I had a similar experience buying a home battery from SKYLIGHT ENERGY in Sydney. What they did, however, I see as criminal and consumers need to be aware and not provide any money, more than a deposit and beware of signing contracts.
In July 2023, I responded to several advertisements on social media that were actively promoting and advising that they were able to install a home battery system at my address at 99 Drumree Drive, Dumbarton, Western Australia, 6566. Being interested in doing my best for the environment, I deduced that a home storage battery would be worthwhile.
Several businesses contacted me, including a representative from Skylight Energy which was at that time discounting the unit that best suited my needs. I do not believe this person, identifying as Steve, was a direct employee of Skylight Energy but that he was on some form of commission to drum up business (basically a pimp). He pursued me actively for a number of days until a negotiated price of $13,000 for the unit was agreed to. I was told a $1300 deposit could be made by Credit card and that the balance, owed on installation, would not be subject to a merchant commission either.
Steve said he was unable to take the deposit, but advised someone would contact me from Skylight Energy who would phone and finalize the transaction. He made no mention that a contract had to be signed and I was given every expectation that the unit would be installed within the next week or two.
Shortly afterwards, on 26 July 2023, a woman from Skylight Energy (Jean Gruspe) phoned who knew of the agreement made with Steve to forego the commission on the credit card transaction and she took my credit card details for the $1300 deposit. Because I advised Steve I was able to pay for the entire purchase without using their offer of finance, it was agreed I could pay for the balance of $11,700 on the same day as installation without any further credit card commission applied.
After successfully providing my $1300 deposit, the woman subsequently informed me that it would be necessary to sign a contract by electronic signature which, at the time, I thought was a little suspicious seeing she had been prepared to take a deposit without informing me of the contract beforehand. I never had to sign a contract to have the solar panels installed by a different company. All they needed was a deposit to indicate my genuine intentions and the balance was paid on the day of the completed work.
I read through Skylight’s contract and noticed that the terms were not the same what had been verbally agreed to, and so I phoned the employee, Jean Gruspe, again to clarify the disparity. “O, don’t worry about that she said. We acknowledge that laws are different in Western Australia and many of the contract conditions won’t apply in your case”.
After signing the contract by electronic signature and submitting it to Skylight, I wanted a printed copy of the contract for my reference, but it was impossible to print. I am unable to explain why this was the case, but having recently signed a real estate contract by electronic signature and printed off a copy of that without problem, I know that the technology exists for this action. Skylight Energy seemed to intentionally deny me a copy of the signed contract and once it was signed, somehow magically, it disappeared from my inbox and I was unable to ever refer to it again.
However, one of the terms of the contract was that the merchant was given four months to install the unit. I had recently been hospitalized because of a broken neck and I phoned this same woman (Jean Gruspe) about being given good notice about the installation date to be able to prepare the site for the installation. “Don’t worry about that she said, it won’t happen that fast, but you will be advised when it can be installed”. Nothing happened for several weeks and I began to question the integrity of this company.
Eventually, on 25 Aug 2023, I contacted Skylight to enquire when the installation would happen. Jean Gruspe advised that the installation address details had been provided to their electrician and that she would enquire from their operations people about the installation date and inform me the following day of the outcome. The phone call didn’t happen as promised so I phoned again on 25 Sept 2023. This time an arranged date was negotiated and I immediately recorded it in my diary as Friday 13 October 2023 (three months after the purchase agreement was signed). Jean Gruspe phoned on 10 Oct 2023 to re-confirm the arrangement and I was assured that the installation would happen as planned.
On 13 October 2023, I received an early morning phone call from “Billy” in Skylight’s operations department to advise that installation was not possible that day, and that I would be advised in due course of the next possible installation date. I phoned Jean Gruspe and was informed that the new installation date was now 9 November 2023, 17 days before to the contract was due to expire. However, a week prior to this, on 31 Oct 2023, “Billy” phoned to say that the next instalment of $9100.00 was due before installation was possible. I had to remind him that the contract explicitly stated that the balance owed would be paid in full on the day of installation. He disagreed and without argument, I emailed Jean Gruspe and then phoned her about the request to pay the additional $9100.00 and she advised not to worry because such arrangements are not relevant to WA. She advised that installation would go ahead on 9 November as planned.
On 6 Nov 2023, Jean Gruspe phoned me early morning asking if I would consider a different, bigger and better type of unit. She asked if I would consider accepting a Growatt ARK brand battery in place of the Alpha 15.12 battery as they came with a bigger inverter and higher charge and discharge capacity. She said the contract would be amended accordingly and that I would be provided with an amended contract. Reluctantly, I agreed to her request but agreed to it only if the same financial arrangements remained in place. I had to assume that the Alpha type couldn’t be procured. I asked her to specify details of what would be installed, which she did, but the amended contract never arrived and nor was it ever signed electronically.
On 8 Nov 2023, the day before the second agreed arrangement to install the unit was to happen, I phoned “Billy” in the operations department to re-confirm the units’ installation for the following day. He would only tell me that “he would do his best to make it happen”. ‘This was at 4.30pm, Sydney time. I informed him that his answer was unacceptable and that if the unit was not installed the following day as agreed, I wanted my deposit returned.
