Fabian Electrical Renovations

Type of work: Electrical rough-in and finishing for new basement

Incompetence, delays, unethical behavior, rudeness: that's how I describe Fabian and his work.

First he gave me a low rate to get my business but just a couple small changes and the quote goes up by $1100! I thought no problem, I will give him the extra money given he does a good job.

I have now spoken with many electricians and a typical basement rough in takes 2-3 days max. It took Fabian almost a week. He works slow, tries to save money by using his unlicensed helpers/his children, which is illegal. He also had my general contractor do a lot of the electrical work
whereas the contractor is not a licensed electrician. This will all be reported to ESA.

Rough-in time my expectation was 1-2 days as he had told me.
Every day he had some excuse about missing wires or components that he didn't have. I was holding off on drywalling just due to him finishing his rough-in. He cost me a lot of delays in this. He's extremely incompentent but he also keeps taking on more customers.
Due to COVID the reno market is booming and instead of caring about his existing customers he keeps taking new ones and causing delays for existing customers. DO NOT ever give him too much money or he would stop showing up!

Finishing time was even worse, I should have got someone else for finishing due to his behavior. He said he'll show up monday, nope, then says wednesday, nope, finally shows shows up friday. He does work a full day but takes 80% of the money, which is my fault. I should not have given. Due to previous experience I should have given him less than 50%.
As the amount of work he did was less than 50% by the end of first day.

Now his excuses start, he's blaming drywallers for knicked wires
when he should have run the wires higher and what's what I was told by other electricians. So he made a big deal of that. My contractor helped him fix this by cutting up the drywall saving him a lot of time, money and effort.

He makes the same complaint about couple other wires claiming they were cut by drywallers.

I am pretty sure he laid bad wires.

So guess what he ended up leeching connection from existing wires that
were laid by the builder!

He also put some of the outlet boxes in wrong places.
He's an extremely rude person and he comes and tries to indimidate you
saying I gave him wrong measurements. First of all, there were no measurements and he should have asked me before putting the outlets where he did. Regardless he made a big deal, my contractor helped him again to move the box.

He also re-used a lot of my existing components saving him a lot of money. He did not give me any discount or reduction in price for this.
I had extra outlets from builder throughout the basement and he ended up using most of them. I had existing light boxes from the builder all throughout my basement and he used all of them without giving me any reduction in price.

As per the basement permit I told him all alarms need to be 3-in-1 with strobe light. He still puts smoke only alarm without light and when I told him the inspector does not accept this, he starts fighting with me.
He threatened me "not to get on his bad side".

The worst of all were the delays: he said he placed online order since he didn't want to spent too much money buying from local supplier. That's fine with me, but not when it takes 3 weeks.

After that first day when he took 80% of the money for finishing, the next time he showed up was 3 weeks later! He has no sense of service to customer who has already paid him most of the money!
He constantly speaks false about showing up and doesn't show up on those days.

He had my contractor do a lot of his electrical work whereas my contractor is not licensed electrician. I will be reporting this to the ESA.

He got into a big fight with me when he didn't show up one a day after delaying multiple times and told me he wants to come only once to finish up. I stayed patient, he came later on and obviously he didn't finish that day as he was missing electrical components. He had to come back twice after that!

His last visit on which he was supposed to have finished the work, he gave me non-working doorbell. He messed up the electrical panel connections. The furnace breaker and switch
don't work. I havn't checked but I am sure there are others that are also problemetic.

A lot of the switch and outlet boxes are crooked.
His finishing is horrendous.

This so called electrician is extremely incompetent; he speaks untruth and causes delays. He tries to intimidate you and makes excuses for his crappy work. He even breaks existing things that were working fine before he got there.

He put bad switches in a few places. When I complained to him about
shower light not coming on properly he starts fighting with me.

And he messes up simple rough in and finishing.

Avoid at all cost!