Why solar panels are the new double glazing: They don't work much of the time and take 100 YEARS to pay for themselves...

Once upon a time, Lee Comer was a plumber. But he has come a long way since those days. He is now a company director and lives in a beautiful thatched cottage in Dorset complete with its own stables.

How did he make his money? Answer: out of pensioners like Wendy Hammett.

Mrs Hammett, 66, a former secretary, paid Comer's firm, Simplee Solar, more than £10,000 for solar panels at her bungalow outside Bournemouth.

The system, she was promised, would slash her gas and electric bills by 70 per cent. It was a lie.

'It has ended up costing me more,' she said. She is not alone. Other elderly customers of Simplee Solar suffered a similar fate.

In 2006, Comer and his partner Tom Callaghan were fined a total of £40,000 (with £27,000 costs) at Bournemouth Crown Court for supplying and offering goods to which a false trade description applied. That's the legal term for cowboy tactics.

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