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ABQ homeowners slam Meraki Solar Solutions
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Editor’s note: This is the second story in a two-part investigative series by the Journal on consumer reports about deceptive marketing practices by some solar companies operating in New Mexico.
West Side homeowner Dalila Rascon paid $90 per month for a year and a half on a solar system that sales company Meraki Solar Solutions never actually installed on her roof, and she needed a lawyer to cancel the contract.
Florida-based Meraki is one of the most-active door-to-door sales firms currently operating in New Mexico to sign up homeowners for rooftop solar systems.
It blankets neighborhoods in Albuquerque and Santa Fe with door-knocking campaigns that particularly target Spanish-speaking homeowners who are then pressured into signing 20- to 25-year contracts on the spot that later fail to produce promised energy savings, according to more than half a dozen Meraki customers interviewed by the Journal.
Most of those homeowners are now locked into binding contracts for apparently overpriced, underperforming systems that they say are costing them more than the monthly electric bills they previously paid to Public Service Co. of New Mexico.
Rascon was one of the lucky homeowners who managed to cancel her contract with help from attorneys following 18 months of payments, plus threats by Meraki’s solar installation partner at that time, Utah-based Solcius LLC, to record a lien on her home.
Starting Friday, July 28, the Journal reached out repeatedly by phone and email to Meraki’s corporate headquarters in Pensacola, Florida, to discuss these customer complaints.
The company’s Marketing Department did respond by email on Friday, Aug. 4, as the Journal was preparing for publication, stating that the “short timeframe” provided by the Journal made only a “general response” possible.
“We appreciate you bringing these concerns to our attention,” the Marketing Department said. “Our goal here is to provide all of our potential and existing customers with an exceptional solar experience from start to finish. We pride ourselves in adhering to ethical business practices and focus on addressing customer concerns privately and publicly, as seen on our A+ BBB Accredited company profile.”
The company also requested specific information about grievances from customers interviewed by the Journal, expressing its willingness to investigate those complaints and potentially “rectify” problems.
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“Our Albuquerque-based clientele has expressed their satisfaction with our services numerous times, and we are disappointed to hear that any customer was dissatisfied with Meraki,” the Marketing Department said. “We would appreciate it if you would provide us with sufficient information to identify these projects so we can investigate and endeavor to rectify any issues or concerns.”
Apart from the company’s corporate offices, the Journal did briefly speak with the head manager for Meraki’s Rio Rancho office, Lawrence Baca, but he declined to discuss individual customer grievances, and instead referred the Journal to Meraki’s customer service team in Pensacola.
The head of Meraki’s Albuquerque office near Interstate 40 and Eubank Boulevard also initially agreed to meet with the Journal. But he never showed up for the interview and never responded to subsequent Journal text messages.
Rascon’s 18-month ordeal
Rascon — a Mexican immigrant who speaks little English — signed a contract with Meraki in November 2019 to install a 12-panel solar system on the roof of her West Side home near Coors and I-40 after a Spanish-speaking Meraki salesman came to her house. She signed the contract digitally during the visit with the sales rep, who immediately arranged for system financing through a $20,130 loan from a third-party lender in California to be repaid over 20 years at $90 per month.
She started receiving $90 monthly bills from the lender in December, although Meraki’s installation partner, Solcius, didn’t actually show up to install the system until late January 2020. And, before that, she had repeatedly told the original Meraki salesperson and other company representatives by phone that they needed to first inspect her roof to make sure it could sustain the solar system before installing it.
“I called Meraki a bunch of times about the roof, and each time they said the inspection would be done before installing the system,” Rascon told the Journal. “I also asked the installers about it before they came to my house, and they said they wouldn’t be doing the installation if the inspection hadn’t already been done. I trusted them, but I never saw anybody do the inspection.”
Toward the end of the day-long installation in January, one of the worker’s punched a hole with his leg through the roof above her garage, forcing the team to immediately remove the solar system.
The company then told her she needed to redo her roof before they could reinstall the system, and offered to do it for her for another $20,000 above and beyond the solar-system price tag.
She refused and asked to cancel her contract, but they told her it was binding and she’d have to redo the roof on her own before reinstalling the system.
The company did repair the hole in her roof, but not until months later, after rainstorms had already flooded her garage, Rascon said.
Meanwhile, the $90 monthly loan bills kept coming.
“I continued to pay them all to not damage my credit, even though they never reinstalled the system,” Rascon said.
As the months rolled on, Solcius called repeatedly to pressure her to redo her roof and set a new date for installation. And then, in late-summer 2020, the company sent her a letter threatening to take legal action and record a lien on her property.
That’s when she contacted a lawyer to intervene. But it took nearly a year more of monthly payments before the attorney got the contract canceled and arranged for a $1,151 dollar reimbursement from the lender, which she received in July 2021.
Last year, Rascon finally managed to redo her roof, but solar power is now off the table.
“After everything that happened, I’m scared of solar power now,” Rascon told the Journal. “It took away any interest I had in it.”
Solcius did not respond to a Journal request for comment about Rascon or other customer complaints.
False promises, underperforming systems
Rascon’s experience may be extreme, since other homeowners interviewed by the Journal didn’t have problems with the installation process itself.
But all the others complained that sales reps lured them into immediately signing binding contracts with promises of significant energy savings that later turned out to be false.
That includes Meraki customers in Southeast and Northwest Albuquerque, and in the South Valley, all of whom said their systems never produced all the energy promised, and they’re now paying more for their electricity than they paid PNM before installing solar systems.
