Lots of Promises but Not Much Else

The victims of deceptive solar heating sales pitches have vivid recollections of their experiences. Some of their stories:

“They promised us a rebate of $1,500 and a $3,000 tax credit,” said Yolanda Galdamez, 39, of Santa Ana. Galdamez, a supervising housekeeper at the Balboa Bay Club, signed a second trust deed on her one-story frame house to finance a $10,000 solar heating package from Mission Viejo Solar.

Instead of a rebate and a tax credit, Galdamez said she and her husband ended up paying $128 a month for a system that didn’t work. “I was at my wit’s end,” she said.

Jonathon Fears, who was Mission Viejo’s production manager, said the problem that plagued the company was rooted in a salesman “who had his own separate office in Santa Ana and who never told us about systems that needed service.”

“They promised us a vacation,” said Glen Owens, 33, of La Habra, who’s paying $200 a month on a $12,000 system sold by a now-defunct firm called Sun Wizard. It took 50 telephone calls, he said, to get “two nights at Lake Tahoe.”

Owens said he was hoodwinked by a fast-talking salesman who didn’t tell him that the loan papers he signed pledged his house as collateral. “I would like to think I read the contract, but I didn’t read everything,” said Owens, a documents expert for the Riverside County district attorney’s office.

“It’s a cartoon,” said Northridge homeowner Al Malis, 60, of the $12,350 solar system installed on the roof of his one-story frame house by Energy Design Systems, a now-dormant Orange County firm.

“They installed it under two big palm trees and it’s in the shade almost half the year,” he said. “(The system) just sits there like a lump and doesn’t work.”

Last January, Malis received a two-page letter from the Anaheim firm’s attorneys asserting that their client had suffered “an unforeseeable financial setback.” Enclosed was a check for $60 to cover his costs. Malis said he would turn the check over to an attorney.

A Tustin attorney representing Energy Design Systems, Mark Roseman, said that Malis may be “confused” about his agreement with the firm. The $60, he said, “is not (based) on the balance of the price (of the solar equipment) but is (a percentage) of the cash incentive rebate” Malis was promised when he bought the system.

“I signed a blank contract,” said Nora Johnson, 37, of South-Central Los Angeles, a dental technician and mother of four children. She ended up with a $4,995 Sun Wizard system which, she said, “doesn’t work.” The contract she signed turned out to be a lien on her one-story frame home.

The salesman “said he was in a hurry,” said Johnson in explaining why she signed the contract without reading it.

“They lied about everything,” said Cari Bourdeau, an Anaheim secretary, about the system installed by now-defunct Azizi Enterprises on the roof of her two-story home. “It never worked,” she said.

“I didn’t know I was putting my house up for collateral,” said Michael Kilgore, 27, of Lancaster, an assembler on the B-1B bomber for Rockwell International in Palmdale. Kilgore helped spearhead a class-action lawsuit out of a group he formed called MASH--Mad Against Solar Heating.

Moreover, he said he lost $1,300 when one of the solar panels on the roof of his one-story, three-bedroom house leaked on his neighbor’s boat, which was stored next door. His neighbor won a judgment against him in small claims court, he said.

Kilgore claims the solar system, installed by Vans Heating & Air Conditioning of Palmdale, and for which he paid $18,572.18, including financing charges, “has never really worked efficiently and my gas bills have gone up.” Several telephone calls to the Vans company went unanswered.