North Wildwood family turns to Troubleshooters for help with solar panels

NORTH WILDWOOD, New Jersey (WPVI) -- If you are thinking about putting solar panels on your home, we have a story you need to see about a well-known company.

The Troubleshooters have reported on Sunnova before, with complaints from some customers alleging poor customer service and repair problems.

"It's a family home, it's a big house," said Jennifer Konen of Northeast Philadelphia.

The Connelly family loves to gather at their shore house in North Wildwood.. But in mid-January:

"The solar panel blew off and over the front house into the other side," said Konen.

So the Connelly children called Sunnova to fix it.

"They didn't show that week," said Konen.

"We never heard from them. We just kept calling," said Konen's sister, Kathy Sordini.

Fast forward three months later, the panel is still uninstalled and the whole system is unuseable.

"The reality is, anytime it breaks, they don't respond," said Konen.

So the Connelly's contacted the Troubleshooters.

The Better Business Bureau has an alert for Sunnova, saying customer complaints allege, among other things, "deceptive sales practices" and "poor customer service" as well as installation and repair technicians failing to arrive as scheduled.

But Sunnova tells us its quote "BBB score does not accurately portray its quality of service or the substantial investments we have made to enhance customer satisfaction", including - "bolstering our call center operations," "expanding our personnel" and "establishing a Global Command Center".

It does confirm that the Connelly's situation, at least, has been resolved.

The Connelly family tells us three hours after the Troubleshooters got involved, they got a response from Sunnova. The panel was finally replaced and their system is now working again.

"Just thank you. We hope this helps somebody else," said Konen.

And we just got this news: Sunnova has also agreed to reimburse the Connelly's for all the months their system was not operating.

On top of that, the company tells us it's enhanced its operational procedures and claims its customer complaint rate is only 2%.

Full Sunnova Statement

Our teams resolved the system issue and have attempted to get back in touch with the Connelly's.

While the Better Business Bureau (BBB) has recently updated its score on Sunnova to a "C+", we will not be happy until it reaches an A+. We are very disappointed by our BBB score as it does not accurately portray the quality of service we provide or the substantial investments we have made in enhancing customer satisfaction.

In recent years we have implemented a number of customer service improvements, including bolstering our call center operations, significantly expanding our personnel, enhancing operational procedures, and establishing a Global Command Center that coordinates all customer service requests.

Our customer complaint rate currently stands at 2% - meaning that 98% of our customers are pleased with their service. Sunnova has strong customer services rankings on industry-leading ratings services, including a 4.0/5.0 rating on Google, 5.0/5.0 rating on Energy Sage, and 4.5/5.0 rating on Best Company.

In addition to confirming the Connelly's system is thoroughly restored, a tech team is performing a final inspection today at the customer's request. We are also reimbursing the customer for the period of non-production, demonstrating that Sunnova stands behind its 25-year service guarantee and is committed to providing the highest level of service.