Hero Renewables Review

by Tom Allerton

5th March 2019

Preface

This page explains in detail the numerous issues I've had while dealing with Hero Renewables. This version is quite long and has all the details of my communications with them, so if you just want an overview there’s a shorter version on the overview page.

As a quick introduction, I paid a deposit to Hero Renewables to install an Air Source Heat Pump (ASHP), but later decided to use an alternative company. I cancelled my order before any work had been done at which point I was due a full refund of the deposit. Hero Renewables failed to pay after 2 and a half months so I did a chargeback through my credit card provider. This was rejected because they challenged the chargeback by submitting false information to their bank. I finally received the refund 8 months after cancelling, but only after contacting the HIES consumer protection organisation. During the whole period I experienced, among other things: Hero Renewables charging me for work that wasn’t done, trying to pass on costs to me which they were not allowed to do, making false claims to their bank to challenge the chargeback, not responding to communication, being obstructive to my requests, and being dishonest, rude and hostile towards me.

HIES is one of several consumer protection schemes that renewable energy installers have to be a member of if they offer MCS certification. If you're wondering if my experience might just be a one off then consider that during this issue HIES told me that Hero Renewables were expelled from their scheme for breaching their code of practice. They told me that this was as a result of many complaints, not just mine. Also there are numerous negative reviews on their Facebook page and the reasons cited are lack of communication, blaming customers for their errors, misleading sales tactics and being untrustworthy; all the same problems I've experienced.

If you need more evidence of their untrustworthiness, a small amount of digging on Facebook reveals that at least 6 of the 8 positive reviews on their business page are fake as they’re from employees or friends of their director Martin Murphy as I’ve described here. They also have a profile on the YouGen website where every single review is overwhelmingly positive. It looks unbelievable, and it is because there are some very suspicious patterns to those reviews which makes me believe most of them are also fake. I've described my finding on the fake reviews page.

To provide evidence of the issues I have presented all of the communications I had with Hero Renewables on this page. I've written it so you don't have to read all the communications - each section gives an overview of the communication, and the actual email or phone transcript is in a hidden section below. If you want to read the full details, click on the section header to open and close it. All emails are reproduced verbatim and phone conversations are an abridged transcript from my recordings.

List of Issues

My problem with them was not just one small issue: they acted unlawfully, dishonestly, obstructively or with absolutely no care or concern for me as a customer at just about every stage of the process and on multiple occasions. The following is a brief list of all of the individual events that contributed to the issue:

• Failure to comply with The Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013 by not providing their cancellation terms properly.
• Attempting to charge me for the HIES deposit protection despite the HIES scheme rules forbidding the cost to be passed on to customers.
• Failure to refund me any part of the deposit within the 2 weeks allowed by law.
• Failure to respond to multiple emails chasing the refund.
• Failure to phone me back when they said they would do on multiple occasions.
• Making false statements to their bank when challenging my credit card chargeback.
• Attempting to charge me a 20% cancellation fee which is not mentioned in their terms and conditions.
• Attempting to charge me for a survey and technical drawings that didn't happen.
• Failure to even communicate the existence of these supposed charges to me until almost 6 months after I cancelled my order.
• Failure to investigate these charges and respond to me after I queried them.
• Even after they'd agreed to pay me, stating that the charges were valid, they had no obligation to repay me, and that the payment they agreed was a "goodwill" gesture.
• Their managing director being rude, hostile and unprofessional towards me on a phone call.
• Failure to perform the simple action of contacting their bank to query the location of the chargeback money, even though they said they would.
• Blaming me for the delays arising from their continuous poor conduct.
• They didn’t have any complaints procedure and failed to follow the HIES code of practice.

Introduction

In November 2017 I asked Hero Renewables to provide a quote for installing an Air Source Heat Pump (ASHP). I then placed an order, but later cancelled that order and eventually had an ASHP installed by another company. The main issue stemmed from the actions that Hero Renewables took after I cancelled my order. However after cancelling I received information that gave me the belief that the salesperson misrepresented certain facts which caused me to place the order in the first place when I may not otherwise have done so. I will therefore briefly explain these events as it's required to understand some of my later actions. I will only talk briefly about this part because although it precipitated the main issue, it was ultimately not an important facet. I will focus on the main issues which were caused by the actions of the two company directors, Jill Oldham and Martin Murphy.

