Deckert Electric Inc.

Initial Business Response /* (1000, 5, 2015/07/07) */
On June 8th,after a significant storm came through Eureka,the customer called for us to come out and repair storm damage to his main electrical service. His lines were down and he was without power. The customer asked the service man who arrived...

at the job for an estimate to repair the damage and the electrician on the job told him he thought it would be about $ 500 to repair the damage. During the course of the repair, the customer informed us that the the pre-damaged electrical service had been written up by Ameren as needing modified. In an effort to not waste the customers money and be forced to redo the new service at a later date, and because we were not sure Ameren would even re-power the service in its original state, we made the required modifications as we did the repair. As far as the owners statement that we removed good undamaged wire from the job. We cleaned up our mess including the old unusable portions of his service. We would have been happy to leave any parts of the old service had he asked.
Overview:
We arrived in a matter of hours to an unscheduled job because the customer was without power in an environment where we had nearly a dozen customers without power.
No bid was ever issued from the office or in writing.
The estimate given by the electrician on the job was given before the preexisting Ameren issue was even known to him.
The job was completed correctly and efficiently in the only manner that made sense.
The customer was charged simply for the time and material used.

Initial Consumer Rebuttal /* (3000, 7, 2015/07/08) */
(The consumer indicated he/she DID NOT accept the response from the business.)
I do not accept this response because it is not truthful. I was not "written up" by Ameren. The Ameren technician that came out in the morning, at my request to disconnect the power, stated that it would be a good idea to raise the height of the weatherhead. After Ameren came out, I called Deckert to come out and give me an estimate. When the Deckert Electric technicians arrived at my house to look at the damage and determine the scope of the repair, I explained what the Ameren technician had told me. The Deckert Electric technician explained to me that to fix the damage he could remove the broken weatherhead and simply extend it higher to meet the current code requirements. I then asked for the estimated cost of the repair and he gave me the $500 quote. He also stated that I could have the incoming power line buried in the ground. I asked how much that would be, and he said it would be significantly more but he was not sure of the exact cost. He said he would call Ameren for an estimate to trench the line, and left for approximately two hours. The Deckert technicians returned and said they could not get in touch with the right person at Ameren, so I said not to worry about it and to just do the original above ground option that they explained to me. I accepted the original $500 verbal quote and we shook hands. I understand there was no written contract, but we had a verbal contract/ gentlemen's agreement. There were never any changes in the scope of the work after they began the repairs. I only spoke to the technicians once during the course of the repair and asked, "how are things going?" They replied that things were "going good." I never told them to alter or change any of the work that the technician explained to me that they were going to do. The two statements in the above response: "During the course of the repair, the customer informed us that the pre-damaged electrical service had been written up by Ameren as needing modified." and "The estimate given by the electrician on the job was given before the preexisting Ameren issue was even known to him." are bold face lies. My disappointment of the company not honoring the original quoted agreement, or at least coming close, has been further enhanced by the lies found in their response. I was not in any sort of emergency situation. The Deckert technician had ample time to look at the damages and come up with a repair estimate. At no time did the technician say that the original estimate was wrong or needed to be adjusted. They also did not say the scope of the work needed to be adjusted or changed during the course of the repair. I think it goes to show how unreasonable, unprofessional, and untrustworthy the company is by their lies and unwillingness to budge even one penny on an invoice that was 100 percent more than the original verbal estimate, of which there was no changes or modifications in the scope of the work.