A decade ago, someone knocking on your door to sell you solar panels would have been selling you solar panels. These days, they are probably selling you a financial product—likely a lease or a loan.
Mary Ann Jones, 83, didn’t realize this until she received a call last year from GoodLeap, a financial-technology company, saying she owed $52,564.28 for a solar-panel loan that expires when she’s 106, and costs more than she originally paid for her house.
In 2022, she says, a door-to-door salesman from the company Solgen Construction showed up at her house on the outskirts of Fresno, Calif., pushing what he claimed was a government program affiliated with her utility to get her free solar panels. At one point, he had her touch his tablet device, she…