Does your solar company answer the phone after installation?

Panels carry 25-year warranties and inverters 5 to 10, but a warranty is a phone call before it is a document. The real question when comparing installers is simple: who picks up in year six?

What breaks, and when

In our seventeen years the pattern is consistent. Year one issues are almost always small: a tripped breaker, an app that lost its Wi-Fi connection. The real tests come later: an inverter fault in year five, a monsoon leak around a mount in year seven, generation quietly dropping because panels have not been cleaned. None of these are emergencies if someone responds. All of them become expensive if nobody does.

Questions that reveal everything

Ask for the service phone number, then actually call it. Ask what the written response-time policy is; ours is 24 hours, and it has been since 2009. Ask whether the company files your warranty claims with the manufacturer or leaves that to you. And ask to speak to a customer from at least five years ago, because that customer has experienced the company's service, not its sales.