The No-Show Problem Is Bigger Than Most Buyers Expect
Industry sources cite no-show rates running 30% to 40%, even on leads and appointments you already paid for. That is not a rounding error, it is roughly one in three appointments that quietly evaporates before your rep ever knocks on the door. If your vendor's contract does not say what happens when that happens, you are absorbing that cost silently every month.
Three Policy Shapes You Will Run Into
Solar lead and appointment vendors fall into roughly three buckets on this question. The first is a stated guarantee: Solar Exclusive markets "guaranteed appointments or you don't pay," a vendor-published claim worth pressing on to confirm exactly what triggers non-payment. The second is risk-shifted pricing: RunsForYou offers a commission-only option where you pay nothing until a lead actually closes into an installed system, which removes the no-show question entirely by moving the payment trigger downstream. The third, most common across the category, is silence: no stated replacement policy at all, which by default puts the no-show risk on you.
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Book a Solar CallWhy a Guarantee Headline Needs a Follow-Up Question
"Guaranteed or you don't pay" sounds like it fully protects you, but the word "guaranteed" can modify three different things: that an appointment gets booked, that the homeowner shows up, or that the homeowner turns out to be a genuine prospect once your rep is there. A vendor's marketing page rarely spells out which. Ask directly, in writing, what specifically triggers the guarantee and what does not count.
What an Unprotected No-Show Actually Costs You
The math is direct. At a documented no-show rate of 30% to 40%, roughly one in three appointments you paid for never happens, and if your vendor does not replace or waive it, your real cost per kept appointment runs somewhere between 43% and 67% higher than the sticker price implies, before you even factor in close rate. That is the entire argument for a guarantee that actually removes billing on a no-show, not one that promises to "look into it."
Five Questions to Ask Before You Trust a Guarantee
- Does the guarantee cover the booking, the show, or the qualification, specifically?
- Is a no-show replaced automatically, or do I have to file a dispute?
- Is there a stated claim window, and what happens if I miss it?
- Does the guarantee apply to every appointment, or only above a minimum volume?
- Is there a commission-only or pay-on-close alternative available if the guarantee feels thin?
Get these five answers in writing before your first invoice, not after your first dispute.
The Cleanest Policy Never Bills the No-Show at All
The simplest fix to a vague guarantee is not negotiating a better dispute process, it is buying from a model that never bills a no-show in the first place. VA Horizon's solar appointments are exclusive, double-confirmed, and billed only on-criteria: a no-show never appears on the invoice, and weekly billing runs from logged, receipts-backed appointments you can check against what you actually received. That removes the dispute process instead of making it faster.
What this means for you
- Documented no-show rates of 30% to 40% mean an unprotected appointment vendor is quietly costing you 43% to 67% more than the sticker price.
- "Guaranteed appointments" can mean the booking, the show, or the qualification. Ask the vendor to specify which before you buy.
- The cleanest policy is one that never bills a no-show at all, not one that refunds it faster after a dispute.
Sources
The external data in this guide draws on the sources below. Figures described in the text as estimates or industry triangulations are directional and are not attributed to a single dataset.
- Solar Exclusive, buy solar appointments
- RunsForYou, solar leads pricing
- Invention Solar, how much do solar leads cost
- Omnivortex, Solar Pay Per Deal