Solar scams and door-to-door sales: the pitches, the pressure, and your three days to cancel

The five pitches that should end the conversation

Scam pitches are not creative. They recycle a small set of claims because the claims work, and the Federal Trade Commission's alert and its guidance for sellers name the same ones from both sides of the door. Read the table as a script: if the conversation at your door follows it, the safest move is to end the conversation, keep any paperwork offered, and start again later with installers you chose yourself.

Notice what every pitch has in common. Each one removes a number you could check: the gross price, the program's name, the deadline's source, the credit's current status. A legitimate quote survives being checked. That is the entire test, and the rest of this page is how to run it.

Impersonation runs through several of the pitches, and the FTC's companion alert on clean energy scams describes the pattern directly: someone claiming to be with the government or your utility company promises big savings from solar or other home improvements, and agreeing can cost tens of thousands of dollars. The FTC's September 2024 alert says solar sellers who claim to be from, or affiliated with, the government are lying, and its August 2024 alert warns of callers posing as the government or your utility; check any named programme or utility contact through the organisation's own published phone number. Any badge, logo, or letterhead offered at the door is a claim, and like every other claim in the table it settles the same way: end the visit, and verify through the organisation's own published number, not the one printed on the flyer you were just handed. Pitches built on programs for low-income households are checked against the programs themselves in the income-qualified guide.

The credit claim, checked against the IRS

Of all the pitches, the tax credit claim does the most financial damage, because it is arithmetic: subtract a phantom 30 percent from the price and every payback figure built on the result is wrong by years. So check it at the source. The Internal Revenue Service's residential clean energy credit page, read for this guide on October 21, 2026, states that the credit equals 30 percent of the costs of new qualified clean energy property installed anytime from 2022 through December 31, 2025, and that the credit is not available for any property placed in service after December 31, 2025. A system installed on your roof in 2026 gets no federal residential credit. Full stop.

Two details from the same page close the usual escape hatches. The credit is claimed for the tax year when the property is installed, not merely purchased, so paying a deposit in 2025 did not rescue a 2026 installation (the Form 5695 guide lays out the dated cases). And the credit was nonrefundable with carryforward of unused amounts, which matters if you installed before the deadline and still hold unused credit: carryforward survived, new claims did not. This site's solar tax credit status page records the termination and the installation-completion rule in full. Any quote, from any channel, that subtracts a federal credit from a system you would install now is using a rule that no longer exists, and the quote red flags guide shows how that one line poisons the rest of the document.

The phantom credit, priced

The phantom credit, priced. A doorstep quote offers an 8 kW system at a $23,600 gross price, the benchmark-priced system from this site's cost guide, then subtracts a 30 percent federal credit of $7,080 to present a net price of $16,520 and a payback built on it. The arithmetic is flawless and the premise is false: the IRS states the credit is not available for property placed in service after December 31, 2025, so for a system installed now the federal line is $0 and the honest net starts at $23,600 before any state or utility incentive you verify yourself. The $7,080 gap is not a discount the programme provides; it is a hole that opens in your budget the April after installation, when the credit is not there to claim. Whenever a quote's net price beats its gross price by exactly 30 percent, you are looking at this example with your address on it.

Pricing the pitch at the door: the cash price behind the monthly payment

The pitch that survives the credit check is the payment pitch: a tablet showing a monthly figure lower than your electricity bill, with no money down. The figure can be true and the deal still poor, because the monthly payment hides the two numbers that matter, the price per watt and the cash price. Ask for both before anything else, in writing, and divide.

Price per watt has a published national spread now. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's 2026 data update ranked the 100 largest residential installers of 2025 by the median installed price of their customer-owned systems and found medians running from $2.4 to $6.3 per watt, ignoring apparent outliers at either end. Roughly 60 percent of those installers had medians below $4 per watt and almost a quarter were below $3, while about 10 percent were above $5. The lab also found that loan-financed systems were priced considerably higher than cash purchases, probably in part because loan fees are rolled into the up-front price. The site's comparison line, the U.S. Department of Energy's Q1 2025 residential benchmark of $2.95 per watt DC (modeled market price for an 8 kW system, 2024 dollars, checked October 30, 2026), sits in the under-$3 band, where the lab put almost a quarter of those installers. It is a modeled national figure, not a median from that list.

