I've been a massive fool...My planet UK Solar.

wevebeenhad

So, we've been well & truly had by MyPlanetUK, My Planet, My Planet UK MyPlanetScotland...

Please don't tell me what idiots we have been, we are aware & are trying to figure out the best way forward & putting our situation out there in the hope that future potential suckers will know to avoid, avoid, avoid.

On April 14th or 15th, we had a rep from MyPlanet come & sell us a 4kWh solar panel system. We didn't feel we had received a hard sell, although I was distracted with two small children & the early stages of pregnancy, so wasn't as involved as I would have liked to have been. My husband dealt with the very personable sales man. A warning clanger went off for me at the end of 2+ hours when we said we'd like to discuss it between ourselves overnight & we were impressed & thought we'd be in touch the following day, he then, classically, sighed resignedly & said oh he'd have to make another appointment to come back to complete paperwork if we did that, so we ended up signing there & then, like total fools.

The survey was booked & went ahead, the installation was then booked as soon as the survey was complete, for either 7 or 8 days after the initial sales meeting. I didn't write on the calendar which day he came to our house, hence the lack of clarity around that. The installation went ahead on 22nd April 2015.

Since that point it has become clearer & clearer that we have signed up for a very overpriced system, plus their very expensive finance package (thru Barclays). We were told £9999 for system and install (no scaffold required & cheekily used our own spare roof tiles to replace those they damaged). With the finance it will be more like £16k if we run it to completion...

We recommended our neighbours who were interested, having been told that any installed recommendations from us would result in £500 for each recommendation, which we were planning to pay towards the loan as there is no early repayment fee. However, it turns out that the salesman jumped ship to another company (I have the name but don't like to link them to this in case they are better than our shower), so nobody wants to pay the recommend fee - the new company will pay £200, MyPlanet claim that this is coming from them, but we are now 6 weeks further on from our neighbours' installation & still no money has appeared in our account despite repeated promises...

I have taken to emailing everyone at the company I have dealt with & added the CEO in. Still no further forward really. The office manager of MyPlanetScotland (since closed that office & now only operate from head office) has told HO that we want compensation. We hadn't mentioned that, all we wanted until that point was the £500 recommend fee that we feel we are owed. However, if there is any way we can negotiate compensation for this I'd be very keen to do so.

I am aware that the deal we signed up to basically leaves us with no financial benefit because by the time the finance is paid off, we'll basically have paid in any savings we would have made. (idiots). We also are still trying to get FIT sorted, as they didn't send us the relevant paperwork (generation meter, mcs certification etc etc) for several weeks & when they did, the mcs certificate had the incorrect information on it. It has genuinely been one !!!!-up after another.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to move this forward? Am I unreasonable to hope that we might have a leg to stand on in terms of hoping for some financial recompense?

Very long, probably missing information but hopefully someone will read & have some constructive suggestions to make. Many thanks in advance.

Cardew

wevebeenhad wrote: »

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to move this forward? Am I unreasonable to hope that we might have a leg to stand on in terms of hoping for some financial recompense?

Very long, probably missing information but hopefully someone will read & have some constructive suggestions to make. Many thanks in advance.

Welcome to the forum.


You might try writing to Barclays managing director with a copy of this thread, and any other similar information you can find on-line.


Make your letter reasonable and along the lines of 'do they know the type of firm they are dealing with' - damage to reputation etc etc. Say you only dealt with the firm because they had what you thought was a 'partnership' with Barclays.


If that fails - go to your local trading standards office.

wevebeenhad

Thank you Cardew - for the welcome & the advice. I have threatened to contact Trading Standards but I am unsure as to how to proceed, do I sound as though I have reasonable concerns? Am I unreasonable to be trying to get compensation when really it is our own fault for not shopping around & comparing prices. I do for everything else, I do not know why I dropped the ball on this one.

Martyn1981

wevebeenhad wrote: »

Am I unreasonable to be trying to get compensation when really it is our own fault for not shopping around & comparing prices. I do for everything else, I do not know why I dropped the ball on this one.

Hiya. I think the million dollar question is 'how much did you know about PV'? If you didn't know much, and trusted the information the salesman gave then it's understandable for you to have been misled.

Can you remember what info they gave on leccy savings? That seems to be their main tactic for making the deal, and their high prices look good - they suggest much higher savings than you'll probably get, then bump those savings up massively by using wholly unrealistic leccy price inflation for the 20 years. Did they include some LED bulbs in the deal too, and also include there leccy savings in the future income/savings estimation?

Please follow Cardew's advice and contact Barclays. I spoke to the loans partners people, they were polite and seemed interested, but I've heard nothing since, so suspect they were just fobbing me off. On this thread and others, all but one of the loans (if the bank was named) were from Barclays, I think the other one was RBS (can't quite remember).