Julia Diaz, for example, said she and her husband signed up for an eight-panel system for $15,400 that was installed in summer 2021 on their Southeast Albuquerque home near Louisiana and Gibson boulevards.
The couple wanted to reduce their winter PNM bills, when monthly electric charges to operate their home-heating system would typically reach up to $200. In contrast, they had managed to limit their summer bills to an average of about $60 per month by turning off their air conditioning and tolerating the heat.
Meraki promised that the eight-panel solar system would eliminate the Diaz’s PNM electric bills year-round, save for a fixed $8 monthly fee that everyone pays to remain connected to the utility grid. But by winter, the PNM bills were still coming in at between $75 to $80 a month even with the solar system. And, on top of that, the couple was paying $50 per month on the $15,400 loan that Meraki set up with a third-party lender for the solar system, Julia said.
“I called Meraki and they told me the problem was I needed another eight solar panels, even though they told us that the eight panels we already installed would be enough to cover all our electricity,” Julia told the Journal.
To cancel their contract, Meraki told the couple it would cost them nearly $1,000, so they opted instead to install the additional eight panels with another $15,400 loan.
Now, their PNM bills have dropped to the $8 per month promised. But payments on their two $15,400 loans have escalated to $68 per month for each one, or nearly $140 combined.
“They lied to us about the original eight panels covering everything,” Julia said. “We’re not saving anything on our electricity.”
Luz Najar also signed a contract with Meraki for a 10-panel system for $24,000 that Solcius installed in early 2020 on her home near I-40 and Eubank Boulevard. The sales rep promised during a home visit that the system would reduce her PNM bill to just $8 per month. But her summer bills since then have continued to range from $50 to $90 per month, and she’s now paying $95 a month on the loan Meraki arranged for her solar system.
Despite repeated inquires by Najar, neither Meraki nor Solcius representatives have ever explained why her system is underproducing — that is, until a new Meraki salesperson knocked on her door this spring.
“He looked at my paperwork and said the panels were set up only to cover 75% of my energy consumption, and that I need another 10 panels to cover the full amount,” Najar told the Journal. “He tried to sell me those additional panels, but I told him ‘no.’”
Similar to Julia Diaz and her husband, Raul Corral Salinas managed to limit his summer PNM bills to about $60 or $70 per month at his 1,300-square-foot South Valley home. But his winter bills often climbed to between $300 and $400 per month because he has an electric-based home-heating system, so he thought going solar could solve the problem.
Meraki installed a 16-panel system for $27,000 in 2020 on promises that it would eliminate his PNM electric bill year-round, Corral Salinas said. But, while lower, his winter bills remain high.
“I paid about $600 in electric bills over three months this past winter,” Corral Salinas told the Journal.
His solar loan repayment, meanwhile, rose from $89 a month in the first year to $120 now, although he said Meraki never told him the bill would escalate over time.
“I’ve called Meraki to complain many times and I just keep getting different people and I don’t get anywhere,” Corral Salinas said. “It’s hell with them. They just keep telling me one lie after another.”
‘Happy customers’
In a brief phone conversation with Baca, Meraki’s manager in Rio Rancho, he did deny knowing about any complaints against him or his sales team.
“That’s crazy,” Baca said after the Journal told him about the interviews with homeowners. “What I do reflects on me. The homeowners you interviewed, that wasn’t about me. All my customers are happy, and I have testimonials and referrals that show that.”
Baca said he is only responsible for the Rio Rancho branch operations.
“The people I’m training don’t sell that way,” Baca said. “We have offices in Albuquerque and Santa Fe. I’m not in charge of those offices and I can’t control what they do there.”
Still, Baca did say there have been problems with some sales reps in the past who have since left the company.
“There were definitely some bad apples who have come into Meraki, and they are no longer with us because of it,” Baca said. “I can’t control what they (sales reps) are doing. I can only train them correctly to help customers, but I can’t hold their hands at people’s doors.”
Other complaints
Apart from the complaints about underproducing systems, lack of promised energy savings and deceptive marketing, homeowners also listed a myriad of other problems they experienced with Meraki, such as lack of any clear explanation of PNM’s “net metering” program.
Under that program, the utility compensates customers with solar systems by crediting their bills for any excess electric generation that they don’t consume and that gets fed back into the grid for use by other PNM customers.
All the homeowners interviewed by the Journal said Meraki sales reps told them PNM would directly send them checks for system overproduction, something they say has never occurred.
In addition, Meraki failed to tell most of the homeowners interviewed about a 10% state tax credit available since 2020 to offset the cost of solar systems. And, when some of them did learn about the credit and applied for it, it was either too late to get refunds, or they lacked needed system certifications that Meraki should have supplied to qualify for the credit.
Araceli Galindo, for example, signed for a $70,000 loan arranged by Meraki for a 40-panel system that Solcius installed in December 2020 on her 4,800-square-foot home in Northwest Albuquerque. She was counting on the 10% credit to shave $7,000 off the price of her system, but Meraki never instructed her on how to access the credit, and when she did apply for it, she was told she didn’t have the right paperwork to qualify.
In fact, Galindo said that, after she signed with Meraki in summer 2020, it took her six months to actually get the solar system installed with Solcius, because Meraki left it up to her to work with PNM and the installation company to get all permitting and paperwork in place.
“Once they sell you the system, they just wash their hands of you and they’re done,” Galindo told the Journal. “I’m not happy. They just left it to me to do everything on my own, and it took six months.”
