Semper Solaris

We were recommended to them by our general contractor who was working on our addition on our home. He was only doing up to drywall and did not include HVAC or solar. SemperSolaris salesman M.I. sat down with us and went over all our questions on Feb 1, 2021. After we signed contracts, he ghosted us via email, text and phone calls and only referred us to customer service. We signed a contract for 100% brand new roof, solar and HVAC system.
They began tearing down our roof BEFORE permits were issued for our home project leaving our original wood floors exposed to the elements. It began to rain and leak on our wood floors. M.I. said he "pulled favors" to get the roof started with demo, and wouldn't address the rain coming into our home. A customer service agent said that if we wanted to pay out of pocket for them to come out and tarp our roof, they would come out.
Our solar project was delayed by SemperSolaris from every stage. They based the solar panels on our old square footage; not even bothering to read the blueprints we sent them showing our new increased square footage and new roofline. We rejected the first draft, and waited weeks for them to send us the new layout with our correct roofline. M.I. miscalculated the number of panels needed for our project and when he reached out to us, he said we needed to pay for them. After giving him a moment, he decided to "pay for them out of his pocket".
Our HVAC project manager was a nightmare. He not only was verbally abusive to my husband and general contractor, but would listen that he had to pull the mechanical permits on his own (my general contractor was not doing any HVAC under the permits he pulled.) C.S. wouldn't listen to our contractor, not we as homeowners and ignored us when we said that the City of El Cajon inspector notated on our project that SemperSolaris had to pull their own permits! We were assigned D.Y., a "specialized customer service agent", who would take over our account and promised us he would inform us at every step daily with updates. That never happened. I requested that his phone calls were followed up with a summary email to ensure written communication, he stopped after the second call.
Our trust with Semper was now non-existent as M.I., D.Y. and C.S. all had lied or ghosted us in one way or another. D.Y. stopped responding in a timely manner, C.S. wouldn't acknowledge that he was wrong (D.Y. sent an email that Semper did in fact have to pull their own permits), and M.I. replied to my emails with no text, just a link to follow-up to customer service.
Semper began installing our HVAC project WITHOUT obtaining permits from the City of El Cajon. The delays added months to our project (signed contracts in February). We had to not only pay for our SDGE bills, but also began paying on our loan for the entire project to the credit union. Our first payment was not until June 4, 2021. We alerted the credit union that the project wasn’t even near completion and they were able to move the first payment back but not waive it. The credit union told us to not give Semper any final payment until we were up and running and satisfied.
We obtained the permit for our HVAC portion weeks later and we set up an appointment with ENERGUY to test the system. We passed so it was time to schedule our final inspection with the city. We chose a Friday with someone over the phone with the city. At this time, Semper was asking for final payment again and we let them know that we needed an update on the reimbursement request and to be shown how to use the app on our phone to monitor the solar panels. They took it as we were not giving them the final payment and threatened to cancel our inspection and pull our permits until we did. The day of the inspection came. I looked at the website for the city on planned inspections and we were not listed. We spoke to someone from ENERGUY and he stated that he cancelled our inspection based on a conversation about the paperwork having an error on it. We have a 1500 square foot home, the paperwork listed it as 896 square feet. Our inspection was cancelled. I had to call the city and reschedule the inspection to take place the following Wednesday.
When D.Y. called to confirm we had a new inspection date, we asked about a result for our request for compensation. (D.Y. had previously indicated he was going to submit the request to someone that approves these kinds of requests.) He proceeded to tell my husband that he himself made the decision to not grant our request. He had lied. He never actually submitted our request. He was originally put on our job to facilitate trust and mediate communication. Unfortunately, he turned out to be just as bad as everyone else. It wasn’t so much that we didn’t get compensation, it was more that he misrepresented himself as someone to trust.
We went with SemperSolaris because they were military owned. I would never ever recommend them to anyone