My contacting them meant nothing, as I have no involvement whatsoever, but if you do it, and mention that it's their name that keeps coming up, then they may just think twice about who they jump into bed with ..... or at the very least get a blood test first!

But as Cardew suggests, go to the top, don't contact the loans team as they don't seem particularly interested in the potential bad press ..... not that previous (and near constant) bad press has ever bothered them before.

You should also contact RECC about this. They are aware of this thread and a couple of other shorter threads mentioning MyPlanet and its practices. I spoke to and e-mailed Mark Cutler, so he may be a good starting point.

You could also try, perhaps first, the company, MyPlanet or my planet or My Planet itself. Say that you now believe they have ripped you off and you want the whole install removed and all costs / finance cancelled. Worth a try.

Best of luck.

Mart.

wevebeenhad

Thank you both for your advice & apologies for leaving the thread hanging. I will follow your steps tomorrow & see where we get to. Having talked to the husband-type (we're not married, sometimes it's just easier to refer to him that way!) he agrees that the tactic of huffing about having to come back for signatures another time & the suggestion we might not get the same deal again were made as pressure tactics. He also says we were told that come the winter we might need to find an extra £5 a month to make the finance payment, but that the rest of the year it would be covered by our savings. Yes, we were given LEDs (eventually, after repeated requests that they actually send them out) but as we had already changed most of our bulbs I can't be sure that those savings were made a big deal of.

I'm so cross. We didn't know much about PV, we had had some other very unscrupulous company out about 18 months previously & the guy then couldn't/wouldn't answer our queries & then became rude & abusive when asked to leave & stop speaking to us as he was - swearing in front of a 3 year old & a baby ofa few months old. I wish I could remember the name of that company... Anyway, the myplanet guy was much more ready to "answer" questions & seemed far more clued up & personable. We definitely got sucked in.

Still no further contact from myplanet despite a phone call on Thursday from Phil Hill asking what compensation we wanted & a promise to call back in half an hour - no further call, but an email was received on Friday from the company the salesman moved to asking us to sign a disclaimer accepting £200 recommend fee & that the matter would then be completed & we'd have no further comeback to them. We haven't signed & I now need to get the ball rolling on all my complaints to everyone mentioned above.

Could really do without this at 29 weeks up the duff to be honest, but it has to be tackled & it has to be me or it won't get done.

wevebeenhad

Well, wow, I've just had a brief read over the RECC code of conduct & there are already numerous breaches of their conduct. Requires a fresh mind tomorrow but will give me a great starting point for my complaint letter. I've also filled in their Rate your supplier questionnaire & it has highlighted much that should have been provided to us but wasn't. Hateful company.

wevebeenhad

Morning all. I saw mentioned previously, that an install which took place within 7 days of the initial sales meeting needed to have had a signature waiving the right to cancellation/cooling off. Our initial meeting was Wednesday 15th April at 7pm for just over 2 hours, the installation went ahead from 8am Wednesday 22nd April. I know I'm now being pedantic about this, but that would class as within 7 days, wouldn't it?

I've come across various things while skim reading the RECC code of conduct - shouldn't have been in our house for more than 2 hours without documenting why & having good reason (like we were vulnerable), haven't provided various warranties/guarantees, didn't leave his sheet of paper showing the calculations he based our savings on. Apparently they are not allowed to offer any fee over £50 for recommending future customers... I'm not sure that I did read that correctly, anyone know? It is classed as a high pressure sales tactic.

Unfortunately my youngest did not sleep well last night & I didn't get to bed til 6am so the fresh brain needed today isn't happening! Many thanks again for your input.

Cardew

I confess to not being up to date with current regulations, but in your initial post you wrote:

On April 14th or 15th, we had a rep from MyPlanet come & sell us a 4kWh solar panel system.

From that statement it is not clear if you invited the rep or it was a cold call.

It used to be that an invitation to a rep negated many of your rights. Perhaps others are more up to speed on this matter.

wevebeenhad

It was a cold call the previous week. We checked the paperwork last night to see when the finance agreement was signed as I couldn't remember the exact date of the sales rep's visit. Does that help?

Martyn1981

wevebeenhad wrote: »

It was a cold call the previous week. We checked the paperwork last night to see when the finance agreement was signed as I couldn't remember the exact date of the sales rep's visit. Does that help?

Hiya. Following my chat with RECC I added a customer advice section to the PV FAQs. It might be of interest to you, however, I pretty much lifted it off of RECC, so there's a good chance you know more than that already by now, but just thought it worth mentioning (advertising!)

If you get a chance I would strongly recommend ringing RECC. I found them really helpful and friendly. They should be able to advise on the 7 day rule (they do mention a 14 day rule now) and if that gives you any rights or comebacks.

Back to the FAQs, they are not professional standard, just shared knowledge from fellow PV'ers, so if you do learn anything it would be very helpful if you could post it on here, so that the FAQs can be updated as appropriate.

Thanks.

Mart.