'It was deceptive advertising': Killeen man warning others, says he was sold used solar panels - KWTX

‘It was deceptive advertising’: Killeen man warning others, says he was sold used solar panels

KILLEEN, Texas ( KWTX) - A man in Killeen is warning others after he says he was given old and used solar panels from a door-to-door salesman.

Jared Barber says he had been considering solar energy the months before he was approached by a salesman from Pure Energy, a San Antonio based solar company.

Barber says from their initial conversation, the man sounded well educated on the subject so they began moving forward with the purchasing process. And not long after signing the contract, the panels were in place.

Before he signed anything, Barber triple checked with the salesman that if at any time he wanted the panels removed that that would be possible. At the time, the salesman told him yes.

A week after installation, Barber went to check the app that tracks his energy usage and noticed that the panels were only producing a small fraction of the energy they should. And upon further examination, he found that one of the panels is cracked.

“It was deceptive advertising. The young man that came to my home didn’t mention all of that, his goal was to just off load these panels on me and my family. There were a lot of holes in what he said that now I’m paying for,” Barber says.

On top of that, he was hit with two bills. An energy bill that was way too high and a loan bill. The loan bill caught him by surprise because the salesman never once mentioned a loan, and neither did the contract. The loan is on a 25 year note.

Barber says after noticing all of this, he began his own investigation. He has learned that this is a common business practice. KWTX reached out to the Better Business Bureau and spoke with a representative who says companies doing bad business will change their name so that their business can’t be tracked.

“It’s like a rinse, wash and repeat cycle where we see businesses try to escape previous litigations or bad reputations by changing LLC’s and trying to run,” says Jason Meza with the BBB.

KWTX reached out to Pure Energy to see if anyone could speak on Barber’s situation, our phone calls and emails have gone unanswered.

Looking through the Pure Energy Google reviews shows that out of 414 comments, most of them came with a one star review.

The Better Business Bureau highly advises that anytime you sense something off about a sale you’ve made through a company, to immediately let them know so they can try to catch them before they change their name.

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