Complaint Review: Unleash solar

As an observation you equate that you are a company that installs at a cheaper price than your competitors. It's obvious you can do that by not providing the proper safety equipment to protect your employees nor do you care! Hiring sloppy mechanics and untrained installers to give a cheaper price gives a black eye to the solar industry! Your a typical low ball contractor that worries about lining your own pockets and not one that cares about doing safe and good looking installations that are eye appealing. You prefer to hire cheap unqualified installers who don't know anything about OSHA safety and you think it's OK? Wait until one of your workers falls off a roof and hope he sues you and the homeowner and see how long you stay in business. You are penny wise and dollar foolish. It is not relevant how many installs your company has done. Your former employee is correct in pointing you out.

I would have to agree with the original complaint. In that phot it is obvious the array is wavy. How could you not see that. Nabcep installer or not is not a license to install, nor because you are a certified nabcep installer does not make you a good mechanic. I personally know quite a few nabcep installers and know for a fact that some are not qualified. As part of the test criteria nabcep doesn't come out and see your installation to see how good or crappy the installation is. Just because you are a good test taker doesn't mean your a certified and qualified to install solar. I could pass an FAA exam but doesn't mean I should fly a plane. Solar installations require a good electrical trade mechanic, not a person who takes 2 weeks of training, 3 installs and then takes a nabcep test and passes and think he or she is now an expert. As far as I am concerned Nabcep certification is for gym shoe electricians who have no business doing electrical work. Case in point a nabcep certified installer I know has a background as a lawyer, did a crappy install on his own home that I would be embarrassed to show to anyone and he passed the "nabcep" installer exam the first time. Is this person qualified, I think not

I'm not sure how an ex-employee would have any knowledge of our sales numbers in Northern California, but I can assure everyone they aren't anywhere near $500M.  That would be great if they were!  More like 50 or 60 jobs total, at this point in time.  Our prices are so much better than anyone else in the state that we must be pissing off some competitors who feel the best way to strike back is to post negative comments here.  Why don't they post about how the other companies are overcharging their customers!

This  supposedly NABCEP certified individual says that he quit after two days, but later says he showed up to work six times with nothing scheduled.  What's going on here?  An intelligent reader here should recognize that his description of one installer with tattoos as an indication of poor work or performance is way off base and that he's trying to negatively bias any reader.  If you look at his photo of the panels as supposed proof of a "wavy" or otherwise faulty installation, do you agree with his assessment?  These points should indicate that everything else he says lacks any kind of credibility and can safely be ignored. 

3-4 months after the 1st complaint - Nothing has changed... Unleash has sold $500M in Northern California in the past 8 weeks and and still do not have an office or any qualified installers to do the work.. Good Luck if you are North of Bakersfield...

As a NABCEP student and a well trained installer I took a job at unleash solar in June 2012 I quit in 2 days after seeing  several safety violations concerning the use of fall protection systems. Both lead installers on both jobs 

  Job 1 was  installed with an array that did not allow for the fire  access path around  the array as taught by NABCEP. The roof have a low spot cause  sagging of the mounting rails that resulted in an uneven array.   This could have been advoided by the simple use of line leveling installation process.
 
  Job 2 was even worse, 3 different installers from Unleash came to a job with a  concrete tiled roof, but not a single one brought any ladder at all, we had to ask the customer to borrow one, he looked as us in clear disappointment but still was kind enough to lend us a 6 foot painting ladder from his garage. It fell about 3 foot short and forced us to climb on the roof top in a very  unsafe way.The we found we did not have the proper hardware to elevate or mounting rails. After 2 hours
of trial and error using 20 to 30 washers in a vain attempt to paise the track, we left, leaving the customer with about 8 to 10 broken tiles. This  job too no lead installer used any form of fall protection at all and it was the most embarrassing two jobs in solar any one could think of. I thank God I was not the lead installer on these two jobs and I would highly recommend to any installer to be aware of this company as they have no NABCEP  or Leed certified installers what so ever.

The company it self had me come to work 6 times when no jobs were ready But choose not to pay for the un necessary hours or mile involved

As for me I have graduated PV1 and 2, passed Nabcep entry level exam and hold a federal OSHA 10 Cert.  I have installed a handfull of arrays and belive firmly that an array should be very level  evenly spaced for effective cooling ventilation