Critical to the complaint is that as part MCS accreditation, the installer MUST register the deposit with the consumer protection scheme (in this case it was the Home Insulation & Energy Systems Contractors Scheme (HIES)) who guarantee the deposit so if the installer goes bust, the customer is protected. HIES rules say that the installer cannot pass this cost directly on to the customer under any circumstances, and this was confirmed to me by HIES. Note that I did not know this until fairly late on in the complaint.

Phase 1: Quote from the Salesperson

Several weeks after the salesperson visited by house, but before I received the quote, I received an email dated 13th December 2017 stating that there would be a 5% increase in prices from 1st January 2018. Later that day I received the quote which he said was based on the old prices and was valid for 30 days. The problem was that this was my first quote, and I wanted at least 3 quotes before making my decision, but because of the Christmas period I was unlikely to get any further quotes before the end of this 30 day period. After further discussion on the phone he said there were "no exceptions" to the price increases and he suggested that I could place an order and pay the 5% deposit to fix the current price for 6 months. He said it was "fully refundable" but at no point did he mention any time limit to receive the full refund.

Therefore, on 11th January 2018 I placed the order and paid £466.99 by credit card. The quote contained a link to terms and conditions on their website which said

"After signing this contract, you have a cancellation period of 14 days during which you may cancel the contract without penalty. If you cancel within this time, we will return any deposit you may have paid in full. If you cancel after this time, we may have to charge you based on the actual costs we have incurred by the time you cancel."

I thought I was OK because I made it clear I was paying the deposit only to hold the price and therefore no costs should be incurred, and also because this course of action was suggested by the salesperson. Furthermore I phoned the salesperson after 13 days and asked whether I would still get a full refund if I cancelled "in another week" and he replied "yeah".

In retrospect I should have paid more attention to the terms and conditions rather than believing the salesperson. However ultimately the salesperson did make a false statement to me. In the end, Hero Renewables didn’t incur any charges they could pass on to me which meant that it was not necessary to argue that this was misrepresentation. Unfortunately I didn't know that the HIES cost could not be passed on to me until much later in the complaint, so at the start of my complaint I focussed on the misrepresentation.

Phase 2: The Cancellation

On the 8th February 2018 I cancelled the order. I should note that the only reason I cancelled my order was because I felt better about another company's offer; at this point I had no reason to fault Hero Renewables and even stated that I would recommend them to a friend who was also looking for an ASHP. I phoned Hero Renewables’s customer service number which just happened to be answered by Martin Murphy who is one of their company directors and calls himself their "sales and marketing director".

Martin made a deal of this being their first ever cancellation. Critically he asks if any work had been undertaken, he assumes there wasn’t and I confirm that was the case. He states that because it’s beyond 14 days there will be some charges for “registering warranties and things like that” but he couldn’t tell me how much that would be except saying it would be “fairly minimal”. I didn’t argue this at the time as I thought I would review the terms and conditions first. He also said he would guarantee to match the quote from the other company if I sent it to him, although I did stress that I had already confirmed my order with the other company so this probably wasn't possible.

I sent him my other quote immediately by email. Several days later on 13th he replied with an offer to match the quote, and stated that if I didn't want to proceed that he'd pass me to the MD to process the cancellation and refund.

I replied later that night respectfully refusing their offer due to it being too late to cancel with my other company, and asking to be refunded.

So at this point I've successfully cancelled my order, and Hero Renewables have agreed to refund me minus some "minimal" admin fees, the value of which they've not mentioned. I had not yet challenged this as I did appreciate that I was outside of the 14 day cooling off period, and I also believed I would be given at least a partial refund.

It should be noted that the law gives companies 14 days to provide a refund, so regardless of how much they were going to refund I should have received something within that period. Yet 3 weeks later I hadn't hard anything, so I sent a simple chasing email to Martin:

This was responded to fairly promptly, although I should note that was the last time Hero Renewables responded to any communication until almost 5 months later. Martin simply said that it was being dealt with by the MD, but didn't give any name or contact details.

