Alternative to Brooklyn Solarworks
Thanks all.
ejcarroll
in General Discussion 3 years and 2 months ago
44
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44 replies
andriywww1990 | 3 years and 2 months ago
so dennis. you now know what you do about BSW and YSG. you might be tempted to take a lower priced contractor and if you do, i would expect it to go just as others have said – both what my neighbor said and what is on yelp. you might think you’ll get lucky and it will go better but bear in mind, it could also go worse. i would say it has a better chance of going worse because something tells me that if someone can charge 50% less than a proven good contractor, something is wrong.
i have seen this a million times over. when people pick the lower price, they often end up being unhappy. i’ve been called to fix or complete dozens of unfinished jobs that contractors could not complete or abandoned and one thing is common denominator to all of those jobs: the homeowner picked the lowest price. and then they end up unhappy, complaining about the contractor who was their cousin or a friend of the family or someone who they shopped out trying to get the lowest possible price. those homeowners do understand that ALL businesses have problems, some people ar e better estimators (and some are not) and some people manage money better (and some don’t), etc, etc. sometimes the customer falls for a good story (I “had leftover material” or my “guys are standing around doing nothing because its slow”). if a contractor’s price is too low, if he does not have the money or credit to buy a new machine or get the van fixed if something breaks, he is going to short change your job – he is not going to not feed his kid. that is the reality with money.
knowing what you now know, if you go with the lower price and something goes wrong, you have to accept responsibility for that. it is sort of like this, when i worked for buildings, i wanted to pick a lower priced contractor for built in unit. my bosses said “no, this will be on you if they screw it up”. i am not saying the contractor bears no responsibility but if something goes wrong, it becomes your problem – you own it.
stevecym | 3 years and 2 months ago
When someone charges 1/2 of another contractor, the best thing to do is get a third quote.
shollander91 | 3 years and 2 months ago
Ha – true! I am getting a third guy to quote, expect it to be on the lower end but lets see
stevecym | 3 years and 2 months ago
Good for you. Smart man. From what people have said, it sounds like bsw is johnny walker blue. Ysg is johnny red. You want johnny black or green.
RobertGMarvin
in General Discussion 3 years and 2 months ago
A Johnny Walker Red level contractor might be fine. You need to avoid the wood alcohol types 🙂
Rick | 3 years and 2 months ago
I know a bunch of friends who installed with BSW on landmarked blocks and it was seamless . They are popular because they have the job detailed and perfected from permits to rebates and they provide high quality . They are highly experienced. But if you want to ask for a headache, go for it ( just saying ) You get what you pay for .
true | 3 years and 2 months ago
I hope you’ve learned your lesson, Dennis – tread lightly when questioning the Church of Brooklyn Solar Works.
lkrshacmzcy | 3 years and 2 months ago
As a Plumber who gets told this same thing a lot, I must also give a warning of Tread Lightly but for a different reason.
About 30-40% of our Service Work Revenue is coming in after the “1/2 Market Price Plumber” to fix their mistakes. Not saying this will happen here but as everyone has said: what you see physically getting done is not the only thing you are paying for with a High Value Company.
shollander91 | 3 years and 2 months ago
Lots of doom and gloom projected … feels like I definitely need to use someone else to disproof this perception that BSW is the only company that can complete this HIGHLY COMPLEX engineering challenge
lkrshacmzcy | 3 years and 2 months ago
Hey I use the Discounted Barber and love it…gets the job done just fine every time.
The Dentist I use on the hand, pretty sure I put all three of his kids through College and Grad School. But I love my teeth!
Do your Due Diligence and compare. Just please let us know how it all goes. Grandpa always taught me crossing a minefield is a lot easier than people think…just a let a few others go first.
solehappy | 3 years and 2 months ago
i dont know of a single person that ever doesnt go with the absolute gold plated best version of a thing always if they can afford it. these kinds of attitudes make it seem like consumers without unlimited budgets are doing the trades a disservice. i have also paid top dollar for some of the most recommended trades on here and had objectively terrible work done that someone much more inexpensive found unconscionable. i would not at all be surprised that someone could do the exact same work as bsw for half the price and that bsw could completely botch a project leading to huge headaches. thats the whole problem.