Here is the pitch, worked with stated inputs. The tablet offers an 8 kW system for $148.60 a month: a $35,100 loan at 1.99 percent for 25 years, no money down. The loan principal works out to $35,100 divided by 8,000 watts, or $4.39 per watt, already in the upper bands of the chart. Now ask what the same system costs for cash. If the answer is $27,000, the $8,100 between the two prices is a financing fee, 30 percent of the cash price, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's 2024 issue spotlight on solar financing found exactly that pattern: fees that typically add 10 to 30 percent to the cash price and can exceed 50 percent, built into the loan principal and often not identified as a markup on the cash price.

Run the payment against the cash price and the advertised rate disappears. Paying $148.60 a month for 300 months to borrow $27,000 is a rate of about 4.40 percent, not 1.99, and the 300 payments total about $44,580 for a system whose cash price was $27,000. None of that makes the offer illegal, and some homeowners will still choose it. What it makes is comparable: $3.38 per watt cash is the number to set against other installers' quotes and the benchmark, and the effective rate is the number to set against a home equity line or a credit union loan. The dealer fee guide shows how to recover the fee from the disclosure documents when the salesperson will not state a cash price, and a salesperson who will not write one down has told you the most important fact about the offer.

How the pressure works, and why it works

The pitch is only half the mechanism. The other half is the setting: your doorstep, their tablet, no competing quote, and a signature framed as a formality to hold a price, start a credit check, or schedule a survey. Understand what each framing can actually be. A signature on a tablet can be a signed contract. Consent to a credit check can be a loan application, and in solar lending the loan is often the product being sold, with the panels as its wrapping. The dealer fee guide shows how to find the markup inside a low advertised rate. A large deposit demanded before any written contract exists is a warning the FTC's guidance treats as a classic marker of a scam rather than of a busy installer.

PACE financing deserves its own sentence because it changes what is at stake. PACE attaches the repayment to your property tax bill, which puts a lien on the home itself, and federal enforcement has already dealt with homeowners who were signed into PACE liens they did not understand they had accepted. If the word PACE, or tax assessment, appears in a doorstep conversation, the conversation is over until you have read the financing documents at a table, on paper, on a day when nobody is standing in your doorway.

None of this requires you to be rude or to decide quickly, which is the pressure's tell. A reputable installer expects comparison quotes, leaves documents behind, and prices the same system next week. The Department of Energy's guidance to homeowners is to comparison-shop across installers and understand the contract before signing. A pitch that cannot survive you following the Department of Energy's advice is telling you what it is.

The soft version of the signature is the free survey. A no-obligation site assessment is a normal and useful step when you have invited it, and the installation process guide treats it as one stage among nine. In the pressure version it is scheduled on the spot, framed as costing nothing and committing you to nothing, and used to start a file, a credit pull, and a follow-up rhythm of calls before you have seen a single written figure. The distinction is not the survey; it is the sequence. Figures first, in writing, from companies you chose, and access to your roof after you have read them. Any order that puts your signature or your roof first and the numbers later is the mechanism working as designed.

Your three business days: the Cooling-Off Rule

Federal law anticipated the doorstep signature. The Federal Trade Commission's Cooling-Off Rule (16 CFR Part 429) gives you three business days to cancel a sale of $25 or more that was made at your home, and it requires the seller to tell you about that right and to give you a dated Notice of Cancellation form as part of the contract. A contract signed at your kitchen table from a door-to-door pitch is the rule's central case. The clock runs from the transaction date on the contract, not from installation, not from the first payment, and not from when you get around to reading the document.

