MAGNOLIA, Texas – You’ve heard the expression “selling like hotcakes.”
Well right now in Texas, new companies and salespeople are getting rich selling solar panel power systems to homeowners.
All of which creates the perfect environment for solar panel scam artists and shady business people.
That’s something 92-years-old Tommy Ellis, a navy veteran and former AT&T technician, now retired in Magnolia, knows a lot about.
He signed up for solar power months ago and now deeply regrets signing with the company that approached him with big promises and not much else.
Last January, Tommy and his wife Nell took more than $75,000 cash out of their retirement savings to pay one of those solar panel companies to put 22 power collecting, solar panels on their roof.
The salesman promised them they’d be saving the planet and saving on electricity in a big way.
”Well, I wanted to do the right thing, and I’d been thinking about it, and I thought I’d be able to lower my electric bill to where I wouldn’t have much of an electric bill. I’d be producing my own electricity,” Tommy said, shaking his head in disgust.
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Seven months later, Tommy wishes he’d never let that solar panel salesman on his property.
“What has happened to your electric bills since you got these solar panels put on?”, KPRC 2′s Bill Spencer asked Tommy.
”Well, they’ve gone up. They’ve actually gone up. It was $250 to $350 a month, but now it’s over $400 a month,” he said. “I am…