However another 10 days later I still hadn't heard anything so another chasing email from me, asking for details of the person who is dealing with it.

I never got a reply to that email, so another 10 days later I phoned them. I only managed to speak to someone I assume was a general customer services person who took my number and said someone would call me back later that day. I did not get a call back.

I called again the following day but I was told the person would chase it up and was assured that it was being dealt with. However I again did not receive a call back.

I left it a few days but didn't hear anything back. So the following week I called again. I should note that as the person didn't give their name, I didn't realise at the time that this phone call was in fact answered by Jill Oldham who is the managing director and the other company director along with Martin Murphy.

The important points of this call are:

• Jill clearly recognises the case when I say my name without having to refer to anything, so she is personally aware of the case.
• Jill says that I should hear from them within 2 weeks.
• I complain that I’ve already waited 2 months and that the delay is unacceptable.
• She mentions the delay is because of the HIES deposit, but she still cannot give me an exact figure.
• I now do complain that I was expecting a full refund and she stated that I would have got a full refund if I’d cancelled within 30 days (however she’s unsure of the exact time frame, and note this is different to the 14 days Martin said, more about that in the next section).
• It’s important to note that Jill does not describe any costs other than the HIES cost, she even says “I'm not suggesting that we pass on any other costs other that a fair cost that we've paid out for your protection” which implies that at this point the HIES deposit is the only cost they think I owe them. It’s important because they later add several other costs to my account.
• I stress to her that nothing she’s said explains why I’ve so far waited 2 months.

During this call I mostly focus on the fact that the salesperson misrepresented the need to pay the deposit to hold the price when later I was offered a lower price anyway. In retrospect I should have pushed harder on the fact I still hadn't been paid the refund after 2 months.

Jill had mentioned a 30 day cooling off period and said I cancelled outside this. I didn't pick up on it during the call, but in fact I did cancel within 30 days (11th January to 8th February is 28 days). I was aware that their terms actually state 14 days, but I wondered if she meant that HIES offered installers a 30 day cancellation period on their deposit protection fee. In that case they could have recovered that fee and therefore have no charges to pass on to me. To clear up the confusion I called back to confirm and query this.

The result was she couldn’t confirm anything about their cancellation terms and couldn't even confirm what their record of my cancellation date was. Jill then states that she will investigate and contact me "definitely" later that week. I never heard back from her.

A week and a half later on 16th April after not hearing back I emailed Hero Renewables and give them until the end of the week, 20th April to send the refund.

By 21st April I had heard nothing. It was 10 weeks after I had cancelled, well beyond the 2 weeks the law gives them. I had no response to the previous 2 emails and they had not returned any of my phone calls despite stating they would on 3 occasions. It was beyond the 2 weeks Jill said I would hear something by in the first phone call with her, and well beyond the “later that week” she said she would contact me by in the second phone call.

I’d given them more than enough opportunity to refund me and I’d made more than enough effort trying to contact them to resolve the issue. With it being clear they had no intention of actually refunding me and with no other option, I submitted a chargeback request through my credit card.

It’s worth noting that because chargebacks works quite slowly, Hero Renewables didn’t become aware of my chargeback until 20th June, another 2 months later. In that 2 month period they still made no attempt to contact me nor to refund me.

Phase 3: After The Chargeback

This is the first chargeback I'd ever done. You receive the money back almost immediately, but the merchant then has an opportunity to challenge it. This is what Hero Renewables did, and on 30th July I noticed the money had been taken from my account again. My credit card provider stated that Hero Renewables challenged it based on the “costs they incurred being greater than the deposit”. This surprised be because Hero Renewables had previously stated that the only costs were the HIES deposit which was roughly £100 (but they hadn't stated an exact figure at this point) and “minimal” admin charges, they had never mentioned any other costs and certainly nothing as large as the deposit.

