Jennifer
Elitist and confrontational design service representatives
We are homeowners doing a DIY solar installation. One of us has certifications in solar installation. We need engineer-stamped plans in order to obtain solar permits from our local jurisdiction, so we reached out to US Solar Supplier. Their website says they offer a variety of tiers of design services for both DIY and professional installers, including engineer-stamped permit plans. During the initial consultation, we met with Dylan who was fairly new to US Solar Supplier. He was friendly and did not indicate any barriers to creating permit-ready stamped plans. 5 minutes into the meeting, a more experienced designer, Dave, joined the meeting and was immediately hostile. He said that they don't provide plans for DIY installers, quoting an assumption that most people get their equipment off Facebook Marketplace. He said that unless we buy all the equipment from them, they won't work with us. Their website does not say that you have to buy the equipment from them in order to use the design services. Besides, we have bought solar supplies from them for this and other projects. He claimed that we hadn't bought anything from them because he couldn't find an order associated with the email address I used for the Zoom meeting. This is a ridiculous claim, because we have a different email address for the Zoom meeting than we use for online orders, and we have a different mailing address than the property address (and have purchased items for them for our prior solar project at a different residential address). Unfortunately, US Solar Supplier has lost our business forever. We have three properties that need solar installations, and if this service had worked out well we would have used them for all our projects. But instead, their confrontational and elitist attitude will make us return to our local solar supplier instead.



