Are all electricians like that?

malamala

Before we moved into this house, we had it rewired.

We paid the electrician in full after the job was almost finished. At that point, we believe most jobs were done, except:

0 Wiring up of the shower (we have not installed a shower yet at that time)
0 Install extractor fan in the toilet

The electrician lives just opposite to our new house, and he said he can easily fix that for us anytime (and so we believed.)

Since then he has been promising to come 'tomorrow' almost everyday but he never came and never called to let us know about not coming. When we finally got hold of him, he would say 'I'd send someone tomorrow'.

No one turned up and he didn't call at all. It's been like that the past 4 days. We were just told they would come but nobody came.

In the end I called his home no., his wife answered and she knew at once who I am when I mentioned my name.

She apologised for letting us down and explained there's some tragic in their family, her mum's someone was killed. I was shocked and embarassed so I said sorry as well. She said she would ask her husband to call us once he returned home (yesterday) and will sort out our shower asap. So I believe her words.

Here comes today, still no call, no message whatsover.

Wiring the shower up is actually very easy according to my husband but he would not do it for safety reason.

My husband suspected the electrician has not done earth bonding at all.

We paid in full by cash but we have not got a receipt yet, nor our spare key back

If he has bad news in his family I would totally understand, but I would expect a phone call to let us know when he cancelled appointment. But now we suspect if the tragic news was fake, as it's been about 10 days since he gave us wrong promises.

Sorry about the long post.

I know not all electricians are not like that but I am just really upset about this.

Lesson learnt is, no matter who they are, DON'T PAY IN FULL UNLESS THE JOB IS ABSOLUTELY DONE. RETAIN SOME MONEY IF THERE ARE SOME MINOR JOBS NEED DOING.

Any advice for me?

Thanks!

Slider

You need to have a talk with him direct (face to face) to find out whats going on. Without your completion certificates etc, you are going to be in trouble if you try to sell the property. Is he registered with NICEIC?

Ditto

Have the face to face talk with him at least to get your spare key back. While talking to him you can gage if he is lying to you about the family probs - maybe he is spinning you a line to get you to get someone else to finish the job off.

YorkshireBoy

When I was 'on the tools' and doing re-wire 'foreigners' many years ago, my biggest fear was being reported to HMRC for non-declaration of income.

You may find that mentioning this to your 'electrician' will hurry him along a little.

However, what it may not do is get you a BS7671 test & completion certificate or Part-P certificate. For this you may have to employ the services of a reputable firm and/or your local council. Of course, you will want to negotiate payment for this work from your 'electrician'.

malamala

Thanks very much for all your advice.

Yes the electrician is registered so he can issue cert.

Yes WE WILL BE IN TROUBLE without the certificate because our mortgage lender has retained a few thousand pounds on our mortgage. All the other jobs have been done and all cert. received. Only this one is not finished.

As some of you said, the electrician might be spinning us round hoping we would get someone else to do it.

He looked so sincere, and he lives just one minute walk away from us. Our neighbour knows him too.

Am really surprised how someone doesn't care about their reputation like that.

paragp

unfortunately electricians are not the only ones who do this..
we had a builder doing a an extension at our house who left the work 3/4 complete, we took him to small claims cour, we won the case and guess what, the builbder declared bankruptcy!!!!....

it almost seems like with these tradesmen, there is no winning.. you do things their way or you are stuffed!!!!!!!

malamala

paragp wrote:

unfortunately electricians are not the only ones who do this..
we had a builder doing a an extension at our house who left the work 3/4 complete, we took him to small claims cour, we won the case and guess what, the builbder declared bankruptcy!!!!....

it almost seems like with these tradesmen, there is no winning.. you do things their way or you are stuffed!!!!!!!

That's ashamed

This electrician just lives 1 min walk away from us, so we really did not expect him to ignore us.

Still have not heard from him despite leaving messages on his mobile.

Husband thinks maybe the electrician has not done earth bonding and he does not have time to finish it off, or he has lost our key.

Anyway, it's driving me mad not communicating with us.

I wish we had hold back some money from him