I received an e-mail from someone who performed at the girls birthday party announcing that she was an eco-preneur.She was a salesperson for a new company proposing to place solar panels on your roof for a $500 deposit and a monthly fee for the power generated equal to your current providers base charge. In my case, that's SCE and it's .14/kWh. Of course, if you use more than your base allowance of 10 kWh/day (we average 30 kWh/day), the price goes as high as .40/kWh. Needless to say, it sounds like a good deal.

Then I did some digging...

• They couldn't be making any money! I'd be paying them around $1,000/year. With their 25 year guaranteed pricing, that would amount to $25,000. Of course, my accounting background necessitates that I take the present value of that cash stream and arrive at a more accurate (assuming 3% inflation) $18,000. Add to that you $500 deposit, and they've created an $18,500 sale... for an item that would cost me $45,000 to purchase right now for cash. Something smells fishy.
• On their website, it implies that they collect the $500 deposit at the time the solar panels are installed. In reality, they're out to your house within 3 days of filling out the online form collecting money on something that won't be installed until September 2007 at the earliest.
• They claim that they are building a $450 million dollar plant in Houston. Proof?
• They claim that they will be able to build the panels at half the current cost... In a plant that's not yet completed?
• There's 'sales force' is a bunch of people who signed up online for their pyramid marketing scheme. There is absolutely no training involved. Everything they know about the company, they learned from the website.

This has got me fired up because it's taking advantage of people that are trying to do the right thing, and pitting friends against friends due to it's multiple-level-marketing sales approach.

I've put in a call to the DOJ and I'm not stopping there.