Complaints

The complaint text that is displayed might not represent all complaints filed with BBB. Some consumers may elect to not publish the details of their complaints, some complaints may not meet BBB's standards for publication, or BBB may display a portion of complaints when a high volume is received for a particular business.

• Initial Complaint

  Date:01/27/2023

  Type:Service or Repair Issues
  Status:

  ResolvedMore info

  Complaint statuses

  Resolved:

  The complainant verified the issue was resolved to their satisfaction.

  Unresolved:

  The business responded to the dispute but failed to make a good faith effort to resolve it.

  Answered:

  The business addressed the issues within the complaint, but the consumer either a) did not accept the response, OR b) did not notify BBB as to their satisfaction.

  Unanswered:

  The business failed to respond to the dispute.

  Unpursuable:

  BBB is unable to locate the business.

  We hired Blalock to install add'l solar panels for our home on 6/29/22.Per our contract the install should have began between 6/29/22 -8/29/22. Install was on 11/8/2022 several wks later, during a heavy rainstorm. 7/14/22 we receive communication from ***** ******* stating we needed to add add'l panels because they miscalculated our usage & we had to pay an add'l $1500 for a new total of $22,290. We agreed & paid. Install began 11/8/22, on 11/9/22 we receive a call from their company stating they couldn't complete our install.Their inspector did not inspect our panel correctly or at all, an upgrade of $2000 was req. from us. This was disputed with them & after much back & forth they decided to install a sub panel. All the work was finalized, and inspected by 11/21/22. Blalock promised, in writing that they would submit an application to SCE & wait time was 7-10days. Blalock didn't submit our application. After a month of waiting, we contacted them on 12/23/22. ***** ******* & ****** ********** informed us that they had not submitted our application at all.They confirmed that they indeed had all our information required since June 2022 when we provided them with our complete electric bills and solar information, yet it was their mistake. It wasn't until January 3,2023 that they submitted an application to SCE. Since then the application has been returned and resubmitted 7 different times due to incomplete or incorrect information submitted by Blalock. Blalock's customer service is poor & their attitude towards their customers dismissive & unprofessional, to say the least. We acquired a loan to pay for their services and are still paying for our electric bills since Blalock has failed in making our new solar panel system operational. We are requesting that they pay for our solar payments beginning November until the panels are up an running and our electric bills in order to cover all our out of pocket expenses and the massive inconvenience and frustration. Thank you

  

  Business Response

  Date: 01/29/2023

  Hello *********, 

  
  

  I am truly sorry for this inconvenience and I'm utterly shocked and extremely imbursed about the way you have outline Jarrod in handling your situation. Unfortunately, I left Thursday morning to my grandmothers "celebration of life" family boat trip to spread her ashes in the Atlantic Ocean as she wished for and will not be back on land until Thursday night. I would like to contract you directly Friday morning to solve this issue in a peaceful manner as it should have been in the first place if this is ok with you? Again, I'm very sorry for this experience you have had as this is not the way I have built my business over the past 15 years as you probably saw with all the other reviews I have on yelp and google and would like to make that experance the same for you if you will allow me to. 

  
  

  Respectfully at your service, 

  
  

  **** *******

  Blalock Electric & Solar inc. 

  ************
  *************************

  Customer Answer

  Date: 02/06/2023

  Better Business Bureau:
  
  
  
  I have reviewed the response made by the business in reference to complaint ID ********, and find that this resolution is satisfactory to me. The owner reached out personally and was more the willing to correct all wrongs. Went above and beyond to make this a satisfactory resolution for us. Thank you very much!

• Initial Complaint

  Date:12/07/2022

  Type:Service or Repair Issues
  Status:

  ResolvedMore info

  Complaint statuses

  Resolved:

  The complainant verified the issue was resolved to their satisfaction.

  Unresolved:

  The business responded to the dispute but failed to make a good faith effort to resolve it.

  Answered:

  The business addressed the issues within the complaint, but the consumer either a) did not accept the response, OR b) did not notify BBB as to their satisfaction.

  Unanswered:

  The business failed to respond to the dispute.

  Unpursuable:

  BBB is unable to locate the business.