It wasn’t until after the issue was resolved that I received from my bank a copy of the evidence that Hero Renewables submitted to challenge the chargeback, but it is worth mentioning it here. Along with a copy of my contract, they submitted the following statement:

"The client was fully aware from numerous telephone conversations that costs had been incurred for his project which would require to be deducted. The costs outweighed the deposit but we chose not to send a bill to this client at this time. We registered the client deposit with warranty which also incurred our costs as well as the survey costs. The client is in receipt of the signed order/warranty documentation and has discussed the installation at length with our team prior to actually being asked to go to his property to carry out our full design survey".

If you have read the communication so far you will of course realise that most of this is a lie: they never mentioned costs beyond the HIES deposit (which in any case they were never entitled to deduct), and there was no survey, and certainly no discussion about it, that's completely fabricated! Remember this is the formal statement that Hero Renewables made to their bank to challenge my chargeback after they failed to refund me or respond to my communications. They eventually admitted that a survey was not done and that the costs were not valid. Therefore they had the correct information available, had they acted with care, but submitted this false statement anyway. As a result of this statement, the chargeback was unjustly decided in their favour.

After speaking to my credit card provider, I phoned Martin to question this. Martin said there was now a total of almost £650 on my account, the majority of which was charges for a site survey and technical drawings. This of course surprised me as it had not been mentioned before and no site survey or drawings had been done. When I asked why I had not been told about these charges he said that the account showed there were numerous phone calls that costs had been incurred on the project, in reality only the deposit protection fee was mentioned, and even then the exact value was never stated. When I queried the other charges he said he would investigate and get back to me by the end of that week.

For the remainder of the call I queried him on the apparent misrepresentation of the salesperson. In retrospect it was unnecessary as they were never entitled to deduct charges anyway. Critically I also ask him if the HIES deposit is a cost that I should bear and he says it is, when in reality it is not, although I didn’t know that at the time because I’d not yet contacted HIES.

You might wonder why I hadn't contacted HIES. Part of the agreement that installers have with HIES is that they must make their complaint handling procedure clear which includes telling customers about the HIES scheme. Of course Hero Renewables didn't have any complaint handling procedure whatsoever and didn’t tell me that I could get help from HIES, which they should have done as part of the HIES code of practice. It’s worth noting that their website including their T&Cs still contains nothing about handling complaints.

The critical points from this conversation are:

• Hero Renewables added costs to my account for work that was never done.
• They also added a 20% administration charge for cancellation. Despite Martin saying how clear their T&Cs are, it doesn't mention any cancellation administration charge.
• Martin states that he will investigate these charges and get back to me within a few days. He never got back to me.
• Martin also states that the HIES deposit protection fee is chargeable, when in fact HIES rules say it isn't.
• It's also notable that at the start of the call Martin expresses surprise that it's not been dealt with yet. Martin later told me that he personally challenged my chargeback and that it was the only chargeback they'd ever had. So he was well aware of the situation but apparently feigned surprise - yet another level of dishonesty.

By 3rd August I hadn't yet received a response from Martin, but I had now "discovered" HIES and contacted them and confirmed that Hero Renewables weren't entitled to deduct the cost of the deposit protection insurance. With this new information I sent an email to Martin essentially putting my full complaint into writing, which essentially repeats what I've described here so far. One new aspect of this, after reviewing their terms and conditions was that they hadn't complied with the The Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013. An overview of these can be found on the Which? website. One aspect is that merchants must offer at least a 14 days cooling off period, they must spell out the cancellation rights in writing, and critically this must be done on a durable medium such as paper, email, PDF etc. The reason for this rule is presumably so if the merchant changes their T&Cs, the customer still has a copy of the old version that applies to them. If the merchant doesn't provide the customer with the cancellation terms properly, then the customer automatically gets 12 months in which to cancel for a full refund.

Hero Renewables terms and conditions only existed on their website, they never sent me a version in any durable medium, and therefore they were not entitled to enforce their 14 day cooling off period, so in fact I had 1 year to get a full refund. Although it’s a procedural point, it’s another demonstration of them not treating customers fairly, and it means that if the case had gone to court, it would have been another strong argument against them.

Over the next few days I was also in contact with a Dispute Resolution Officer from HIES who started to investigate the case.

