Avoid working with Steele Electric at all costs! Their total lack of professionalism has cost us time, money and caused a whole lot of avoidable stress. Long review ahead, but the nightmare situation they landed us in justifies it, and will hopefully save others from making the same mistakes.
The short story: After bidding a large job for our newly purchased home (knob and tube replacement, new panel, new outlets and fixtures), Steele Electric showed up to work, looked around for about 20 minutes, then told me they were quitting because they "didn't have time" and there was "a lot of knob and tube." That's right, the exact job we hired them to do! Thanks to Steele Electric, we can't move into the house for at least another month and a half (the wait time for a new electrician to start) and we're going to exceed the 30 days the insurance company gave us to complete electrical upgrades after closing - still waiting to hear if we'll be subject to penalties. We'd already ended the lease on our apartment (we did give ourselves a little flex time in case the job went long, but we never imagined this scenario), so we're now paying rent at a temporary apartment, paying for a storage unit and paying a mortgage at the same time. All because they "didn't have time" for a job they signed up for. Plus we now have the headache of moving twice.
I should mention that the previous week, when they were supposed to start working, I took the morning off work to meet them at 7 am at the new house. Not only did they not show up, no one called to tell me they weren't coming. I had to wait for their office to open at 8 am to call and be told that they had been on their way, but an emergency had come up. They weren't apologetic about not calling to let me know, and worse, when I asked when they'd be starting, I was told they couldn't work until the following Friday, more than a week later! Hmm, must have been some emergency to occupy them for over a week. There were some other red flags along the way; read on and avoid our mistakes...
The slightly longer story: Steele was recommended to us by our home inspector and we decided to hire them for the work based on their reviews and willingness to do extensive knob and tube work, which other electricians I spoke to weren't as keen on. I had sent Ryan at Steele our detailed inspection report to give him an idea of the scope of work and explained that in addition to replacing knob and tube wiring we also wanted to add new hard wired fixtures and outlets. He priced the work st $16k and said within that budget we should be able to get "whatever we wanted" in terms of new fixtures and outlets. I asked if someone could come out to walk through the house so I could explain in more detail what I wanted and he declined. He said they'd done this sort of job before within that budget, and we could figure out details on site. That should have been a big red flag for us, but we proceeded out of a desire to get the work done. Next red flag: the lack of a contract. Despite setting a budget, Ryan told me they couldn't be sure exactly what they were dealing with until they started work, and when dealing with knob and tube the unexpected comes up. So they preferred to invoice me at the end of the job, while promising to keep me up to date on changes that would significantly impact the budget, rather than have a contract with specific line items and have to constantly come to me with changes. We went along with the no contract arrangement and we'll never make that mistake again. All we have in writing from them is a bid, so we have no financial recourse now that they've left us hanging and cost us a whole bunch of money.
Lastly, the two guys who came out to work on the house were nice enough, but it was obvious from the beginning that very little had been communicated to them about the job. After walking through the house with me, they told me the $16k budget and 3-4 days they had was only enough to replace the old wiring, and wouldn't include any new fixtures or outlets. Uhh, what!? Then they looked at the panel in the basement and said since it was newer and not a fire risk, I might not need to replace it, freeing up some of the budget. I've since been told by multiple electricians, after one glance at the panel, that it's dangerously wired and done without a permit. When they were telling me they were quitting, one of the reasons they gave was that nothing in the house was grounded, which was clearly noted in the inspection report Ryan supposedly read and, like I mentioned above, that there was just too much knob and tube. The inspection report (and several conversations) had made that clear, too. When I said "this is why I wanted someone to walk through the house a month ago," the best they could say is "I think Ryan realizes that now," and "he's new at this." They referred us to another electrician who, as it turns out, doesn't even do knob and tube work. Avoid Steele Electric like the plague! read more