The reception wasn't warm when 3 On Your Side arrived at Arizona Power Save in Mesa to speak with a man by the name of Raymond Baxter.
He'd agreed to an interview with us less than 24 hours earlier, but apparently had a change of heart.
We wanted to talk with Baxter about a solar installation he'd done at one home in Sun City.
“They came with a crew with no knowledge of what they were doing,” Luther Abrahamson said.
Abrahamson owns the home and says he hired Baxter to install solar panels on his roof last year. But Luther says it’s been one problem after another.
“We've spent $26,000 to put this system in and we're paying more now for our monthly electric bill than we were before,” Abrahamson said.
3 On Your Side had professionals familiar with the solar installation process examine the job to see if anything looked out of the ordinary.
They say the actual solar panels didn't appear to be bolted in correctly, and the wiring job was sloppy.
It's these findings we wanted to ask Baxter about, but instead, we received a statement from another man named Scott Francis, president of one of the many companies involved in the Abrahamson's solar install.
Francis writes his “company has properly installed the job...we all know customers that seek products and services above and beyond the sales agreement...to compel a company to give them something they have not paid for.”
But the Abrahamsons say the ones losing money here is them.
They tell us in addition to higher electricity bills, they're tax incentives have been reduced because the solar panels aren't performing to their full potential.
The couple estimates it'll cost about $5,000 to have their system fixed, and want to warn others that as the green industry grows, so do number the number of people looking to profit.
“If this is typical of the workmanship that's being tolerated and accepted, Arizona is going to pay the price, I think,” Abrahamson said.