On 9th August, almost 2 weeks after the previous phone call with Martin I had still not heard back from him about the charges, despite him saying he would get back to me by the end of the previous week.

There was a sequence of emails between me and Martin where he claimed that they had not received the money back from the chargeback and included a screenshot of their banking portal showing the deposit still in a "disputed" status as evidence. However he refused to investigate the survey charges until the chargeback had been resolved, despite him saying he'd do so and get back to me by the previous week, and despite the fact that the resolution of the chargeback has no bearing on him being able to investigate these charges. Furthermore, he refused my simple request to contact his bank to confirm the status of the chargeback. I had contacted my bank during this exchange and they double checked and confirmed again that the money had been sent back to Hero Renewables’s bank.

At this point I wondered if they had in fact received the chargeback money but were not admitting it in order to delay proceedings. I don't know why they would do this other than to spite me upon realising I was strongly fighting it and they had little prospect of holding on to the money, but that's guesswork. It certainly doesn't make any sense why they would refuse to make a simple phone call to their bank, which is a further example of their obstructive attitude.

The critical points from these emails are are:

• Martin had failed to respond about the charges when he said he would.
• Martin was being obstructive by unreasonably refusing to respond about the charges until the resolution of the chargeback.
• Martin was being obstructive by unreasonably refusing to contact his bank to confirm the resolution of the chargeback.

In the meantime I spoke to my bank to confirm what had happened to the money and they confirmed to me again that it had been returned to Hero Renewables's bank on 12th July. I actually mis-remembered what they said and stated 25th July to Martin, but it makes no fundamental difference.

Martin responded to this by claiming that he'd said he'd investigate when the chargeback process was complete. The previous week he actually said he'd respond "Within a few days, yes. I expect by the end of this week.", so another example of his dishonesty and obstructiveness.

Email received: 10th August 2018 12:28

Tom,

As per my previous email and our phone call of which you apparently have recordings of, I stated once the chargeback process is complete I will investigate on your behalf. This still stands.

Please see below screenshots from our merchant account.

Kind Regards,

At this point I was extremely unhappy at his attitude. As noted above he had actually said he would get back to me by the previous week. Also there was no reason he could not wait for the chargeback to be concluded before investigating. And in any case, the information from my bank was that the chargeback had been concluded, and given their dishonesty so far it was difficult to believe them over my bank.

After HIES Involvement

Shortly after this email exchange I contacted HIES again who confirmed that they had spoken to Hero Renewables and they had agreed to refund me in full. This was obviously good news, but I still needed to actually receive the money. Soon after I emailed both Martin and Jill to ask for them to confirm that they’d agreed to pay me and give me an estimate of when they would pay it back. Neither of them responded.

So 2 days later I sent another email, and again they didn't respond. In a much later phone call Martin went on to state they had done everything to achieve an amicable resolution, yet here they are not even responding to a simple question!

With no response by email I decided to phone Martin to get confirmation. This was an exasperating call as he absolutely refused to confirm what they had already agreed with HIES. He claimed that he would not agree to anything or give me any information until the chargeback had been decided. This is ridiculous on several accounts: firstly they had already agreed to refund me as I confirmed with Jill several minutes later so there was no reason to not tell me this.

Secondly there’s absolutely no reason why he couldn’t give me information (for instance about the survey charges) before the chargeback was decided. He claims he couldn’t tell me so that he’s “covered legally” but there are no legal issues with responding with facts about the case. In fact if this had been a court case he would have been chastised by the judge for not sharing facts about the case in a timely manner. There is no situation where not responding to a customer complaint is the right course of action. Martin is either completely clueless about how to handle complaints, or was being deliberately obstructive to frustrate me.

He also blamed the delay on me doing the chargeback, something they mentioned several times without any apparent recognition that their failure to refund me or respond to me in the first 2 and a half months gave me few options but to do the chargeback.

With a wall of obstruction from Martin I decided to phone Jill. She did confirm that they’d agreed to refund me, but made out that it was a "goodwill" gesture and that they had no obligation to pay me back. Remember HIES told me that they're not entitled to charge the deposit to me, and all other charges were fictitious, so I'd say they did have an obligation to pay me back! She claimed she was "more than happy" to repay me and it was "not in my interest to hold on to your funds", which are odd statements from a company which had failed to pay me in more than 6 months! She also referenced the number of times I'd phoned them, apparently without irony considering my numerous attempts to contact them are a direct result of them persistently failing to respond to my emails or return my calls.

