Do NOT under any circumstance hire Higher Calling Electric!!! Tobias, the owner, is dishonest, extremely unprofessional, and actually stole from me.
I met with 3 electricians before hiring him to bury an overhead electrical line and create a new breaker box upstairs.
We were very upfront with each company about the amount of rock they would encounter when digging the trench to bury the lines. Tobias was very boastful about how he would do the job for much less than his competitors. We hired him based on our agreed price of $5785 ($600 to dig the trench and $5185 for the breaker box installation/electrical).
Before the trench was completely dug, Tobias contacted me to say that I owed him an additional $200 over the original quote for the work done so far, and that it would be $1160 MORE for him to actually finish the job. When I expressed my frustration and reminded him that we choose him because he boasted about being less than his competition, he told me that, "situations occur that are not foreseen it's a quote / change orders occur frequently but I'll just stop there if you like and you can choose another company".
At this point, our only access to our door was walking on boards to cross a giant 3' x 3' trench dug through our driveway and front yard to our house. We didn't' feel like we had time to start over with hiring a new company to finish the mess that was created, so we agreed to the higher price.
If this drastic increase in price wasn't bad enough, when hiring Tobias, we had requested that we would be given notice for when power would be shut off for long periods due to us having a 2 year old, an infant, and a child with special needs in the home. Tobias assured us that it would be no problem to give us notice and that power would never have to be shut off for long durations. But after work began, he would send workers at unscheduled times and we'd have to change our entire schedule abruptly. One particular day, an employee from his company arrived with no notice and said that power would be cut off for a few hours. Upon calling Tobias and inquiring why notice wasn't given and reminding him that we have very young children in the home and need notice for power outages, he actually threatened us that if we did not allow his employee to continue, he would just cut our power off the entire day next time. I have never encountered an electrician that threatens his customers with his power to cut off their electricity.
The worst part of our experience was the day he sent someone to fill in the trench where the electrical lines had been run. I was at work while this took place and was furious when I came home. Tobias failed to prepare and didn't have any gravel delivered to create a foundation for filling the giant trench. Upon seeing the lack of dirt/gravel, the bobcat operator called Tobias and asked what he should do. Tobias, without ever consulting with me, the home owner, instructed his worker to just scrape up my gravel parking pad, which we had just had delivered approx. 6 months prior, and fill in the trench and then cover it up with fill dirt. He stole our gravel and never even mentioned it to me until I called him! Tobias told me that he needed my gravel to finish the job and would replace it; like this was acceptable behavior and completely normal to take a homeowner's parking pad and use it to complete his job.
He never replaced my gravel. He had crush and run (a much cheaper product & what he should've used to fill the trench) put in its place. He claimed that's what he stole even though I provided pictures of the gravel we had just recently had delivered. Our parking areas are still without gravel! After much back and forth, during which he screamed at me on the phone, he then refused to speak to me and stated that his wife will handle everything from that moment forward. Upon speaking to his wife, she was apologetic and offered to at least overseed and lay straw down in our front yard to make up for the problems. We reluctantly agreed to have them do this. Tobias then contacted me and told me that he didn't want me speaking to his wife (?) and that he'd charge me for the overseeding and straw if we want that job done, despite his wife offering this to help make up for all of the problems we encountered. I told him to never come to our home again and we'll get his mess fixed ourselves.
In addition to the major issues we encountered, some of the minor issues include: the downstairs breaker box was never labeled, the old electrical boxes were left dangling by wires on the side of our house, soffit was ripped off and not put back in place, the main power to the house that the electric company monitors was shut off without them being notified, and a wire was left dangling overhead.
After witnessing his bizarre, irate, and unprofessional behavior, I would never want Tobias near our property or family for any reason. read more
