Solar Cancellation Companies: How Attorney-Backed Firms Work and How to Spot a Scam

How do attorney-backed solar cancellation companies work?

Disclosure: Candid Yak works with Titan Advocacy Group, a solar consumer advocacy firm, and may be paid when readers hire it.

Attorney-backed solar cancellation companies start with your paperwork and work toward a signed agreement with the installer or lender. A firm that offers a free case review reads your contract, financing documents, payment records, utility bills and messages from the seller, identifies every company involved and the gap between what you were promised and what you signed, and, for clients it accepts, retains an attorney licensed in your state who signs a written engagement directly with you. It comes after the free routes, and no legitimate firm can tell you in advance what the lender will decide.

A solar cancellation company, as this guide uses the term, is a business that helps homeowners negotiate or contest their way out of a solar loan, lease or power purchase agreement (PPA). An attorney-backed firm is one whose legal work on your file is done by a licensed attorney you can name and look up. Whether a firm can get you out turns on the contract type, the dates, your state and the facts, and cancellation is never automatic.

What should you do before you contact any firm?

Work through these in order, and stop when one works.

1. Inside a cancellation window? Cancel in writing now, by the method the contract and the law require, and send a copy to the lender the same day. Windows vary by state; the deadline tool helps you count.
2. Identify your contract and every company. Use your documents to find your contract type (cash, loan, lease, PPA, or PACE) and every company involved: the installer, the lender, the loan servicer and the warranty provider. They may be four different companies.
3. Ask in writing, and complain for free. Write to the installer or lender, say exactly what you want, and get the answer in writing. For a system you bought, the FTC says, “If you have a problem with a system you bought, try to resolve it with the company first,” and if you’re not satisfied, to report it at ReportFraud.ftc.gov and to your state attorney general. For a loan, the CFPB’s complaint page asks, “Have you tried reaching out to the company?” For a lease or PPA, Treasury, the CFPB and the FTC jointly “encourage consumers that believe they have been a victim of unfair or deceptive practices to file a complaint with CFPB, FTC, or their relevant state consumer protection office.” Add your state contractor licensing board.
4. If they refuse, and your documents show a gap between what you were promised and what you signed, get a free case review from an attorney-backed firm. A 2024 CFPB consumer advisory says, “You can submit a complaint to multiple places, and you can also consult an attorney at the same time.”
5. Other routes: a buyout for a lease or PPA, a payoff or refinance for a loan, or a transfer when you sell the house. The main guide covers each.

You don’t need to pay anyone before the installer or lender answers your written request.

What does a firm do with your file?

A legitimate attorney-backed firm works in this sequence:

1. Consultation. You explain what happened. The firm should tell you plainly if a free route, such as an open cancellation window or an unanswered written request, is still available.
2. Documents. You send the signed contract, the loan agreement and its Truth in Lending disclosure (or the lease or PPA), payment records, utility bills, and every communication: the proposal, ads, texts, emails and e-signature records.
3. Review. The firm identifies each party and what each one owes you. That matters because the four roles may sit with different companies: Mosaic loans, for example, have been serviced since September 22, 2025 by Solar Servicing LLC, a Forbright Bank subsidiary. The CFPB describes solar deals in which sales, installation and financing “often blend into a single interaction,” so the review also separates who promised what. It then measures the gap between those promises and the paper.
4. Retained counsel. For clients the firm accepts, it retains an attorney licensed in your state, and you sign a written engagement directly with that attorney.
5. Strategy. The attorney decides which claims fit your documents and which company to approach first. For a seller-arranged loan, that can include the FTC Holder Rule notice, which makes the holder of the loan subject to your claims against the seller while capping recovery: it “SHALL NOT EXCEED AMOUNTS PAID BY THE DEBTOR HEREUNDER.”
6. Negotiation. The attorney negotiates toward a written result: a modification of the loan or lease, a settlement, a release, or a cancellation. A complete result also deals with any UCC filing on the panels, which for a paid-off consumer loan the lender must terminate within one month under UCC 9-513, and with credit reporting.

Keep paying while the file is open. A legitimate firm won’t tell you otherwise, and missed payments can bring late fees and default; on a secured loan, the CFPB notes the lender “has the right to repossess the panels in cases of nonpayment.”

When does the firm bring in an attorney?

At the point where your file needs legal judgment: deciding which claims your documents support, writing a demand that asserts them, and negotiating a release you’ll be bound by. That attorney should be licensed in your state and named in a written engagement you sign directly.

Ask who pays the attorney. If the firm does, the American Bar Association’s Model Rule 1.8(f) allows a lawyer to accept pay from someone other than the client only if “the client gives informed consent,” there is “no interference with the lawyer’s independence of professional judgment or with the client-lawyer relationship,” and your information stays confidential. The ABA says its model rules are advisory and that each state’s rules control, so ask the attorney how the rule works where they practice.