I was also in contact with my card provider during this period to determine the status of the chargeback as it seemed strange to me that my bank was telling me the money had been returned to Hero Renewables, yet Hero Renewables were telling me they hadn't received it. My card provider told me that the money had been sent to their bank on 12th July, it was now 16th August and Hero Renewables were telling me they won't be able to do anything until 17th September.

After contacting my card provider they again assured me the money had definitely gone back to Hero Renewables’s bank. When I asked them to investigate why it hadn't they said they would need a statement from Hero Renewables’s bank stating that they hadn't received the money and that I should contact Hero Renewables to ask them to contact their bank. I said that I’d already done this and but that Hero Renewables were being very obstructive, but they said there's nothing else they could do. I therefore phoned Jill again the following day to, on the advice of my bank, once again ask them to contact their bank.

Jill's attitude on this phone call was appalling, notably:

• Raising her voice to complain at me for apparently "hounding" her company with phone calls. I shouldn't have had to make any phone calls to get a refund, and had they responded to my emails and returned my phone calls I wouldn't have to repeatedly chase them.
• Blaming my chargeback for the delay. I can only describe Jill as delusional if she thinks I'm at fault. I had little option but to do a chargeback when they had failed to refund me after 2 and a half months.

Jill did however on 2 occasions during this call say that she'd look into contacting their bank. It will be of no surprise that she never did do this, so yet another broken promise. She also repeated that she has no desire to keep hold of the deposit, which again is at odds with the fact that they failed to refund it within any reasonable length of time and failed to take any action which would expedite the repayment.

I immediately sent an email complaining about how I was treated, it should of course be no surprise that I never received a response and I've never received any sort of apology for her attitude.

The following week I received written confirmation from my bank of the date that the money had gone back to Hero Renewables’s bank, with advice for me to ask them to contact their bank. By the 24th August I had still not heard anything despite Jill saying she would investigate so I sent a chasing email including the letter from my card provider. Needless to say I didn't receive a response.

Email sent: 24th August 2018 11:26

Dear Jill, Martin,

Please can you update me with the status of contacting your bank to query the location of the money, which you said you would do early this week.

I have attached written confirmation from my card provider that the money was taken back by your bank on 12th July. Barclaycard have confirmed that your bank initiated the transfer, so I have no doubt that the money is at your bank and has been so for 6 weeks. As you can see, Barclaycard have advised me to ask you to contact your bank, which I first did 2 weeks ago on 10th August.

Regards

-Tom Allerton

As I hadn't received a response I tried to phone Jill on both 28th and 29th August. Both times a customer service person took my number and told me she would call me back, but of course she never did, demonstrating again just how dishonest Hero Renewables and Jill Oldham is, and how little they care about their customers.

It appeared they were deliberately not communicating with me, so as it was only a few weeks until mid September I decided to wait. On the 18th September I did finally receive an email from Martin Murphy which unexpectedly said that they'd received confirmation that the chargeback had been found in my favour. I cannot explain this as I'd had multiple conversations with my card provider, including a written statement from them stating the chargeback had been found in their favour and the money returned to them.

There's a few other interesting points in his email. He says "we have not held your funds throughout the dispute process so were never in a position to return the funds to you" which is not true, they had the funds in the 2 and a half months prior to me issuing the chargeback and they could have returned it to me then. Also he says "we have had no correspondence from any bank until yesterday", yet communication is two-way, they could have contacted their bank and I had been asking them to do so for several weeks, and Jill even said she would do.

I do note the apology from Martin about being unable to communicate amicably. However I find it rather weak in that he refers to our communication in general and fails to take responsibility considering the issue was caused entirely by their lack of response to my communications and failure to call me back when promised.

I did follow this up 1 week later as I hadn't received the money, again asking them to contact their bank to see how long I would have to wait. True to form, I didn't receive a reply.

