Second Opinion
Bring us your
door-knocker
quote
Free line-by-line review. We show you where it's marked up, what a fair Calgary install really costs, and whether the contract protects you. No sales pitch attached.
Free line-by-line review. We show you where it's marked up, what a fair Calgary install really costs, and whether the contract protects you. No sales pitch attached.
A typical in-home solar sale in Alberta runs through three layers of margin the customer never sees: the commissioned salesperson on your couch, the lead-generation company that routed you to them, and the dealer-financing partner that packages the loan. Together those layers commonly add 25 to 40 percent to the price of the exact same system installed by a local in-house crew.
Flux quotes come in 20 to 40 percent below typical door-knocker pricing because none of those layers exist in our cost structure. No commissions. No dealer-financing markup. No appointment-setter overhead. Just the cost of the equipment, the cost of the crew that installs it, and the margin that keeps us here to service it for the next 25 years.
You don’t have to take our word for it. Send us the quote and we’ll show you the math.
You don’t need to be a solar expert to spot a bad quote. You just need to know which sales lines are doing the lifting.
Legitimate installers hold their pricing for 30 to 60 days. Same-day close pressure exists because the salesperson’s commission is tied to that visit and the math stops working if you shop around.
Alberta and federal rebates are not pre-approved to individuals by a salesperson. They’re applied for after install. If you’re told you’ve already qualified, ask for the program name and application number — they usually can’t produce one.
Dealer-financed solar typically includes a 20 to 30 percent dealer fee rolled into the loan principal. You don’t see it as a line item, but it’s why the financed price is often thousands higher than the cash price of the same system installed somewhere else.
Residential solar install backlogs in Alberta are measured in weeks, not half-years. Extreme scarcity language is a closing tactic.
Honest payback in Alberta is typically 7 to 12 years for residential without an EV or heat pump load. A 4-year claim usually relies on inflated production assumptions, best-case export pricing, or both.
Ask how. Monitoring accounts should be registered in your name on day one, not theirs. Rebate paperwork should list you as the applicant. When an installer controls both, you have no recourse if they disappear.
The review is written, not a phone call. You get it in a format you can share with your partner, your accountant, or the original salesperson.
Every panel, inverter, and racking product in your quote compared against current Calgary market pricing. We flag discontinued models, builder-grade substitutions, and undisclosed warranty downgrades.
Your quote’s total cost per installed watt, benchmarked against typical Calgary residential installs. This is the single cleanest number for comparing across companies — and it’s what door-knocker quotes usually fail.
We run your address through the same tooling our advisors use and compare the quote’s year-one production claim to what your roof realistically delivers. Tilted the wrong way, wrong azimuth, shading unaccounted-for — we catch it.
If the quote includes financing, we calculate the dealer-fee markup (usually disguised inside the principal), show the true cost of capital, and compare to a Canadian Solar Alberta-type low-rate program.
Cancellation rights, warranty transfer language, monitoring account ownership, lien registration, and who is liable if the installer goes out of business. Small print that becomes enormous in year 3.
Sales claims that don’t survive basic fact-checking: grant eligibility, payback timelines, production guarantees that aren’t actually guaranteed, pre-approved financing, and pressure tactics.
Four things Flux doesn’t have that door-knocker quotes do.
Door-knocker and dealer-network solar typically bakes a $6,000 to $10,000 sales commission into every quote. Flux doesn’t pay commissions — our advisors are salaried, and the funnel is inbound. That money stays with you.
Most companies subcontract the install to low-bid crews and mark up the labour. We do the work ourselves with a Master Electrician on every job. You pay for the work once, not for the middle layer.
Roof, electrical, and bill review happen remotely using satellite imagery, photos, and your utility history — on-site visits only after you’ve committed. That kills a huge chunk of the cost door knockers carry in drive time and appointment-setter overhead.
We’re not the cheapest quote you’ll get — we’re the cheapest one that still lets us be here in 20 years to honour the warranty. The companies that race to the bottom on price are the ones leaving stranded systems behind them.
No phone call required unless you want one. The written review is the core of the service.
Email a PDF, photograph the paper copy, or type up the line items — whatever you have. Also let us know roughly what the salesperson told you about production, payback, and any financing.
We return a written review: what’s fair, what’s marked up, what’s missing, and a fair Calgary price for the same scope. No sales pitch embedded in the document. You own it and can use it however you want.
If you’d like a competing quote for comparison, we’ll prepare one at the same time — typically 20 to 40 percent below the one you sent in. If not, no follow-up. The review is the service.
Flux was founded by a Master Electrician with 20+ years of experience. We run an in-house crew, and our advisors are salaried — nobody on our team makes more money by selling you a bigger or worse system. BBB A+, 5.0 Google, Tesla Certified, APSystems 2024 Project of the Year. We also publish a live map of every Alberta install we’ve ever completed.
If your system is already installed and something feels off, our takeover service covers warranty transfers, monitoring recovery, and repairs for any brand. Pre-sale or post-sale — we’re the same people either way.
No. The review is free and comes with no obligation. We’re upfront that some people send us their quote, learn what’s fair, and end up negotiating their original company down — that’s fine. Our bet is that enough people want someone local and accountable to install the system that running this service pays for itself in trust.
No. Alberta consumer protection law gives you a 10-day cooling-off period after signing a door-to-door contract, but the smarter move is not to sign under pressure in the first place. Ask them in writing for a 7-day price hold so you can review with your partner and a qualified second opinion. A legitimate company will agree. One that won’t is telling you something about their sales model.
If you’re still inside Alberta’s 10-day cancellation window for direct sales contracts, you can rescind in writing and walk away with no penalty. We’ll help you draft the rescission notice if needed. After the window closes it gets more complex — sometimes there are still outs depending on the contract language — but the quality of that conversation depends entirely on the specific contract. Send it to us and we’ll tell you what we see.
We don’t publish opinions about specific companies by name. The review focuses on the numbers and the contract — those speak for themselves. If the equipment is legitimate and the pricing is fair, we’ll say so, even if the sales approach was high-pressure. The quote is what matters.
Honestly, anything you feel unsure about. We review quotes from national dealer networks, out-of-province solar companies, in-home sales crews, referral-mill aggregators, and even local companies — any quote you want a second set of eyes on. The label matters less than the numbers.
Yes. Commercial and agricultural quotes get a longer review because the electrical and production modelling is more nuanced, but the principle is the same. Send us what you have.
Send us one of the quotes. We'll tell you whether it's fair — and what a real Calgary install costs. Free, written, no pitch.