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Sure - it is Infinity Solar, based out of Orange, CA. It's hard to pinpoint the reason we decided to go with Infinity, but a few things stood out to me:
(1) their initial bid was already the best of the 10-15 vendors we contacted. Pretty much all the other vendors cost more and were proposing the use of solar optimizers rather than micro-inverters. When I asked for estimates based on micro-inverters, their estimates became even more expensive.
People have their opinions on micro-inverters v. power optimizers, but, for us, we felt like micro-inverters were what we wanted for our system.
(2) my contact person was very knowledgeable and informative, and not at all pushy - no big sales pitch, and I felt like he understood what I was looking for, which was just the information that I needed to make an informed decision. Many of the other people I dealt with just gave off a bad vibe that rubbed me the wrong way. My contact person with Infinity seemed knowledgeable, asked a lot of questions, and I felt like he wanted to ensure his estimate was thorough.
(3) Infinity received a lot of online reviews, and all seemed positive.
(4) My contact person at Infinity gave me options for financing that many other companies were not even aware of, and he took the time to explain how all the financing options worked, which ones were good and bad, and what to expect.
(5) There's something that tugged at us to give our business to a local business, rather than going with a larger provider, i.e., LA Solar Group.
After contacting all these vendors, it came down to Infinity and LA Solar. If I am remembering correctly, LA Solar was slightly cheaper if I did not account for the panel upgrade; however, their cost to upgrade our panel was more expensive than Infinity, such that the overall price tilted in favor of Infinity. I let LA Solar know this fact, and I felt like I was dealing w/ a car salesman, where my contact person told me - this is the most I have authority to approve, but I can talk to my manager to see if I can do better.
For me, I just liked how straight-forward Infinity was. No BS, no big sales push.
With that being said, I have had a few minor hiccups since signing the contract w/ Infinity.
First is the financing. I obtained financing from a credit union (that Infinity had told me about), which won't release the funds until you have an installation date (something I did not learn until about a month after my loan was approved). However, Infinity requires progress payments, such that I have already had to make two payments (approx. $3,500). We are fortunate that we can afford to make those progress payments, but that's something Infinity should have explained to me (or maybe that's something I should have thought of, and something I should have asked about and negotiated). Also, when I spoke with all of my contacts at Infinity, nobody had spoken to my contact person at the credit union, despite several e-mails that I addressed to both Infinity and the credit union. In sum, it felt like nobody at Infinity knew, or cared, what was going on w/ my financing.
There was an initial delay in contact from Infinity's project manager (my initial contact was the sales rep, who passed me onto the project manager and the accounting department after execution of the contract). I had to follow up several times before the project manager responded. At the outset, I felt like she could have been more better in giving consistent and regular updates; however, I think we've resolved that initial hiccup, and she's been better about keeping me up to date.
The third issue was the delay in installation. My project manager e-mailed me a few weeks ago to tell me the city had approved our permit, and Infinity was ready to proceed w/ the installation. However, I learned that Edison was supposed to come out to tag my panel, something Edison had not done at that point, and they still have not done, despite the passage of two weeks. According to Infinity, they have followed up several times with Edidson, but there's not much they can do, as Edison does not coordinate this w/ anyone, and they just show up at the house at their convenience. This ultimately isn't Infinity's fault, but had they told me about this panel tagging, I probably could have let them know earlier in the process that Edison still had not tagged our panel, and maybe that would have given Infinity the opportunity to pester Edison earlier, and more often.
(1) their initial bid was already the best of the 10-15 vendors we contacted. Pretty much all the other vendors cost more and were proposing the use of solar optimizers rather than micro-inverters. When I asked for estimates based on micro-inverters, their estimates became even more expensive.
People have their opinions on micro-inverters v. power optimizers, but, for us, we felt like micro-inverters were what we wanted for our system.
(2) my contact person was very knowledgeable and informative, and not at all pushy - no big sales pitch, and I felt like he understood what I was looking for, which was just the information that I needed to make an informed decision. Many of the other people I dealt with just gave off a bad vibe that rubbed me the wrong way. My contact person with Infinity seemed knowledgeable, asked a lot of questions, and I felt like he wanted to ensure his estimate was thorough.
(3) Infinity received a lot of online reviews, and all seemed positive.
(4) My contact person at Infinity gave me options for financing that many other companies were not even aware of, and he took the time to explain how all the financing options worked, which ones were good and bad, and what to expect.
(5) There's something that tugged at us to give our business to a local business, rather than going with a larger provider, i.e., LA Solar Group.
After contacting all these vendors, it came down to Infinity and LA Solar. If I am remembering correctly, LA Solar was slightly cheaper if I did not account for the panel upgrade; however, their cost to upgrade our panel was more expensive than Infinity, such that the overall price tilted in favor of Infinity. I let LA Solar know this fact, and I felt like I was dealing w/ a car salesman, where my contact person told me - this is the most I have authority to approve, but I can talk to my manager to see if I can do better.
For me, I just liked how straight-forward Infinity was. No BS, no big sales push.
With that being said, I have had a few minor hiccups since signing the contract w/ Infinity.
First is the financing. I obtained financing from a credit union (that Infinity had told me about), which won't release the funds until you have an installation date (something I did not learn until about a month after my loan was approved). However, Infinity requires progress payments, such that I have already had to make two payments (approx. $3,500). We are fortunate that we can afford to make those progress payments, but that's something Infinity should have explained to me (or maybe that's something I should have thought of, and something I should have asked about and negotiated). Also, when I spoke with all of my contacts at Infinity, nobody had spoken to my contact person at the credit union, despite several e-mails that I addressed to both Infinity and the credit union. In sum, it felt like nobody at Infinity knew, or cared, what was going on w/ my financing.
There was an initial delay in contact from Infinity's project manager (my initial contact was the sales rep, who passed me onto the project manager and the accounting department after execution of the contract). I had to follow up several times before the project manager responded. At the outset, I felt like she could have been more better in giving consistent and regular updates; however, I think we've resolved that initial hiccup, and she's been better about keeping me up to date.
The third issue was the delay in installation. My project manager e-mailed me a few weeks ago to tell me the city had approved our permit, and Infinity was ready to proceed w/ the installation. However, I learned that Edison was supposed to come out to tag my panel, something Edison had not done at that point, and they still have not done, despite the passage of two weeks. According to Infinity, they have followed up several times with Edidson, but there's not much they can do, as Edison does not coordinate this w/ anyone, and they just show up at the house at their convenience. This ultimately isn't Infinity's fault, but had they told me about this panel tagging, I probably could have let them know earlier in the process that Edison still had not tagged our panel, and maybe that would have given Infinity the opportunity to pester Edison earlier, and more often.
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