In the mean time I was of course in contact with my card provider to see what has happening, to ask why I was receiving conflicting information about in who's favour the chargeback decision had been made, and where the money was. Unfortunately the banks do not work quickly but were at least saying they would investigate.

As I still hadn't received the refund 2 weeks after Martin stated the chargeback had been reversed, and he hadn't responded to my email a week before, on the 3rd October I phoned Martin to see what was happening. This was an interesting phone call. I had intended only to ask what was happening with the money, but the opportunity arose to ask for explanations about why this issue was taking so long to resolve.

To start with, regarding them not receiving the money back from the chargeback, and being fair to Martin, I do think he is being truthful on at least this part. I suspect there was some confusion between the banks which resulted in me and Hero Renewables having different information about the status of the chargeback. This obviously didn't help the issue, but given the evidence I believe that they didn't have the money in their account. However while I was busy in contact with my bank to try and resolve this, Hero Renewables did absolutely nothing despite me repeatedly asking them to contact their bank.

During the rest of the call Martin gave some conflicting answers. On one hand he did apologise for the survey charges, claiming them to be mistakenly added to my account. He also admits the issue is partly down to them and that in some aspects they didn't do the right thing, but didn't specify which aspects these were. But it felt like a hollow apology and was certainly no admission of wrongdoing; and he also says that the issue was down to me, yet fails to give any reason for this. The interesting points form the conversation are:

• Martin claims that the reason he did not respond to my queries, particularly to investigate the survey charges, was because he was "anticipating something legal" from me. This is a bizarre thing to say because you would normally try to avoid legal action at all costs. If Martin thought I would take legal action he would surely want to either provide me with evidence proving that I was wrong, or as was the case, admit that I was right and agree to rectify the situation. In either case it would vastly reduce the chance of legal action being required; by not responding he is making the situation worse and increasing the chances of further action. There is no situation where the best way to handle a complaint is to not respond to the customer, so Martin is either completely clueless about how to handle complaints, or is simply making nonsensical excuses for their poor conduct.
• I twice referred to the 2 and a half months before I initiated the chargeback, once explicitly asking for an explanation of why they didn't refund me during this period. Both times he avoids the question.
• Martin contradicts himself several times. Most significantly when I complain about the amount of time I've spent dealing with the issue, he states that he too has spent an "inordinate amount of time". Yet several minutes later he claims he "didn't battle so hard" which implies the opposite. This contradiction leads to more doubt over how honest he is being generally.
• He repeatedly claims he would have preferred to resolve the issue amicably, yet during the issue Hero Renewables have acted in every way except amicably. I read this as a subtle implication that he believes the reason it wasn't amicable was down to me, which he also states explicitly. If you've read to this point you don't need more convincing that this is very far from the truth.

In another twist, later that evening I received an email from Martin stating that the chargeback had been reversed in their favour! Again I can't explain how or why this happened, Martin asked if I had withdrawn my claim, but I was not in the position to do so as my card provider already considered the case closed. As promised, they did then, finally, refund the money to me a couple of days later, so I finally had the deposit back 8 months after cancelling the order.

Review

After considering the phone call with Martin on 3rd October along with all other communications, I came to the conclusion that there was little point in asking them to explain themselves. While confusion over the chargeback may have muddied the issue, their attitude throughout had been dishonest and obstructive, they acted unlawfully and lied to me. Both Jill and Martin on multiple occasions had blamed me for the delays, and despite a weak apology from Martin, they had failed to take any responsibility, certainly for the 10 weeks before I issued the chargeback. They repeatedly said they'd contact me or do things which they never did, they lied about charging me for the HIES fee and 20% deposit, and lied to their bank about discussing the survey with me. there is no excuse for any of these things and they appeared so untrustworthy that it seemed unlikely I’d get any truthful explanation from them.

