Mis-selling:

Advice and Direction

When you are looking to make a purchase it’s important that you have the confidence and peace of mind that whatever information you are given by the company (whether verbal or written) is correct and accurate. This is vitally important because when your decision is based on how the product will perform (e.g. solar) and provide you in energy savings and income you must be able to rely on the company giving you this information. Sadly, this isn’t the case sometimes which results in the consumer being mis-sold.

We take mis-selling seriously and have therefore appointed the award-winning Energy Performance Validation Scheme (EPVS) to help ensure consumers are not mis-sold. The focus of our partnership with EPVS is on monitoring our members to help ensure that consumers are receiving accurate performance estimates, financial savings and any earning income.

EPVS – Established to stop mis-selling

The domestic renewable energy sector has long been dominated by solar PV, with the governments Feed-in Tariff scheme providing attractive incentives to consumers to purchase solar PV. However, the solar PV sector has also been dogged by mis-selling. This resulted in major finance lenders pulling out of providing consumer credit in the market place and also key stakeholders lost confidence in the sector. 

HIES, a leading renewable energy consumer protection scheme, developed a solution to combat mis-selling in collaboration with industry leaders/finance lenders/manufacturers/installation companies etc. In January of 2016, EPVS was launched to protect UK consumers from being mis-sold products such as solar PV, air source heat pumps, energy storage etc. EPVS has the support of finance lenders such as Ikano Bank.

Due to the launch of EPVS in 2016 renewable companies can still access key finance solutions for their customers by way of being affiliated with EPVS. EPVS has helped to safeguard the domestic renewable energy sector, bring back confidence from key stakeholders, and enable installation companies to offer finance to their customers, enabling the deployment of more renewable technology products to stimulate growth in the sector.

EPVS has been recognised for its success in protecting consumers from being mis-sold at the Card and Payment Awards.

Solar & Energy Storage – Mis-Selling

Solar PV and energy storage products are being mis-sold to consumers from the research we have undertaken (RECC | National Energy Foundation | STA). With the advancement of technology, introduction of grid trading/aggregation platforms & renewable energy tariffs, consumers are being misled and left confused to the performance and financial savings of the products they have bought.

Solar PV supported by energy storage is a key home energy solution enabling consumers to reduce energy bills & carbon emissions, but if the sector is not protected from mis-selling, then the sector will lose confidence from key stakeholders (consumers, finance lenders, UK Government, manufacturers etc), which will ultimately see the failure of the sector before it can gain awareness and market penetration.

Safeguarding the future of the renewable & flexible energy sector is one of the reasons for the creation & launch of Flexi-Orb. Our vision is ensuring consumer safety and protection to enable zero carbon homes. In order to achieve this, our first job is to ensure that consumers are protected and safe, and one of the first problems to solve is mis-selling.