There's no doubt that Dale is a good electrician. His conduit bending was artful and overall, he…read moredid nice work. I haired him a couple years ago, agreeing to pay T&M or "Time and Materials"--this done to save him driving 50 miles to make an estimate. He was fine with it. Then I got his bill, and realized he was marking up materials, in some cases, bigly. That's not how T&M is supposed to work. He gets the materials and I pay him for those materials. He gets is hourly rate for shopping. But now, a couple years later, I've potentially lost $1,000 worth of food in our freezer (we're giving the food away as I type) because a GFCI he installed in my garage blew--which caused my freezer to go warm today.
As a quick fix, I just installed a regular outlet, eliminating the GFCI, but when I took his GFCI out, it looked old--like used. Then I wondered, why, with a dedicated circuit, wouldn't he have installed a GFCI breaker in the service panel, rather than using the outlet gambit, which I think is simply not as reliable a system. I'm wondering if he had an (perhaps, old) outlet in his truck and maybe failed to buy new breakers at Menards, (as he installed two circuits) so, the outlet option. Maybe there's a reason why he'd use a GFCI "outlet" as opposed to a breaker, and maybe it was a new GFCI (I mean, how could I really know if it was new or not), but between the excessive charge for materials (in fairness, he did adjust his bill, down, after I complained), he's not someone I'll do business with ever again--but his work is nice. I now use RCR Electric and/or Northside Electric.
Colin C
Cross Plains, WI