company as if the issue is a personal complaint against them or their family member, and fixing the issue will cost them something personally. On the contrary, if the company were to improve their product / service, everyone benefits, including the person who was defending / explaining the substandard product / service. Yet, the person has an irresistible and irrational urge to defend the company. Such defense of the company adds absolutely no value to the discussion, except nuisance value.

Did Tesla say or claim at any point of time that their customer service is going to be substandard due to their low installation cost? Did they set expectation about exactly how substandard it is going to be? No. Who decides if 2 weeks or 1 month or 2 months is acceptable level of wait for Tesla's cost of installation? No one. So, please let us not even go there.

More importantly, the main point of my post is to find out if there is a greater occurrence of system failures, which might suggest a product issue, and not a service issue. NO ONE, least of all Tesla, will suggest that the product itself is substandard due to lower cost. That is the issue why I chose a particular title for this discussion thread. Your response deflects away from this main point.

Protip: It is okay to sit out a discussion where we add no value.

There hasn't been a higher occurrence of system failures that I've seen, but heat isn't generally good for production.

I didn't pay much more for not going Tesla, maybe $0.05 per. That said, there is a case that if you have an inverter outage, your whole system is down for however long it takes to replace that and with Tesla, it's generally a known fact that this is what you order/get and you can't force them to use something else because that's how they roll.

It's just less flexible if you want to choose another vendor's equipment or some other battery. Cost has been stated as the #1 reason usually for using Tesla which is ok, but around here and most online forums like the solar reddit, you do get positives and negatives with that. If you had no clue, then that's sorta on you. A lot of people have had good installations/service results as well, etc...but if you don't, then that's just how it is possibly in your area and maybe service in your area is just not great.

I suppose from your own question/comment, you need to understand that vs. telling folks to sit out. You're now a datapoint moving forward that folks in your area may have to wait 2 months for someone to take a look. Good for everyone to know that, but no, people in Arizona has had solar since early days and I don't see many more issues from reading multiple forums. Maybe more AZ folks can chime in.

Like just because 1 person's laptop breaks out of 10,000 doesn't mean they all break. You're probably just unlucky this happened and it'll get resolved when they get to it. Maybe they don't have enough service folks, but can't be helped I guess if that's what it's like currently, esp if they need to contact the installer (if not Tesla directly) who is busy with install work which is worth more $$.

 

[ucmndd]

On the contrary, if the company were to improve their product / service, everyone benefits, including the person who was defending / explaining the substandard product / service.

Would you have happily paid the 20-30% more for your system for improved support, response time, and customer service?

 

[kpanda17]

Back on the qiestion
I would escalate to this person or someone of the same level or higher

https://www.linkedin.com/in/brant-werdel-629125136

 

[Vines]

> It sounds like you got an appointment 30 days ish after you reported the issue which is a while.

Math fail?

I see you are one of those guys. In every forum where someone raises an issue with a substandard product or service, there is always someone who is keen on defending the company as if the issue is a personal complaint against them or their family member, and fixing the issue will cost them something personally. On the contrary, if the company were to improve their product / service, everyone benefits, including the person who was defending / explaining the substandard product / service. Yet, the person has an irresistible and irrational urge to defend the company. Such defense of the company adds absolutely no value to the discussion, except nuisance value.

Did Tesla say or claim at any point of time that their customer service is going to be substandard due to their low installation cost? Did they set expectation about exactly how substandard it is going to be? No. Who decides if 2 weeks or 1 month or 2 months is acceptable level of wait for Tesla's cost of installation? No one. So, please let us not even go there.

More importantly, the main point of my post is to find out if there is a greater occurrence of system failures, which might suggest a product issue, and not a service issue. NO ONE, least of all Tesla, will suggest that the product itself is substandard due to lower cost. That is the issue why I chose a particular title for this discussion thread. Your response deflects away from this main point.

Protip: It is okay to sit out a discussion where we add no value.

I haven't seen widespread issues of failures, but delays in service definitely occur.

Based on your thread, I assumed you didn't notice that production had dropped out until some days or weeks after it stopped. Once you called in and reported it, they scheduled you for about 30 days after your thread was posted.

Usually, these threads are posted days or hours after the customer hears the news of the scheduled tech visit which is longer than they want to wait. It sounds like instead, you waited some weeks before posting your displeasure. I don't know, my math isn't great lol.

My post wasn't meant to defend anyone, but to inform you and others that this seems to be part of the price with Tesla Solar.

 

[Unclepaul]

Could be that it is not Tesla intentionally slowing down service, but that it is simply very hard to hire enough competent and trainable people in the marketplace at reasonable cost.

When temps soar, it is not unusual for Solar production to become less efficient and production decreases. This causes ton of owners to contact their solar provider and ask for a resolution.

Telsa also has peaks of service requests, and is often slow to schedule a service call.

