In addition to all of the recent mayhem, the solar panel salesman came for a riveting evening. I still don’t quite understand how it all started.
While I suppose we might be open minded about solar panels and all of the fancy stuff that goes with it, so long as it is cost effective. Nevertheless we had an interesting evening (and I’m being generous here) with the solar panel salesman.
Firstly he got the wrong house, so I had to apologise to our neighbours who were not impressed with the salesman trying to invite himself into their house. I should have known it would be a disaster as the person who phoned to confirm the appointment told us it would take a good 90 minutes. Ninety minutes! Flippin heck, I thought, is he expecting us to feed him during all that time?
Once arrived, he settled into his chair at the dining room table and started to click away on his laptop. We sat in silence and this was only broken by him asking the occasional question such as how many people live in the house, what we do for a living and so on.
Eventually he showed us a Google Earth image of our house and placed overlayed an array of solar panels. He was surprised when we said that would spoil the look of the building and would he kindly consider placing them in the valley, where they could be out of the way. If anything, he explained, people like their solar panels to be visible for people to see. Well maybe they do, but definitely not us.
He fiddled and clicked more and more to come up with his solution. He proudly announced it would cost us just shy of £20,000 to have their kit, complete with batteries, installation and all kinds of gizmos. I pointed out it would take about 15 to 20 years to recoup the cost and asked whether he thought that was a good deal. He thought it was and added we could always have finance if it was a problem. Furthermore their current deal was “only” 11.9%.
He was most surprised when I said we would prefer to keep the money in the bank, packed up his laptop and jumped into his Range Rover to drive home. A Range Rover, a black one no less. Well that says it all.
I dare say we will give up another evening in a few years time, to hear all of the latest mumbo jumbo about generating our own electricity to save the planet. Perhaps by the time we do agree it will be cost effective, it will be too late for us….