<story><title>Ex-SolarCity employees: We were fired after reporting millions in fake sales</title><url>https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/07/3-ex-solarcity-employees-claim-company-oversaw-bogus-sales-to-inflate-valuation</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>foxyv</author><text>My partner worked for various solar companies (But not Solar City) as a canvasser hoping to get some sales experience. As a result we got to see first hand how corrupt and underhanded their sales departments could be.&lt;p&gt;Canvassers were exploited mercilessly and commissions never appeared as new requirements were added to the payouts. Paychecks bounced periodically. Canvassers would be told to go door to door in areas where solicitation was illegal even though the company knew it was illegal and risked getting their employees arrested. Managers would hire friends and use fake leads to make them look good.&lt;p&gt;I kind of hoped that Solar City would be an exception but I&amp;#x27;m not surprised. It seems like the entire solar industry is focused more on extracting government subsidies than on creating long term revenue streams. I don&amp;#x27;t think management is very confident of the long term prospects of residential solar. Especially considering pushback from utility companies.</text></comment>
<story><title>Ex-SolarCity employees: We were fired after reporting millions in fake sales</title><url>https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/07/3-ex-solarcity-employees-claim-company-oversaw-bogus-sales-to-inflate-valuation</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>mikro2nd</author><text>A trend that&amp;#x27;s been growing for quite a (long!) while now is exemplified by this article: &amp;quot;&lt;i&gt;Tesla did not respond to Ars’ request for comment on Sunday.&lt;/i&gt;&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Who in their right minds realistically expects &lt;i&gt;any&lt;/i&gt; organisation to respond to some random journalistic enquiry &lt;i&gt;on a Sunday&lt;/i&gt;?&lt;p&gt;The other major variant of this shyster tactic is along the lines of, &amp;quot;Company X failed to respond &lt;i&gt;immediately&lt;/i&gt; when asked for comment.&amp;quot; No company is able to respond &lt;i&gt;immediately&lt;/i&gt;, particularly not on an issue that&amp;#x27;s likely contentious. Any response would need to be run by their PR and legal people at the very least.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s a cheap and nasty way to make companies look&amp;#x2F;feel uncaring about the issue being reported, but imho it does nothing but reflect poorly on the reporter and publication using these smelly tactics, and leaves me wondering what other agendas they may have running.</text></comment>