I have never had to write such a scathing review of any company, and am saddened to have to do it now. But considering the large cost of our solar project and even larger disappointment this project has become, it has become apparent that I must tell my story so that no one else has to have the same problems.
We began our project on October 30th, 2015. Initially, we made decisions about our set-up, amount of panels, my desire to have the well powered separate from the grid, and ground mount versus roof mount, and applied for financing with one company. We were called by our representative the next day and told that the financing company we had applied with would not be able to finance a ground mount, and we were steered towards another company that would. We were approved and began the technical layout of the array on November 2nd, 2015. I was told to expect a 45 to 60 day process, from permit to working system.
After speaking with the engineer for our project, I realized the system we were designing was not going to fit our needs, and would need to be re-imagined. My service representative did say that this type of hybrid system was not something they did often, but at no time were we told that they had little to no experience installing this type of system. This involved an understandable delay as they re-structured the project, adjusted the final costs, and applied for permits.
On January 5th, our finance account was charged $100.00. This was the first charge to be made on the account. I called Revolve to verify and check on our status, as we are now approximately 30 days into the project. I had not received any communication from Revolve about our project. All contact at this point had been initiated by me. I was told that, yes, our permits were submitted and that was the charge we were seeing. Another several weeks passed, along with several phone calls from myself to Revolve, with no answers as to when ground-breaking would happen. In February, we were charged for approximately half of the total cost of the project. No work had been done as of this time. March came and went, with still no work having been done. I was becoming frustrated. No one had answers as to why our project was not progressing. We are now at the beginning of April, 5 months into a 60 day project. I called and spoke with anyone who would talk to me. I became desperate and had a very angry conversation with our initial salesperson, who alluded to some of the internal problems Revolve was having, which was negatively impacting our project. It was not until this conversation that our project was actually moving forward, even though we had been paying on a loan with nothing to show for it.
Revolve finally broke ground on our project on April 11, 2016. There were numerous delays. Everything from the solar panels themselves being unavailable (I later discovered that the panels they used were slightly less expensive than what we had initially ordered, but had no price adjustment), to the battery compliment being unavailable. We had 2ft x 4ft holes in the ground for weeks, with no solar array. Up until this time, only half of the cost has been charged to us, and we were making payments, even though we had no system in place. On April 19th, we were contacted by our service representative and told that Revolve was unable to charge the remaining amount because their charge window had closed; the finance company would not allow us to adjust that account and we were forced to open a second account to allow them to complete the charges. We did so, but with many reservations. We felt we were in too deep with our project to pull back.
Our panels were finally installed on May 27th, 7 months into a 60 day project. We submitted all requested paperwork to Pacific Gas and Electric for a permit to operate on June 2nd. Today is August 31st and we are still waiting for our permit to operate from our utility company. We have 18 beautiful solar panels and 4 batteries finally installed, just in time for the sunniest part of the year. However, they sit idle, and unused by us. We are diligently paying two loans for a currently worthless solar system due to lack of knowledge, poor planning and business acumen, and complete lack of communication from Revolve Solar. This has been a costly and discouraging project, with no benefit to us as of this point. I feel that we have been robbed of the benefits solar power can offer and are paying for a worthless product. I cannot with good conscience recommend anyone use this company. read more