Look the attorney up yourself. The ABA says “your state maintains current records of registration and discipline information for lawyers licensed to practice in the state,” and that there is no national license to practice law. Ask, too, whether the engagement covers arbitration or court if negotiation fails, or whether that would take a separate agreement. Our attorney guide shows what a claim worth a lawyer looks like.

How do fees work, and what should you get in writing?

Candid Yak found no published, verifiable price list for solar exit services, so this page gives no typical fee. The quote should come after the review, in writing, and before you pay anything. Get these answers on paper:

• What is the total fee, and what triggers each payment?
• What happens to my money if the installer or lender refuses in writing?
• Which attorney will handle my file, and is any legal work billed separately?
• What counts as a finished result: a signed modification, settlement, release or cancellation?

For the attorney’s own fee, the ABA’s Model Rule 1.5 says the scope and basis of the fee should be communicated “preferably in writing,” and a contingent fee agreement “shall be in a writing signed by the client” that tells you which expenses you’ll owe “whether or not the client is the prevailing party.”

The firm’s own contract can carry a cancellation right, too. If you sign an exit company’s agreement at your home, the FTC’s Cooling-Off Rule can give you until midnight of the third business day to cancel it, and the FTC counts Saturdays as business days.

How do you tell a legitimate firm from a scam?

A firm worth hiring passes every item on this list:

• It reads your documents before it quotes, and tells you plainly when a cancellation window, a written request or a complaint is still open to you.
• It names the attorney who will handle your file, licensed in your state, whom you can look up with that state’s lawyer regulator.
• It puts its fee, and what happens to the fee if the lender refuses, in writing before you pay.
• It never tells you to stop paying your loan, lease or PPA.
• It never promises a result and never claims a connection to your installer or lender.

What does the enforcement record on exit scams show?

Candid Yak searched for government enforcement actions against solar cancellation or “solar debt relief” companies and found none as of October 20, 2026. The record that exists comes from timeshare exit, where companies sold the same kind of service to owners of a different long-term contract. These two cases are timeshare cases, and nothing in them is a finding about any solar company.

Timeshare case one: a $140 million judgment in an FTC case. On April 20, 2026, the FTC announced that a federal court ordered Christopher Carroll to pay $95 million in consumer redress and a $45 million civil penalty, and permanently banned him from selling timeshare exit services. Carroll was president and CEO of the Square One Group, one of the companies in a scheme that also operated as Consumer Law Protection. The FTC said the scheme falsely claimed to be associated with timeshare companies, falsely told consumers they couldn’t exit a timeshare without paying its fees, failed to provide promised refunds, and used contracts consumers were told they couldn’t cancel, in violation of the Cooling-Off Rule. The Justice Department said it harmed over 11,000 consumers, who paid “from $5,000 to over $80,000.”

Timeshare case two: Washington’s Reed Hein consent decree. In September 2021, timeshare exit company Reed Hein & Associates agreed to a consent decree requiring it to pay Washington $2.61 million, with $19 million more due if it violated the decree, for a total judgment of $22 million. According to the attorney general, more than 2,800 Washingtonians paid upfront fees “ranging from just under $3,000 up to tens of thousands of dollars per ‘exit,’” and the company advertised a “100 percent money-back guarantee” while treating foreclosure as a successful exit. The attorney general described a customer who stopped paying on the company’s advice and then faced a collection action he couldn’t fight. Another couple paid $6,600, then learned their resort’s owners’ association offered an exit for a form and a $20 fee. The decree required the company to stop claiming it “forces” or “compels” resorts to take timeshares back, to disclose that files may be outsourced, and to set aside at least 20 percent of each customer’s payments for refunds.

Each of these points turns into a check you can run on a solar firm:

• A claimed tie to your lender or installer. Ask the lender directly. A legitimate firm says it has none.
• A claim that you need the firm to get out. A legitimate firm expects you to have asked the installer or lender yourself, and the Reed Hein couple’s $20 exit shows why.
• Money taken before anyone reads your contract. A legitimate firm reviews first and quotes in writing.
• A guarantee that defines success against you. Get in writing what counts as a finished result and what happens to the fee if it isn’t reached.
• Advice to stop paying. Treat it as a reason to end the conversation.
• A file nobody can account for. Get the name of the attorney on your file before you pay.

Keep the loan question separate: if you qualify for a lower rate, a personal loan can replace a high-cost solar loan, though you should ask the attorney on your file first whether a payoff affects your dispute.

Disclosure: Candid Yak works with Titan Advocacy Group, a solar consumer advocacy firm, and may be paid when readers hire it. This page’s author, Kira Fairbank, is a manager at Vacation Ownership Consultants, a timeshare exit firm.

This is general information, not legal advice. Whether a firm can help depends on your contract, your dates and your state’s law, and a state may regulate debt adjusting and similar services directly, as Washington does. Before you sign an exit agreement, send a demand, or change any payment, have an attorney licensed in your state read the documents.