YOU HAVE YOUR SAY

EVERY week, Money Mail receives hundreds of your letters and emails about our stories. Here are some of the best from our story about home owners who are tricked by rogue solar panel salesmen . . . DON’T be so daft as to buy solar panels from doorstep salesmen. I can’t believe there are still people gullible enough. Just say: ‘No thank you, I’m not interested.’ Then shut the door. C. T., Canterbury. IF YOU retired with a nice nest egg and paid cash to buy solar panels, you might make a modest profit over the 20-year Feed-In Tariff period. But if you borrowed to install, you will lose out significantly because of the high interest on the loan. C. K., Gloucester. I WAS cold-called by a company which gave me the hard sell. I went to my bank and arranged a low-interest loan. I have paid it off, my electricity bills have fallen and the Feed-In Tariff payments mean I will soon start making a modest profit. L. N., Essex. WE INSTALLED solar panels in 2013, costing £8,000. With an average income of £650 and electricity savings of £95 per year, we will have recouped our investment by year ten at the latest. As the Government incentive scheme runs for 20 years, we will have doubled our money. Solar panels are a good investment if you pay up front. K. B., Cheshire. WE TOOK a huge loan to pay for solar panels three years ago. We were told the Feed-In Tariff money would cover the repayments, but that is not the case. I wish we’d never got involved. B. P., Liverpool. SOLAR panels in England just don’t make sense — it’s cloudy most of the time. Even in California, solar panels would take around seven to ten years to pay for themselves in reduced power bills — longer if you took out a loan. L. N., London.

BITTEN BY SOLAR PANEL SHARKS Money Mail, June 6