How many customers will thank you for telling them they bought the wrong house, car, holiday, tele or married the wrong woman? How many will thank you for telling them that in your opinion their install isn't up to scratch.
That's not how I'd envisage the sort of think I was suggesting working - it'd be the installers that were given the feedback in confidence, not the customer, though I'd hope the installers would then do something about it if there were significant issues picked up. I suppose in the event of a dangerous situation being picked up, you'd want evidence that the installer had rectified the situation, otherwise you'd also be liable if the danger became reality and you'd done nothing else to warn the customer / ensure the situation was sorted, but outside of that situation it'd just be feedback for the installer I reckon.
Apart from anything else, you'd need to give the installer chance to explain why they'd done something the way they had, as there can sometimes be valid reasons for doing something that is outside of the general guidance.
The point of this for me wouldn't be pointing fingers, ruining reputations etc, it's the complete opposite - it's about recognising the limitations of the current training, advice, regulations and assessment to cover all possible aspects of the installations fully, and enabling best practice to be spread throughout the industry from installer to installer (probably in both directions a lot of the time), at the same time as helping those companies to conduct a thorough quality assurance system of double checking a proportion of the systems they've installed to ensure that if there are any issue they get picked up before it becomes a serious multiple installation warranty issue a few years down the line for them. For me, that's a large part of why I post on these and other forums is both to learn from others experience in some areas, and pass on my own experience in others.
I often wonder what potential customers think when they come on here and see us moaning about installs we've seen, sales tactics we've heard. That we the installers think REAL, the registration bodies and DECC are a joke. Do you think it inspires them to find a decent installer or puts them off because the industry isn't policed well enough at the moment and the chances of them getting ripped off are too high.
true, which is why I'm trying to make a positive suggestion for a change instead of just having a moan, which tbf I have been guilty of on a few occasions recently, so maybe that is best kept for the lounge.
I learnt a valuable lesson from a customer many years ago when going to price up a boiler replacement when minutes after entering his home he said "I know all about running down the competition so don't bother trying" We have gone on to install solar thermal and pv along with general plumbing work for them over the years.
I don't run down the competition. I don't lie and if I don't know the answer to a question I tell them( the pc) I'll find out and come back to them. Don't ask a woman whether the children in an obvious photo are her grand children( they won't be ) I have got every job bar 3 that we've priced over the years (going back long before this mcs lark started) one of them I didn't want. One of them they didn't need it. The other one I lost left me gutted.
Remember you are first selling yourself and then the install.
I agree, although we will point it out if we know that someone's being told something entirely wrong - eg the company flogging rebadged chinese panels as being UK made, when the customer is telling us they're thinking of preferring them due to their use of UK panels.... we got that job.
And if that's honestly your success rate that's pretty astonishing, so fair play for that. Out of interest, where abouts in the country are you? I reckon our success rate is about the same for the work we do in Inverness, which is all word of mouth, but around our home base there are now 300 companies MCS certified for solar PV within 30 miles, so there's a hell of a lot more competition, and we're more like 1 job per 2.5 quotes, but 1 in 1.5 or better for recommendations.
Oh and the worst installer I have ever employed was an clearskies assessor (remember them?) I wonder if he's now an mcs inspector.
That's the point I'm making / asking really - how can we (or the industry) make this situation better without it just being another box ticking paperwork exercise.
eta - anyway, that suggestions just my thought for the day. Maybe it's a brilliant idea, maybe it's a total non-starter.... I've no idea which, but I can confidently say it's somewhere on that spectrum.