In my case, when solar was out, I contacted Tesla and the effected a fix Over The Air. Got me back up and running in 15 minutes.

Hope OP gets his system up and running again, but slow service seems to be something we hear lots of complaints about.

 

[Vines]

Could be that it is not Tesla intentionally slowing down service, but that it is simply very hard to hire enough competent and trainable people in the marketplace at reasonable cost.

When temps soar, it is not unusual for Solar production to become less efficient and production decreases. This causes ton of owners to contact their solar provider and ask for a resolution.

Telsa also has peaks of service requests, and is often slow to schedule a service call.

In my case, when solar was out, I contacted Tesla and the effected a fix Over The Air. Got me back up and running in 15 minutes.

Hope OP gets his system up and running again, but slow service seems to be something we hear lots of complaints about.

I agree, I do not think there is an intentional slowdown. It is just very busy in all aspects of the solar industry.

Tesla would rather put new installs up than do service calls, so that is what they prioritize and delegate resources to. In the grand scheme of things, most customers lose a tiny fraction of the dollars they saved, in lost production waiting for a service call.

 

[jgleigh]

Would you have happily paid the 20-30% more for your system for improved support, response time, and customer service?

Almost seems like insurance. If you never use it then it was a waste of money. If you use it all the time it feels like a benefit.

 

[ptdusn]

Would you have happily paid the 20-30% more for your system for improved support, response time, and customer service?

For our 9.45kW with 2 PWs and a new roof!! We paid $65k. We got $17.5k Tax Credit and dumped onto the loan. We bought from Sunrun and I am vey happy with their customer service! The one issue we had, (Load Meter Fault on the House power indication), was fixed 2 months ago. Everything is running great!

 

[ucmndd]

Almost seems like insurance. If you never use it then it was a waste of money. If you use it all the time it feels like a benefit.

Totally agree, and I think there are valid reasons for going in either direction.

My main point is don't buy a Chevy and then get pissed that your experience falls short of Mercedes. There's a reason Tesla is dramatically cheaper than everyone in the game and it's not that they've found a magic way to make solar panels for half the price.

 

[aswami]

A lot of people who responded on this thread don't seem to fully understand Tesla as a business.

1. Tesla tries to optimize for having the right level of customer service for a given customer base, product / service quality improvements and service cost control (which is not the same as original product cost control). This thread could have easily been about the service experience with my $100+ K Model X. Plenty of such bad customer service stories are out there. Would you guys then say, you got poor customer service with your Model X service because you paid so less to purchase the product? Tesla as a company does not want to make profit by skimping on customer service.

2. Sometimes their service optimization calculations go wrong. That is why the main thrust of my original post was to ask if there have been higher equipment failures recently in hot regions. I don't think Tesla's service optimization calculations consider almost a 2-month wait for a service appointment to be acceptable just because the original product cost was low. Something else must be going on to cause such high wait times.

3. The main reason Tesla Energy's residential customer sales price is low compared to others is the savings on sales and marketing, especially sales commission. It is not due to saving on post-sale customer service. Considering the volume of the post-sale customer service requests they get compared to their installed base, any savings realized from substandard customer service would not be a big contributor to the profit margin.

4. Tesla Energy is not a typical solar panel company. The mindset of selling for low cost and providing poor customer service is for a company that wants to sell you a product and then be done with you. Tesla Energy does not want to be done with you after selling you the solar panels and power walls. Tesla Energy wants to eventually become your utility or trade power like a utility in your region - one or both. In either situation, Tesla Energy wants to have a relationship with you for life. They want access to the energy in your solar panels, power walls, in your regional grid, and squeeze much, much higher $$$ out of that in perpetuity. They have a greater motivation for keeping their install base up and running to the best of its capacity. They are not providing substandard customer service due to their original install cost being low.

 

[sunwarriors]

A lot of people who responded on this thread don't seem to fully understand Tesla as a business.

1. Tesla tries to optimize for having the right level of customer service for a given customer base, product / service quality improvements and service cost control (which is not the same as original product cost control). This thread could have easily been about the service experience with my $100+ K Model X. Plenty of such bad customer service stories are out there. Would you guys then say, you got poor customer service with your Model X service because you paid so less to purchase the product? Tesla as a company does not want to make profit by skimping on customer service.

2. Sometimes their service optimization calculations go wrong. That is why the main thrust of my original post was to ask if there have been higher equipment failures recently in hot regions. I don't think Tesla's service optimization calculations consider almost a 2-month wait for a service appointment to be acceptable just because the original product cost was low. Something else must be going on to cause such high wait times.

3. The main reason Tesla Energy's residential customer sales price is low compared to others is the savings on sales and marketing, especially sales commission. It is not due to saving on post-sale customer service. Considering the volume of the post-sale customer service requests they get compared to their installed base, any savings realized from substandard customer service would not be a big contributor to the profit margin.

