A technician came around on the last day of spring to scope out the installation site, he went up a ladder to peer at the roof, went down to the basement to see where the inverter would go, and went into the light well to check out where the cabling for the electrics would be put to bring the power down from the roof to the garage.
On 4 December Think Renewable called me briefly to set a day for installation, and this was organised to be done on 2 January. By the middle of the month I was optimistic the installation would go ahead due to the generally dry weather we’d been having.
To help keep a cap on my energy spend I signed up for two AGL savings events. This is where they ask you if you want to be part of their effort to keep power consumption low during a peak period. Usually this is at around 6.30pm when people are at home together using appliances. For one event I got the $5 credit to go toward reducing my next electricity bill.
On 2 January the installers came with two vehicles including one with a trailer for the panels which they’d brought with them. I let them in and showed them where to go to get to the top balcony, then promptly went to sleep on the couch. When they’d finished they woke me up and I said “I didn’t go to sleep” when they said “You went to sleep” it was like a comedy skit where the householder is shown to be a silly duffer.
I SMS’d the guy who’d explained the project to me that week but by 7 January he hadn’t responded so I called him on the Monday. The problem was that I hadn’t received any confirmation of a successful install or even any notification from Think Renewable that Pleti would start billing me and expecting money. I didn’t know the date the first payment would be due so didn’t have all the information I needed to get ready for that eventuality.
In the end Think Renewable had to increase the loan amount because they couldn’t get it done for the price initially presented. I didn’t have a problem with this and gave them the ok but Plenti came back asking me for more documentation, they needed to sight a municipal rates notice. I complained to Plenti and I complained to Think Renewables because it seemed to me that they should’ve told me about this alteration before the install went ahead. Plenti sent me a summary of the complaints process of 10 Jan.
Eventually the loan was cleared the same day and AGL, my electricity provider, contacted me saying that they had had a request “for the meter reconfiguration to your electricity meter” but that it might be able to be done remotely.
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