ACRA ELECTRIC

"As soon as I found out about this poor review I immediately attempted to contact this customer. I had to try three times to get through but finally did and offered to refund the second charge plus make any additional repairs necessary at no additional charge. She thanked me and said that would be great, but then when we attempted to schedule the work we had a hard time contacting her again and when we did get through she said she was ill and would contact us when she was better. I told her whenI spoke to her that I wondered why she did not contact me immediately when she had the problem and also why she waited so long to post the poor review. She told me it wasn't another electrician that did the repairs but rather a neighbor friend, and she really did not know why it took so long to post the review. We take these reviews very seriously and alway want our customers to have the highest satisfaction with our company and our work, so we are still reaching out to this customer to provide a satisfactory outcome. Sincerely, Robert Greco President ACRA Electric, Inc."

"This is a home built in 1998 with an aluminum buss Challenger panel. The owner had a whole house instant hot water heater installed about 2 years ago. We could not find evidence of a permit or inspection for this work, so we are not sure if the work was done by a licensed contractor or not. After we installed a new circuit breaker for the boat lift the instant hot water heater stopped working. We examined the panel and discovered that the 2 pole 60 amp breaker feeding the instant hot water heater was burned, as well as the aluminum buss that it was installed on. My electrician got a new circuit breaker out of the truck and installed it on a clean section of the buss below the overheated section and reconnected the instant hot. He also installed blanks on the panel cover to fill the unused spaces. We left the job and received our city inspection for our completed work. After returning to the office he relayed the information to us and we reviewed photographs that were taken the day we did the estimate. Upon zooming in to the 2 pole 60 amp circuit breaker at the bottom of the panel we noticed that the exposed part of the buss was discolored, showing evidence of heating which we did not notice at the time of the estimate. We have done many panel changes over the years and especially with the older challenger and ITE panels we see evidence of overheating and burned buss bars where the circuit breakers clamp on, especially the breakers feeding high ampacity loads like ac units and air handlers with heat strips. In this case the whole house instant hot water heater draws a lot of current and over time if the conditions are not perfect, as is the case with an older aluminum buss panel, the breaker will begin to heat at the spring loaded connections to the buss. Over time the spring tension holding the circuit breaker to the buss weakens and eventually the circuit breaker will fail. In the process of doing our work on this panel we disturbed the already compromised circuit breaker and the customer has now expected us to replace this entire panel at no charge. The act of removing the panel cover alone is not enough to make a circuit breaker fail, and if it does it is proof that something is going wrong in the panel, which the photographic evidence proved. We are extremely aware and sensitive to having a great relationship and pleasing experience with all of our customers and I personally apologized to this customer for the time he had to wait for his job to be done. We also installed the new circuit breaker and panel blanks at no additional charge, and even offered a discount for his trouble, however I do not feel that we should be taken advantage of by having to replace a panel that was installed in 1998 and that we were the lucky ones to identify and correct a potential problem. Also, our electrician is a licensed journeyman who is qualified to work in energized panels. Occasionally with the older panels, when the main is turned off it sometimes will fail to reset, so if we don't have to turn off the panel to work on it we won't. The journeyman was taken by surprise when the owner quickly reached in to the panel before he could warn him to stop. Even with the main turned off there are energized parts in a panel, so never reach in to any electrical equipment unless you are qualified to do so. We hope that in this case the customer will reconsider his position and pay us so we can avoid legal action. If you have any questions about this or any other electrical issues please feel free to call me. Robert Greco President, ACRA Electric, Inc. 239-542-1624"