Things seemed pretty promising at the beginning. It was relatively easy to arrange for a date that worked and they were able to come within three-four weeks; not too soon, but soon enough for us. We had recently moved into a new home and noticed some oddities that we wanted to have fixed, so this gave us enough time to also refine our list of projects. On the day of the work, they arrived on time and did a walk through with me about the list of projects and everything seemed OK. We talked about having a $500 budget and that once they got to about that amount of work, to check in before continuing. This was not at all adhered to; they finished all of our projects, but our bill was $800 in the end.
During their visit, I was concerned about a couple of things. One was that I was over-hearing regularly that they didn't have the right supplies (I don't think they knew I could hear them...). I'm pretty confident this is why we have a light switch in the wall in the kitchen where there should be a double plug (see attached). The light switch is not connected to anything. Three new receptacles were installed but we have five holes for receptacles; two unused holes will need to be patched. Not a big deal, but kind of annoying. The apprentice was left to install a light in the basement and connect it to "something done properly in the basement" (we have some un-grounded existing lights). He tied into the service outlet and I'm not confident this is up to code. On the plus side, when replacing an aluminum wire that fed the furnace, they noticed we did not have a service switch for the furnace, so they did add that to make life easier in the future.
While working in the attic (to drop feeds for new receptacles in the 2nd floor), I overheard the apprentice asking if they should point out that they noticed some chewed electrical wires up there and should they tell the homeowner. He received some round-about answer, and now I'm concerned that there may be problems up there. I did point-blank ask the electrician about this near the end of their visit, and didn't get a definitive answer on its severity.
I am disappointed that there was nothing written down about future projects to consider nor was there a final walk through to inspect what work had been done and to ask any questions about it. When they finished the list of projects, they said they were done and went out to the truck. I thought to myself that they hadn't been at the panel in the basement for a while, so I went down right away and noticed that they hadn't closed the panel back up nor re-labeled any of the breakers. Thankfully I was able to catch them before they drove away and the apprentice came in to finish things up at the panel, but it definitely did not leave a good impression.
We haven't had any electrical issues with the work that they did and I'm not sure any of it is actually incorrect, or if it's just nervousness, but I would say hire/supervise with caution.
As a side note, it also took 10 business days to receive an invoice so don't expect a speedy confirmation of how much the services received actually cost.