At every step of the way they were in control of the situation and had options open to them to resolve or expedite the resolution of the issue. The fact that they never took these options demonstrates that they had no interest in acting fairly, honestly or with integrity. Their options included:

• They could have just refunded me straight after I cancelled.
• They had the option to respond to my multiple emails and phone calls in the 2 and a half months before the chargeback.
• Upon receiving my chargeback, even if they thought it was without merit, they could have contacted me to query it.
• They had the option to investigate and tell me how the survey charges appeared on my account when they said they would.
• They had the option to contact their bank to query where the money was.
• After agreeing with HIES to refund me, they could have contacted their bank to withdraw their challenge to my chargeback.

If I had done something wrong I’d be happy to attribute some blame to myself, but ultimately the ball was in Hero Renewables’s court at every step of the way. The issue was about them giving me a refund and that's something that only they have control over. It's preposterous for them to blame the delays on me or on the chargeback, to complain at the amount I was contacting them, and to claim they wanted to resolve it amicably. How can I be responsible for them failing to send the refund me? What do they expect me to do if they fail to respond to my communications? I could have gone to HIES sooner, yet in contravention of the terms of HIES membership Hero Renewables failed to mention their dispute resolution service to me, and didn't have any complaints handling procedure of their own.

Ultimately they were never entitled to retain the HIES fee and they lied to me about that - even after HIES contacted them and they agreed to refund me they still claimed the charges were valid. They were also not entitled to charge me a 20% cancellation fee, so they lied to me about that. They certainly were not entitled to charge me for the survey and designs that were never done, which leads to the question of why were these on my account? They claim they were mistakenly added, but was it really a mistake?

I carefully considered this and in particular noticed the statement they made to their bank to challenge my chargeback, and specifically the sentence "The client...has discussed the installation at length with our team prior to actually being asked to go to his property to carry out our full design survey". This is completely untrue, I never discussed a design survey, and Martin has admitted that no survey was ever done. Martin said that he personally challenged the chargeback after he just "looked at my account", so he is saying that my account showed this on the communications record.

It seems very unlikely that in addition to survey charges mistakenly appearing on my account, communication records also happened to mistakenly appear on my account. And at the same time the records of my actual communications must have disappeared, because otherwise Martin would have seen all my attempts to contact them when he looked at the communication record before he wrote the chargeback challenge. In fact it seems very coincidental that upon receiving their first ever cancellation, then their first ever chargeback, that at the same time they just happened to get what was evidently an uncommon instance of an issue that caused erroneous entries in the account details of that very same customer. And what's more, these erroneous entries just happened to change the account in just the right way to show that no refund was due. What are the chances of that?!

I also note that when I first cancelled the order on 8th February I spoke to Martin, and he specifically asked if any work had been done. He assumed it hadn't and I confirmed that, so he should have known there had not been a survey even without looking at the notes. Also when I spoke to Jill on 3rd April she was clearly familiar with the case and did not mention any survey charges, so at this point the charges were apparently not on my account. I had spoken to both of the company directors so they were personally familiar with the cancellation. Jill will have known that she hadn’t returned my call from 3rd April and that I hadn’t been refunded. Given that it was their first cancellation and first chargeback, and that both company directors were personally involved, it’s impossible to think that it somehow slipped through the cracks or that either Jill or Martin were unaware of the facts of the case.

It's also extremely suspicious that there was absolutely no mention of the survey charges until after I did the chargeback; had they been on my account when I cancelled Martin would surely have mentioned it along with the HIES charge. It should therefore have been obvious to Martin, when looking at my account while challenging my chargeback, that the charges dated from after I cancelled. So Martin's explanation just doesn't make sense.

Combining all this with their complete lack of effort to communicate with me, their general dishonesty, and their refusal to investigate the survey charges, I cannot believe that the survey charges were accidentally put on my account.

While I can't know for sure, it leads me to the opinion that Hero Renewables deliberately fabricated the additional charges in order to generate false evidence to use in their challenge to my chargeback. This seems evident from the number of coincidences that would have had to happen alone, but when added to their obstructive conduct, lack of communication, dishonesty, unlawfulness, deceitful rhetoric and subsequent preposterous attempts to blame delays on me, it's difficult to believe that the issues occurred as a result of anything other than their deliberate actions.

If you are looking to have a renewable technology installed avoid this corrupt and untrustworthy company. There are many reputable companies out there, do not trust Hero Renewables.