It saddens me to be giving this company a 2-star rating. This was my experience…read more
I needed an electrician to remove a wall fan, venting my kitchen to the outside. I yelped an electrician, and got 5 added quotes from Yelp. Darin, the owner of Burton HVAC, was the very first response, and he gave me a low-ball quote of $85 fixed rate.
Well, they weren't rated on yelp, and had zero reviews. Their page said they had been in business for 19 years, and had electricians on staff, among others, so I decided to try googling the company to see if I could find anything else out about them. They had 5 5-star ratings on google. This being said, I assumed they were trying to increase their presence on yelp, by taking a loss on a few projects in order to get some 5-star reviews here. So, I decided to give them a try.
I called the number given in Darin's response, only to be met with "Hello." It took me aback, and I had to ask twice if I was reaching Burton HVAC. I was, and Darin said he could come straight over! Unfortunately, it was a Wednesday or Thursday when I called, and I told him I would not be available until the following week. He could choose his date and time to visit, but it couldn't be Monday. Darin told me Tuesday at 1pm would work for him, so I put his visit on my calendar. He also asked me to text him my name, address, and the time and date of the appointment so he could add it to his calendar later.
On Monday, I received an invoice via text for the services he was going to provide. I've never been billed before meeting the service provider before. And on Tuesday at 11:47am, I received a text message saying that my appointment at 1pm was 'coming up'.
At 1pm, my son took our dog and left the house for an hour trying to get him out of the way during the service call. No one had arrived at that point. At 2pm, my son came home from lunch with our dog, and was surprised to see the fan still in the wall. I had not received a phone call or any communication from Burton HVAC at this point.
I texted Darin and said "Weren't you supposed to be at my house at 1pm today?" His response was "Yes I was sending a technician your way and he should have been there at 1:00, let me see what's going on."
Darin called me 10 minutes later to tell me his technician was working on a job that was running over, and he still needed to do another job after that before he could see me! He then stated that he would just come over himself to do the work. I said that would be fine, and then he told me that it would be another 2 to 4 hours before he could make it to my house. I clarified with him that it meant he would be arriving at my house sometime between 4pm and 6pm. Darin then asked if I would like to be kept in the loop, and I told him "Yes! Please let me know what is going on."
Well, 4pm came and went, 5pm came and went, and 6pm came and went, and STILL no contact from Darin or anyone at Burton HVAC.
At 6:24pm Darin texted. It read "Okay if it's not too late I'll be heading your way. That will put me there at about 7:30"
My husband was home, and was definitely not happy with the way things were going, but at that point I just wanted the work done. I was not confident that the guy would be able to be on time on any other day, and I didn't want to waste another 7 or 8 hours waiting again, so I told him "We'll be here." And he responded with "On my way!"
Well, as you can guess, 7:30pm came and went without word from Darin. At 8:04pm, Darin texted "I'm about 5 minutes away." He arrived by about 8:15pm... for a 1pm appointment.
Darin and his co-worker were very nice. They were obviously having a long day, but still trying to do the best job they could. I realized after they arrived that (I'm 99.9% sure) neither one of them were electricians.
They worked really hard to remove the fan from the wall of my house. It was in there good. Then, they just cut and capped the live electrical wires and dropped them in the wall of my house! An electrician would have known that doing that is a violation of building codes. My husband knew it, but at the time, I did not.
Anyway, the two gentlemen both worked hard while at my house. The fan is removed. They even put a towel in the hole and taped a bag over the opening to keep bugs, etc. out until we can have the gap sealed properly.
After they left, I returned a microwave cart to the area below the fan, and plugged it into the electrical receptacle there. After their visit, there is now no power to that receptacle. We now need to have another electrician come out to properly remove the electrical wires in the wall and fix the outlet for our microwave.
I feel Darin bit off more than he could chew with my job. He needed to send an electrician & if one wasn't available, he should have rescheduled. Or perhaps he should have never quoted my job in the first place.