  I hired Blalock Electric to install a solar power system on my house around January 20, 2020. They installed the system after that. The system was turned on but the system was placed too low on my roof - it was supposed to be installed towards the top ridge of my house. They came and removed and repositioned the system about 18 days after the system was installed. No one showed me anything about how to use the monitoring or any features. I was just told that the Enphase inverters had monitoring that would alert me if anything was wrong.
  
  My utility is SCE and they bill you annually for any electricity that you use that is beyond the solar power produced that gets fed back into their grid to offset power used at night or during the day when the demand is greater than the solar power production available. Plus they charge some sort of fixed fee for having an account.
  
  My friend noticed in 2020 around May that my SCE statement did not seem to reflect any solar power credits being made or earned. He showed me and it lead me to investigate and I learned that the system had not been functioning for almost two years since around the date they moved the system.
  
  I reached out to the contractor and they said they would have to charge me to come look at the issue. I refused to pay. My family member reached out to them and got them to agree to come out, but not before the owner took to calling me insulting names like "grossly negligent" for somehow not knowing how this system worked, or that it wasn't working, You should know that when you connect to your solar power, Edison converts you to an annual billing cycle. So it isn't as though I had any time or opportunity to know what was going on.
  
  He agreed to come out with no charge and they discovered that the system was not turned on and the problem was something inside one of the control type box looking things on the side of my house. I had no idea that this was a box or that it could be opened and no reason to go in there.
  
  After that, the system worked for a short time, then stopped again. Their technician had showed me how to contact the monitoring company and to see what's going on with the system. They had to come out and fix it again. Same problem as originally happened. or Similar. Thus confirming that I was not "grossly negligent" again.
  
  Then it happened AGAIN. And they came and fixed it again.
  
  Meanwhile, the owner has refused to compensate me for either the two years of loan payments (I took out a loan through his company to finance the system installation) or two years of electricity bills from Edison. He has offered to pay for one year. For some reason, not the other.
  
  I explained that he needs to pay for all the lost energy or loan payments.
  
  He has refused to and I told him I'd file a complaint with the BBB and CSLB if he didn't respond by my deadline.
  
  And so here we are.

  

  Business Response

  Date: 12/11/2022

  Hello, To whom it may concern below is the timeline of events that was explained to the customer. If any more explanation is needed please feel free to reach out thank you. 

  
  

  Entered into solar contract on 2/4/2020 then Blalock installed the solar system on 2/26/2020 then obtained final inspection on 3/2/2020. After the final inspection passed my team submitted the application for PTO "Permission to operate" on 3/3/2020 which was approved by SCE for PTO on 3/4/2020. On 3/4/2020 an email was sent by my Office manager Sara regarding the PTO and monitoring then another email regarding the PTO and monitoring was sent on 3/5/2020 after our team came back on site to move the panels up per the request of Lane and after the work was completed the crew verified the system was online and working properly "screenshot attached below"  and the solar system was turned on and left on this same day which was the last time that Blalock was on site being the project was 100% completed. On on both emails sent by Sara on 3/4/2020 and 3/5/2020 explains how the solar system can be monitored as well as making it known that it is the customer responsibility to monitor the system and notify us so we can address it in a timely manner furthermore in our contract that was signed by ******* Hill and **** "*****" Le on page 4 under terms and conditions section 10 "attached below" also states MONITORING. After solar installation, Contractor is not responsible for monitoring solar energy production. Buyer/Owner is solely responsible for monitoring the solar production through the online system. Contractor is not responsible for any utility charges assessed to Buyer/Owner for insufficient solar production.
  
  For whatever reason the solar system stop working on 3/22/2020 but the solar system was fully operational after we were 100% completed with the work on 3/5/2020 and at that point it is now the responsibility of the system owner "*****" to keep up on monitoring and advise us of any issues they may see and while it is very unfortunate that the system monitoring was not kept up on by ***** and as much as this pains me it is clear that this not of any fault of Blalock Electric & Solar inc. and solely the fault of ***** for the failure to monitor their solar system for the past two years and not notify Blalock of any issues so that we can remedy it.