Innovation Electric

Firstly, we have entered into civil litigation against Innovation Electric, so the purpose of this review is to provide our facts to anyone who might be considering Innovation Electric (IE). We engaged IE to help with a variety of different services in our home.
IE provided a detailed quote, and while they came in on the high side of quotes, they were a recommendation and we saw all of the good reviews online, so went with them. We agreed on a scope of work, and a fee schedule, and we signed the contract.
We paid the first installment, and IE completed the first days work.
We paid the second installment on day two however early on that day IE brought forth a new item that needed to be done that was outside the scope of work. They said they cannot continue with the job until this item was completed.
IE claimed the issue was raised by Hydro, but IE could not demonstrate that this was the case, or when Hydro identified it as a requirement. Regardless of why it came up, it came up, so we began to try troubleshoot on how to do this.
We were told that this new job would cost an additional 1500$, and they recommended a friend of theirs to do the work. We found that additional cost to be unacceptable, and asked for time to do our due diligence in getting some other quotes on this extra part of the job to see if we could get it done for less than $1500. This whole project was already many thousands of dollars, we simply could not afford this additional $1500 that we were not expecting.

IE recommended we put the job on hold right away, to avoid them/us getting a penalty charge from hydro (if they came to the site and we did not have this job ready for them). So, we did put it on hold to avoid any penalties.

It took us a couple of weeks to get this job done, because it involved being on the roof and there were some snow storms/rain in that time, but we got it done (for far less money than IEs friend was going to charge us), and called IE right away to restart where things left off.

When we contacted IE to resume the project, they sent us a bill for $1,700 to restart the project!! We were shocked!! This all started to sound very shady to us.
IE provided no reason for the additional charges - there was no additional scope to our contract, no additional hardware, no penalties from Hydro. And they certainly never told us about this ahead of the project being paused. And keep in mind, this project pause was by no fault of our own, of course this was only because they did not identify the extra job in the original contract.
IE sent the bill for the additional $1700, and stated that they will not complete the contractual obligations of our signed contract without an additional 1700$.
Since they sent the new invoice, all of our emails to IE have gone unanswered. Our text messages to Steve Li have also gone unanswered.

IE has taken over 93% of the total payment, have only done approximately 50% of the job. They have now refused to either honour the contract, nor to communicate with us. At this point, our lawyer is engaged, and the matter will have to be resolved via civil litigation which is the last thing we wanted to have to do. But what choice do we have when they will not even answer our messages? They have simply taken our money and ran!

We know they have many positive reviews online, so we were really caught off guard by this because, in our case, working with them has been a very expensive nightmare.

We paid on time, as directed. We are asking for nothing outside of the terms of the signed contract. This is extortion, and it is illegal.

I hope someone can benefit from our experience, and find a contractor who has honour and integrity in their business practices. Based on our experience, I would advise exercising extreme caution if considering IE for your electrical work, and I would obviously not recommend them.