4. Tesla Energy is not a typical solar panel company. The mindset of selling for low cost and providing poor customer service is for a company that wants to sell you a product and then be done with you. Tesla Energy does not want to be done with you after selling you the solar panels and power walls. Tesla Energy wants to eventually become your utility or trade power like a utility in your region - one or both. In either situation, Tesla Energy wants to have a relationship with you for life. They want access to the energy in your solar panels, power walls, in your regional grid, and squeeze much, much higher $$$ out of that in perpetuity. They have a greater motivation for keeping their install base up and running to the best of its capacity. They are not providing substandard customer service due to their original install cost being low.

I think I actually disagree with mostly everything you posted here and feel your mindset of Tesla is actually wrong. Tesla has left a lot of solar markets as well if you look over some old posts here.

As for your Model X, it's because the Model X is a low volume car that has a ton of issues trying to deal with gullwing doors vs a high volume, model Y which they can change processes, tweak it, keep iterating, etc, fix issues.

Complaints of customer service has been with Tesla since they got slightly bigger. I don't know where you've been if you haven't noticed that. Others can chime in more familiar with Tesla service/service calls.


As for your point (2), the answer is still the same. NO, there hasn't been noticeable failures and you're simply unlucky that service folks and installers are busy right now. Head over to the solar reddit and you can't go a week without a comment that you don't go to Tesla for great service. It's all about the $$ savings usually/almost always.

Just search the tons of threads here as well about service if you don't agree with me. All in all, I think your view isn't what the industry view is nor what historically has been the case. I didn't go with Tesla energy due to concerns with PTO and them keep missing filing paperwork. They are listed on the CA contractors site that didn't know how to apply for NEM correctly.


As for your (4), I actually thought Tesla just wants to wham/bam get you installed and move on. Similar to selling Tesla cars, you talk to no one (some prefer this), pick up your car, move on, get on with your life. Nothing like you imagine of building great relationships or they wouldn't have left people who just picked up a MY in early 2023 who paid $20k more and said too bad we cut the price.


Maybe I don't understand Tesla as a business as you claim, but if they wanted great customer service and want me for life and continue to squeeze $$, then you'd expect that they would work with you for any custom install (metal roof, not standard, lots more work, etc...). Tesla Energy doesn't do anything like this. You have a metal roof and Tesla will cancel your project immediately. Similar to selling cars and Elon has stated as much, they want to move as much product as possible. That's not the model of top customer service with lots of $$ vs. high volume, lower $$, etc...


Oh look at this post just now, customer has every single Tesla product under the sun...answer is still NO:

Pennsylvania Solar Roof and Powerwall Canceled

I am in the late stages of construction of a house in PA. The design is for a passive all electric house powered by a Tesla Solar Roof. I contracted for a tremendous system with Tesla in 2020 and pretty much planned for everything based on the Solar Roof. I had been in communication with...

teslamotorsclub.com

Some of that I think is because Tesla doesn't like the price they were going to charge you (remember the solar roof price increases on signed contracts?), how to get out of it, just cancel the whole project!

 

[ucmndd]

A lot of people who responded on this thread don't seem to fully understand Tesla as a business.

1. Tesla tries to optimize for having the right level of customer service for a given customer base, product / service quality improvements and service cost control (which is not the same as original product cost control). This thread could have easily been about the service experience with my $100+ K Model X. Plenty of such bad customer service stories are out there. Would you guys then say, you got poor customer service with your Model X service because you paid so less to purchase the product? Tesla as a company does not want to make profit by skimping on customer service.

2. Sometimes their service optimization calculations go wrong. That is why the main thrust of my original post was to ask if there have been higher equipment failures recently in hot regions. I don't think Tesla's service optimization calculations consider almost a 2-month wait for a service appointment to be acceptable just because the original product cost was low. Something else must be going on to cause such high wait times.

3. The main reason Tesla Energy's residential customer sales price is low compared to others is the savings on sales and marketing, especially sales commission. It is not due to saving on post-sale customer service. Considering the volume of the post-sale customer service requests they get compared to their installed base, any savings realized from substandard customer service would not be a big contributor to the profit margin.

4. Tesla Energy is not a typical solar panel company. The mindset of selling for low cost and providing poor customer service is for a company that wants to sell you a product and then be done with you. Tesla Energy does not want to be done with you after selling you the solar panels and power walls. Tesla Energy wants to eventually become your utility or trade power like a utility in your region - one or both. In either situation, Tesla Energy wants to have a relationship with you for life. They want access to the energy in your solar panels, power walls, in your regional grid, and squeeze much, much higher $$$ out of that in perpetuity. They have a greater motivation for keeping their install base up and running to the best of its capacity. They are not providing substandard customer service due to their original install cost being low.

This is a whole lot of feelings and conjecture presented as fact.

 

[CrazyRabbit]

This is why I like enphase, owner can make warranty claims!
Tesla should take note… lol