I’m hoping this blog post helps you to properly pick an electrician (or any trade company for that matter) to work at your home. I’ve met 1000’s of homeowners over my career and see the struggle they have figuring out which company is best for them. Should I choose the company with the lowest price? How about the one with the most professional looking vehicle wrap? How about the one that has been in business for decades? Or the brand new company that has been open for a year?
There is a lot to consider when inviting a contractor to come into you home to work. You need to trust them. You need to trust that their pricing is fair for the product delivered. You need to feel confident that when a problem arises, they will handle it and not blow you off.
Let’s start with some of the different size companies you may be considering.
First is the one man show. This is a licensed electrician who works for him or herself and does all the work themselves as well. They usually have no office staff and no employees, OR maybe 1 apprentice working with them. They will most likely be working out of their house.
Second is a mid-size company, say 4-10 electricians. This is usually the next step up from the one man shows and these size companies sometimes have office staff, but still usually don’t. The owner is probably still doing all the paperwork, taking calls themselves while still working in the field with their electricians at the same time. Depending on where in the 4 to 10 employees range they are, they could still be working out of their house, or may have an actual business location.
After that comes a full service company. These will be over 10 electricians and they have a full time office staff in place to take calls, answer emails etc. and will usually be operating with a high level of organization and quality control. They will have a professional website along with a web presence on review sites which would be easy to find / research. At this level there will be certainly be a location (maybe more than one!) that you can visit and talk to someone in person. This builds a lot of confidence with customers when there is a location to stop into, sign contracts, meet the team etc.
Now the rough numbers of employees for each type are just that, rough. A mid-size company could be bigger with the owner still doing all the office / phones themselves, but they will hit a point where it’s impossible and actually slowing things down / hurting the company. I know for myself when we hit about 7 electricians it was absolutely impossible for me to continue to do all the paper work and take the calls on my cell phone while maintaining a high quality experience for our customers. It was VERY hard for me to give up the office work to someone / train them on it, and I see most electricians struggle with this BIG TIME. They will think, well I can handle it myself, why should I pay someone to do it? Not seeing the big picture here, that doing all of that yourself is only hurting your business.
I’m mentioning all of that just to give you some background on how these companies grow, and one of the many struggles electrical companies go through. So now you may be asking yourself, well which one do I want? Any of the company types are fine, as long as they are delivering a quality job in an organized manner.
One of the biggest complaints I hear about electricians from customers is “they said they were coming on this day and never showed up!”. This is a BIG one, and often ruins electricians reputations if they continue to miss appointments, especially without a heads up. Nothing is worse than a no call no show!
This is a good example or where hiring a larger outfit might make sense. Larger companies have more employees, more capacity to take jobs on, and the ability to move employees from one job to another if someone calls out. For instance if you hire a one man show, and that person is sick that day / week, there is no one else to perform the work. Whereas a company with a large crew can easily handle one electrician calling out sick. Larger companies have systems in place to handle most curveballs.
Word of mouth versus review sites:
How about both, not just one or the other? If you have lived in your area for quite a while you must have friends or family that can recommend an electrician. If you are new to an area, you might need to rely on review sites on sites such as Google, Yelp, Homeadvisor, Thumbtack, Houzz, and the many others out there.
I’m a huge proponent of each. Any company doing good quality work will build a reputation that will spread on both review sites and through word of mouth. I will say that if you get a referral and the company CANNOT be found on any review site, it should be a red flag. If you are hiring them for a small job and feel good after talking / meeting them, go for it. But if you are hiring them for a large complex job I’d ask for references from other customers they have done some similar kind of work. References should help, but keep in mind no business owner is going to pass along a customer reference that had a bad experience, obviously!
That is why I like a combination of both. I know for myself when I’m hiring someone to do something I always ask around for references, and then do some research on the review sites. You would be amazed how critical people can be on review sites so it can give you a really good sense of what the company is like to hire.
There are SO many review sites now it’s hard to go through them all. I will say sites like Homeadvisor will ask customers to review contractors they hired, leading to contractors on that site having tons of reviews compared to a site like Yelp. Yelp will never ask a customer / user to leave a review, the reviews are supposed to come organically through the user having an experience they just have to share (Great, bad or something in-between).
Residential vs Commercial Electricians:
If you are hiring an electrician to work in your home, hire one that works in homes! Working in homes, and working in commercial situations is a completely different animal, they are SO FAR from each other it’s not even close.