To cancel inside the window: sign and date the cancellation form, or write a letter that says clearly you are cancelling, and deliver it the way the notice instructs, keeping proof of when it was sent. Mail it (certified mail with a receipt proves the date) or hand-deliver it to the address on the notice and keep a dated receipt; the rule's notice lists mail, delivery or telegram, so an email is a useful copy, not a substitute. Keep the contract, the cancellation form, and your proof together. If the seller claims the window does not apply, do not argue at the door: cancel in writing anyway, inside the three days, and let the paper argue for you.

Two cautions complete the picture. The rule has exceptions and details (the exact business-day count and the form requirements are in the rule and on the FTC's consumer pages), and many states add their own cancellation rights and contractor rules on top of the federal floor, so check your state consumer protection office as well. And the window is short by design: three business days is a remedy for a signature taken under pressure, not a research period. Use it to undo first, then research at leisure with installers you invite.

The business-day count is where homeowners miscount, so here it is from the rule itself. Under 16 CFR 429.0, a business day is any calendar day except Sunday and the federal holidays, so Saturday counts and a Monday holiday does not. The notice the seller must give you sets the deadline as midnight of the third business day after the transaction, and the rule bars the seller from selling your loan note to a finance company before midnight of the fifth business day after you sign. Once the seller receives a valid cancellation, it has 10 business days to refund every payment and cancel any security interest the sale created.

When the three-day clock really starts

Believing the cancellation clock starts at installation, at the first payment, or when the equipment arrives. Under the FTC Cooling-Off Rule the three business days run from the date of the transaction, the signature at your door. Homeowners can lose the remedy by waiting for the site survey to think it over. Cancel first, in writing, with proof, and think afterwards.

If you already signed, or already paid

Work the timeline in order. Inside three business days: cancel under the Cooling-Off Rule as above, in writing, with proof. Past the window but before installation: read the contract's own cancellation and deposit clauses, then put any dispute in writing to the company; a contract argument conducted by phone does not exist later. If money moved through financing, contact the lender as well as the installer, because the loan and the installation are separate contracts with separate counterparties, and stopping one does not stop the other.

Report the pitch either way. The FTC takes reports at ReportFraud.ftc.gov, and the alert that opens this page exists because those reports are how patterns get prosecuted. Your state attorney general's consumer protection office handles the local licensing and contractor side, and complaints about the financing belong with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau as well as the lender. Reporting is not only for people who lost money: a pitch reported by the neighbour who spotted it is evidence by the time it reaches the neighbour who did not.

Then rebuild the decision properly if you still want solar. The honest version of this purchase is slow on purpose: a roof assessment, two or three quotes you invited, each priced per watt, incentives you verified yourself in DSIRE, and a contract read at a table. Every guide on this site assumes that pace. Nothing about a real system rewards the household that signed fastest.

Whatever stage you are at, start a file today: the contract and every form you signed, the cancellation notice if one was provided, names and dates from each visit and call, and screenshots or copies of anything shown on a tablet. Regulators and lenders work from documents, and the household with the complete file is the one whose version of the doorstep conversation gets believed.

What an honest doorstep looks like

Door-to-door contact itself is not the scam; plenty of legitimate installers canvass. The honest version is easy to recognise because it behaves like the FTC's own guidance to sellers: truthful claims, total cost disclosed, no overpromising on tax credits or savings, and an offer to leave information and return by appointment. They will name their company and licence, encourage you to get competing quotes, describe the incentives process as one you verify, and put a deadline in writing only when a real programme document carries it.

Run every approach, from any channel, through the same five questions before a signature exists anywhere. What is the gross price, in writing? Who owns the system and any incentives? Which figures are estimates and which are guaranteed? What are the cancellation terms? And can every incentive named be found by you, tonight, in DSIRE or on the IRS site? A seller who answers all five plainly has earned a quote appointment. A seller who answers none has given you the only information the visit was ever going to produce. The state's own record of who may install and who may sell is the check to run first, and the license guide reads it for four states.