andriywww1990 | 3 years and 2 months ago
cookthebooks, while you are correct in what you are saying, as a contractor i used to see a lot of this and i used to see who makes the mistakes in selection (i have since priced myself out of the market for customers who are shopping for cheap contractors). it is often people who have never been through renovations who make mistakes with these things. once a customer has renovated a house in brooklyn or anywhere else, they know what a good contractor sounds like and they know what it will cost to hire that firm. in the case of my business, as soon as i hear that the homeowner had done a renovation 3 or 4 years previous “and now it is time for the doors” and we get to the price, they say, “that is about what i figured”; people who have never been through a renovation often get a little surprised and sometimes they think there is a way around that expense (there is not) and they shop and shop and shop themselves to the bottom and that is when the problems arise. yes, sometimes things go wrong with good contractors but with poor ones things always go wrong.
as fo r the people i used to encounter when i did more interior wood work, stair balustrades and built ins, they would call me at the end of the job after their contractor abandoned it or got dismissed (in once case because “every time” he got a progress payment he “took a trip to florida”; it was a bad winter, i guess that was a good excuse but he was spending the money he needed to complete the job). in most cases these people were not doing needed things (like a new roof or windows if the old ones were so rotted they were falling out) but were redoing kitchens or adding a basement rooms. the stress these people bring on their marriages when all this goes wrong is insane. None of these people were short of money – some of them had new cars many people could only dream about; if they applied the same standards they applied to selecting cars to their houses, they would have had no issues with the contractors. in short, contractors are best avoiding these kinds of customers and perhaps some of the comments you are seeing on here are directed at those people; people who value cars over everything else including a peaceful marriage make very poor customers for contractors. fortunately, i do not encounter that in brooklyn but i do see it over here where i live and i run from it.
in so far as who suffers when they select the lowest bid. probably not the people contracting the job or the owner of the company. they still get their money. listen to the complaints about these jobs and look at the crews working for the lower paid company. the homeowners suffer poor quality because the lowest bidder hires the cheapest, most desperate unskilled labor. that is the business model and it is wrong for the customers and the entire labor pool – including the people not working for them because those employers set a standard where other businesses think it is ok to hire human beings with little pay and no benefits (they often misclassify the labor as “contractors” and force them to provide the state mandated protections on a very low hourly wage)- conditions that all of us on this board should abhor.
of course there is no guarantee of anything. but overall, if something does not have to be done right away (a roof or sewer line) and a customer can wait and pay a little more, they are better off doing so – for their own peace of mind, sanity in their marriage, and for the dignity of the labor working for the contractor.
Fort_Green_p_nut | 3 years and 2 months ago
Interesting thread. I for one am very interested in what Dennis finds from his 3rd quote, who he ends up choosing and how it works out.
While it is often prudent to go for the established brand name – BSW in this case – success can also sometimes lead to complacency and consumers benefit when there are multiple choice available.
Has anyone had a good experience with Sunrun? I’ve seen their cars around in park slope.
Lurker | 3 years and 2 months ago
Dennis. Please do us all a favor and go for the cheapest option no matter what others advise. And be sure to post here over the next 3-5 years and keep us posted on how it all went. If it goes great, you save 50% and all goes well-enough that you are satisfied, terrific! You’re a pioneer paving the way for others to stick it to the man and save tons of cash! If it goes wrong, still great! You’ll be an object lesson on what it means to learn from others’ experiences. Win-win!
true | 3 years and 2 months ago
Icky! [Screen Shot 2022-03-14 at 9](//muut.com/u/brownstoner/s1/:brownstoner:1qt5:screenshot20220314at9.32.38am.png.jpg)
Lurker | 3 years and 2 months ago
Eh, if it’s icky I apologize! But be fair—I only posted because in the reverse position I would have wanted to know and benefit, and I was completely transparent about it—and I didn’t publicly post the link itself. This forum is all about people sharing trades and services they like (and don’t like). Note I have absolutely no connection with the company, or this field, and my only relationship was as a customer.
Fort_Green_p_nut | 3 years and 2 months ago
With the admission that yes it is justified to pay more for higher quality of service and workmanship and I’m not saying it is the case here but:
I sometimes wonder if people who paid a premium price for a service advocate that others do the same in order to justify the premium to themselves. They could feel worse off if someone else finds a new supplier that can do the job for less. I’m bracing myself for being flamed for this.
Guest User | 3 years and 2 months ago
ft greene…i don’t even have solar, but i passed along my clients experiences using BSW… I couldn’t find a single complaint, unlike the competition
Guest User | 3 years and 2 months ago
it seems like most of the solar outfits are nothing more than glorified sales offices who sub out the actual installation to random installers… they make their money on sales and a percentage of the loans that they push clients to use.. They actually have no in house staff for installation or support