Residential electricians have to be good with customers as they very well may be there, over your shoulder the entire time you are working asking questions, watching what you are doing. Commercial electricians don’t have to deal with that as they are often working on larger jobs where there are no customers around, just other tradesmen. Residential electricians also have to have a softer / more delicate touch, that’s really the best way to put it. As a residential electrician you are working in people HOMES, people care about their homes. Special care has to be taken while working in homes that is often not seen on the commercial side of electrical.
While running my own company early on I tried to turn some commercial electricians into residential electricians and completely failed. I found that some electricians just don’t have the touch, the attitude, the confidence, the flexibility, and just the plain old nice way about them to deal with homeowners. I always say, residential electricians are a different breed, and the rarest breed at that.
Verbal agreements versus contracts:
Get it in writing! Be careful if everything from an electrician is verbal with nothing on paper / email. Most companies will email or text estimates these days, and then have contracts dictating the payment terms of the job and schedule. This is especially critical on larger scale jobs.
Our own company works with contracts on jobs valued over $10,000.00. For jobs smaller (under 10K) we require an email from the customer stating they agree to do the work, and our payment terms are listed right on the estimate itself.
For larger projects we use contracts and the payment terms will vary depending on the size and duration of the project. Five days or less will have a deposit and typically 2 payments, where as a four week project may have 4 payments spread out over the duration of the project.
Again if you are trying to hire an electrician who will not put anything in writing, be careful!
Warranty:
All legitimate electrical contractors will offer some sort of warranty on their services. It’s critical to find out what their warranty is early on. You may find some contractors offer a warranty verbally only, never giving you anything in writing. If you have worked with the electrician before, this may be fine. Otherwise getting their warranty in writing should be considered mandatory. Most legitimate companies provide their warranty on their estimates for transparency. The companies offering really good warranties will make it a point to let you know as it’s a great way to build value for the customer.
The industry standard is a one-year parts (provided by electrician) and labor warranty. You may find some that offer something longer or shorter. Finding out how quickly they respond to warranty claims is important. This may be another case where working with a slightly larger company can be helpful. They typically have the manpower to respond to warranty claims and issues rapidly.
Something to keep in mind is that any parts provided by the homeowner will not be warrantied by any electrician. The electrician will only warranty parts he provides. This sounds very obvious, but the question is asked more than you can imagine!
Here at Kuhlman Electric, we offer industry leading electrical warranties: 5 Years on residential service upgrades, 3 years on everything else excluding motion sensor lights and smoke detectors that have a 1 year warranty. I’m yet to find another company with a warranty as strong as ours.
Clear Scope of Work in Estimates
Professional electricians will give a clear scope or work that they will do on their estimates, that is easy to understand for both the customer and contractor. This is critical as if there is additional work requested the estimate can be referred to for a change order.
For example if an estimate says “Replace receptacles with GFCI’s where required”, it leaves me wondering well how many is that? Is it 2 or 3 or 4 or more even? If you hire this electrician then they hit you with a change order for an additional GFCI, you won’t be able to refer to the original estimate as it was so vague.
If instead the estimate says:
- Replace 1 receptacle in kitchen with 1 GFCI
- Replace 1 receptacle in kitchen with 1 GFCI
- Replace 1 receptacle in master bathroom with 1 GFCI
- Replace 1 receptacle in garage with 1 GFCI
You know exactly what you are getting and how many. If the electrician is onsite and you have them change an additional GFCI in the basement, there is no question this is a change order and is clear to both the homeowner and contractor.
I know this all probably sounds very basic and obvious, but vague estimates are VERY common from unprofessional contractors.
Do They Offer Financing?
This is something all mature business will offer. I remember when I first took over Kuhlman Electric from my father Gary and he didn’t even accept credit cards, never mind offering financing! A wise businessperson once said, give your customers every opportunity to pay you as quickly as possible. And YES we accept credit cards, that is something I changed in 2014.
We have many customers use our third-party financing. They take advantage of the 0% financing offer for 12 to 18 months, which is amazing from the customer perspective.
If your project is on the smaller side the financing may not matter. But when you get into projects that are 10’s of thousands, companies offering financing may look even more attractive. Not to mention the companies that do offer things like financing are probably quite professional in all aspects of their business.
Wrapping Up
I hope this blog post helps you to find an electrician to hire. Here is a good checklist of things to look for:
- First impression – you only have one shot at a first impression
- Professional website
- Referrals and online reviews
- What is their estimating process? How clear are the scopes of work?
- Is everything in writing including payment terms or contracts? Nothing verbal right?
- How do they calculate change orders?
- Do they work in homes regularly? Or are they a more commercial electrician?
- Do they accept credit card for payment? How about financing?
- What does their warranty look like?
- Do they respond to calls / emails? Do they have a true office staff?
- How about a physical location you can go and talk to someone if need be?
