This is one of the questions I get asked most often. Should you have your solar system fitted by a large national company or a small local one? I will be straight with you, I am biased, because we are the small local company. But the reasons I would still choose local even if I were the customer are worth setting out, because they come down to one thing that matters more than any glossy brochure: whether the firm will still be there, and still care, after the scaffold comes down.
Accountability is the whole game
A solar system is on your roof for 25 years or more. Things occasionally need attention. A connector, a setting, a fault that shows up two winters in. The question is not whether a system will ever need a visit. The question is who turns up when it does.
With a small local firm you know who installed it. You probably know where the owner lives. If something needs sorting, you can pick up the phone, or in the worst case knock on the door. That sounds blunt, but it is exactly the accountability that keeps a local firm honest. We sort things out because our name is on every roof in the area.
With a large national company that accountability gets very thin. You are one job among thousands. Getting them back to fix something small is hard, and getting them back at all if you are out of their easy reach is harder still.
Subcontractors versus an employed team
Here is something a lot of people do not realise about the bigger firms. They often do not install the work themselves. They use subcontractors.
That means:
- The company that quoted you is not the company on your roof.
- They do not always know who they are sending to your house.
- The crew has no long term stake in the quality, because they are gone tomorrow.
We work differently. Our team is small and mostly employed. The only contractor on our sites is the scaffolder, because we believe a professional scaffolding firm should put up the scaffold, not us. Everything else is done by people who work for us and who will be on the next local job too.
The pop in factor
This is the simple, practical advantage of using someone in your area.
If you use a local Cambridgeshire installer and there is a problem, no matter how big or small, that installer can pop in on the way back from another job and put it right. We are forever in Huntingdon, St Neots, St Ives, Buckden and the surrounding villages anyway. Calling in is no trouble.
If you are dealing with a firm based out of your area, the chances are they are not coming back. Certainly not for something small. The maths does not work for them to send a van two hours each way to tighten a connector.
How some of these firms actually operate
It is worth understanding the business model behind some of the cheap national quotes, because it explains the bad installs I keep being shown.
The pattern goes like this:
- They work a long way from home, taking a workforce from a cheaper part of the country into a more expensive area.
- They install fast and cheap, and they cut corners to do it.
- When the lack of quality catches up with them and the complaints pile in, they fold the company.
- You get no support, because the firm that gave you the warranty no longer exists.
- They start up again under a different name and do it all over again.
This is sometimes called a phoenix company. It rises again under a new name, leaving the old debts and warranties behind. A 25 year warranty is worth exactly nothing if the company writing it plans to disappear in three.
Why we will not fix other people’s bad installs
People sometimes ask us to come and rescue a poor install done by one of these outfits. We say no, and I want to explain why, because it is not us being awkward.
The moment we touch and repair someone else’s system, we take responsibility for it. From then on, if anything goes wrong, our name is all over it. To do that properly we would almost have to rip the whole thing out and start again, because we cannot stand behind work we did not control from the start.
It gets worse if the house has since been sold. The new owners do not know we were not the original installer. They just know Selec Group worked on it. We are not willing to inherit someone else’s corner cutting and have it become our reputation.
The bottom line
A solar system is a long relationship, not a one off purchase. The cheapest national quote is no bargain if the firm vanishes the moment something needs fixing. A local installer lives or dies on its reputation in its own patch, which is exactly why you can trust it to come back. We are a small, mostly employed team covering Cambridgeshire, Bedfordshire and Northamptonshire, and we are proud to be local. If you want solar done properly by people who will still be here in ten years, call the office on 01480 400607 or request a survey through our website.
Jason Pope
Owner, Selec Group