Stay away from this business!
I needed to have a single wire ran from my heat sensors in my garage to link with the smoke alarms for a fire certificate in order to sell our house. After realizing that this was a short notice necessity to sell the house, I found the first good reviewed electrician and hired them. On the phone with the receptionist, she said it would be $70/worker but would probably take two in order to expedite the workload. I agreed for the business and set up the appointment for 7:30 on a Wednesday.
Wednesday rolls around at 7:30 and the two electricians show up closer to 7:45. I brief the two individuals of the situation.
I come back at 09:32 after doing a few errands to find out that they had completed their work at 9:27 (that was verified through a voicemail the receptionist left to let me know they were waiting for me to return). They hand me a slip to sign to verify the completed work. On the bottom of the slip, it states that they were both charging 3.0 hours worth of work. I question this and the lead electrician states, "oh... they didn't tell you we charge travel time?". I told them, "no, I was not aware I was being charged travel time". Mind you, the office they were coming from was in Leominster, less than 10 minutes from my house where the work was done. I let them go on their way because that was not an issue of theirs to dispute. I took a photo of the receipt at 09:44 showing the appointment time of 07:30 and them charging 3 hours each. Before I took the photo, I had the time to call the receptionist back and ask about this charge. While I was on the phone educating her about the situation, she interrupted me saying, "there is nothing I can do about this. I'll let my manager know." When I continued to tell her the facts of the situation, she said "ok", and hung up on me.
A few hours passed by and I called back to see if the manager was in. Same receptionist was not helpful and I left my number for him to call back immediately when he returns to the office. Eventually, the owner of the company called me to figure out what the fuss was about. I told him the entire situation from this morning and how I was not told during the quote about the travel time. His reply, "that's standard business and everyone knows this." "Well it may be common knowledge, but you're the first electrician I've hired. So how am I to know what is to be charged if I've never dealt with this situation before?" I said.
After we go back and forth around that topic, he denies that his employees are charging travel time on both ends of a job. I told him for the math to add up to even 2.5 hours, they would have to charge before and after my job. This leads me to believe that the next job was also getting charged for the travel time from my house to their location and the employees are then double-dipping travel time. Of course the owner denies this.
Next issue brought to his attention was how his receptionist hung up on me. "I don't hire anyone like that. I know these women personally and they would never do that." I then returned, "Sir, this is exactly what happened. We are not going to have a teacher versus the parent with the unruly child conversation. I am telling you what just happened a few hours ago." He shut that down and felt that I was lying about his employee. The entire conversation I had with the receptionist was calm and very professional. Under no circumstance should a customer be hung up on by a receptionist because that individual cannot handle the situation properly.
After going round and round for half an hour about how I should not be charged 3.0 hours of work for less than 2 hours of actual work, I told him, "Sir, this is something we can keep at the local level, but I honestly feel like I am not being treated properly here. I truly do not believe that I need to get the Better Business Bureau involved." His response, "Well then you hang up on me right now and call them. You know what is going to happen? They will laugh at you, tell you to shut up, and then tell you to pay your bill. We have been in business for over 84 years for a reason and you won't be able to do anything to stop us from continuing on. Just because you've a hair across your ass doesn't mean you need to be making idle threats."
To save me a ton of unnecessary time with the BBB, we agreed on me paying 2.5 hours. Believe it or not, this is the condensed version due to text restriction on this site.
In short, this company is shady and gives hard workers a bad reputation. Stay clear and save yourself the headache. read more
