BELLAGAMBA ELECTRIC

Provider appeared professional and very personable, discussed job and recommended what appliances I could put on the size generator I had purchased. He informed me that the generator was not capable of handling my central AC on the ground floor, or the single wall unit AC in the upstairs study. He did the hook-up as planned, and when done I asked him to perform a check under load of all the appliances transferred to the generator, to make sure everything would work properly during an actual outage. I went around the house as he requested and turned each appliance on so he could verify that everything was working. He said everything was in order. I paid his full fee. Several months later I learned from another electrician that my generator was in fact capable of handling the AC, but that the provider should have used a different, newer type of transfer switch to accomodate the AC. I was told that this would actually have entailed less time for him to install, and thus would have cost me less overall. In addition, I discovered that he had failed to install breakers in the generator for the lights and computer outlets on the second floor, which were supposed to have been included. He had also mislabeled the breakers for the master bedroom TV outlet on the ground floor as "second story lights," and there was no breaker labelled " TV outlet in master bedroom." I called and left him several messages indicating these problems, but he never returned my calls. I then contacted the hardware store who had recommended him to me (they had sold and installed the generator itself), and requested compensation for the costs of having another electrician correct these problems, as well as hooking-up the AC with the proper transfer switch. After some haggling with the hardware store, I was paid $200 for the correction of the omissions and errors the electrician had made, but was offered no compensation for his failure to provide me with AC hook-up on the generator. I found this electrician to be sloppy in his work. He ignored my phone calls about the problems, and refused to come back and correct them. His attitude was in my opinion very unprofessional. My impression is that he may not even have been aware that a newer transfer switch was available that would have allowed for the inclusion of the AC, and that he was simply not keeping up with equipment advances in his field. I was also told that the "final check" of all the appliances I had requested at the end of the installation process could not in fact have been conducted with the generator under load, even though the provider told me that it was. If it had been, the mistakes he had made would have been caught. Basically, I feel I was deceived on this point, and that I had to trudge all over the house to help perform this "check," which could not do what it was supposed to accomplish.