As expected, the installation didn’t happen and I phoned Billy to tell him they had broken the contract and I now required the deposit returned. He told me the reason the battery couldn’t be installed was because they were unable, (during the previous 3½ months), to obtain the parts. I was told that I must request the refund in writing and so I did, giving them a week for the transaction to be made. After 10 days of not receiving the refund, both Billy and Jean were uncontactable. No one was answering their phones at Skylight Energy. Persistently, I kept attempting to make contact and eventually “Älex” answered the phone and informed me that his staff was working from home.
“Älex” seemed to be familiar with the circumstances of my case. I had nothing to do with him previously. I asked him why the refund hadn’t occurred and he said the company had not received any such request. He also told me that the 4-month contract would not expire until four (4) days. I heard nothing from Skylight Energy again for several weeks and knew I was being lied to.
Having reached this conclusion, I took matters into my own hands and started contacting Western Australian, New South Wales and Federal government departments to seek help. Starting first with the Western Australian Department of Commerce, I was wrongly informed that they couldn’t help because the company I was dealing with was based in Sydney, and was given the equivalent department’s phone number in NSW to complain to them. Skylight Energy, however, were advertising that they had an office in St George’s Terrace in Perth but there was no dedicated phone number.
Upon phoning the NSW department, I was told they couldn’t help because I was based in Western Australia, but they provided me with further phone numbers in NSW to contact “who should be able to assist”. They weren’t, but they too made suggestions of whom I could contact, which all proved fruitless.
I made an initial successful complaint to Bankwest on the grounds that my Mastercard was used to purchase “an item or service which was never received”. Bankwest requested that I detail the sequence of events that happened in regard to the purchase and, a few days later, their credit card officer confirmed that the sequence of events document, together with an enormous number of email communications between myself and Skylight Energy had been received and that she had never before seen a response as clear or as detailed as the one I submitted. Two days later, the $1300 was re-credited to my Mastercard account and I thought the issue was resolved.
However, a month later $1300 was again re-debited to my Mastercard account and I phoned to enquire why. The Bankwest officer was terse and behaved as though he had been legally threatened and feared repercussions. He was totally dismissive, would not listen to anything I had to say, and said Bankwest could not become involved because a legal contract had been signed, signed yes, but broken by the merchant. The phone call was abruptly ended by him.
In the meantime, I heard not a word from Skylight Energy until a week before Christmas. They wanted to install the unit between Christmas and New Year’s Day, which was now outside the 4-month contract period.
In the meantime, however, out of frustration, I contacted two of my local State members of parliament; the Country Party member was as useless as “tits on a bull”, the Labor party member was more helpful and reassured me that the Department of Commerce in WA can assist and wouldn’t believe what I had previously been told. She also provided me with the website details of the ACCC, but when attempting to make a complaint there, I could not progress any further than my residential address, which their website would not recognise and the field was “mandatory” before proceeding further. So I gave up in frustration.
My Labor parliamentarian maintained an interest in this case and encouraged me to persist with the WA Department of Commerce. After waiting in line for 80 minutes the phone was eventually answered. On this occasion, I was again told to make an online complaint, but I informed her I had already tried and couldn’t progress further because the “mandatory” field of a residential address was not recognized on their site. She provided an email address where I could write my complaint as a letter, which I did.
A few days later, I received a call from an officer at the WA Department of Commerce who told me my letter was received and that he would contact me within 2 weeks with an answer. Three weeks later, the same officer rang to say Skylight Energy had entered into voluntary liquidation and that a Liquidator had been appointed to administer winding up the company. He provided me with the details to make a claim. I have since been informed by the Liquidator that there are no funds to cover creditor’s expenses.
All of the employees I dealt with at Skylight Energy, other than “Steve” and “Alex”, were Asian. They are being taken advantage of by these ruthless employers, probably paid a pittance for their work and are threatened with dismissal if they don’t do as they are told. It is something the ACTU should investigate and readily.
I am further dismayed that a worldwide company like Mastercard would permit a company like Skylight Energy to use its financial resources without looking into the company’s ethics and reputation.
As a senior ex-public servant, I know that providing wrongful and misleading information to the public is an offence.
Further, I am disgusted by Bankwest for the reversal of a decision initially made in my favour when all the evidence was clearly before them. There reversal of the credit was made because of fear of legal retribution. They chose to return my money, taken under fraudulent pretenses, to a suspect company. Their action, together with the wrongful initial misinformation from the WA Department of Commerce, caused a long delay to any legal avenue I would have pursued before the company went into liquidation, which I knew would happen. Bankwest has since refunded a $500 good-will gesture, which of course I accepted. I have written to the WA Department of Commerce and received a phone call from them, but nothing has happened since. That was several weeks ago,
Foolishly, I neglected to investigate the feedback provided by Australian consumers about this despicable company, before agreeing to the agreement of purchase. Having done so subsequently, I discovered that too many other Australians, even living in Sydney, were as similarly duped as I and that their cases were replicates of my own and worse. Unfortunately, others were not as sensible as I in recognizing the company’s criminality earlier and luckily, I was wise enough to refuse any further payment before the company “went bust”.
As an Australian, I am embittered by the fact that Australian consumers are treated in this appalling manner and that a company like Skylight Energy appears to have the law on their side when they are instead a bunch of criminals taking money from unsuspecting people, including pensioners, falsely claiming they can provide a service and product that they can neither furnish nor supply. Where is the Australian watchdog and why are these companies permitted to operate in Australia without the proper credentials and financial backing and why is the Australian Parliament not introducing legislation to prevent this scam happening?
What do you think of this story, members? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!
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