
A+ Electrical Services Inc
About us
We provide electrical trouble shooting, repair and installation in Chicago and suburbs. No subcontracting. Cost is determined by the job. No travel charges. No extra charge for after hours service. May contact through email. Licensed, insured, and registered with the City of Chicago.
Business highlights
Services we offer
Electrical Repair. Wiring. Dimmers. Switches. Doorbell. Intercom Systems. Ceiling & Exhaust Fans. Upgrade & Improvements. Electrical Construction & Improvement. Breaker Upgrades. Lighting. Safety Services. Alarms. Appliance Wiring. Pool & Hot Tub Connections. Sump Pump Circuits. HVAC Low Voltage Wiring. Outdoor Lighting. TV Cable Installation.
Number of Stars | Image of Distribution | Number of Ratings |
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"Thank you for your kind comments, we are happy George was able to help you with your projects. Please let us know if we can help you with anything in the future."
"Thank you for taking the time to write a review, we appreciate your kind compliments. We're very glad to hear that the projects went well; it's always a pleasure working with you. Just let us know how we can help with any future projects."
"We really value your feedback and are happy to hear you had another positive experience working with George. Thank you for your kind words; just let us know if we can help with any future projects."
George is definitely a thinker. He'll offer you good advice and bring up things you may not have thought of. I'll definitely use them again.
"We appreciate your nice review and we are happy George was able to help you with your projects. George is very detailed oriented and we're happy to have him serving our customers. Thanks again for your review, we look forward to helping you with any future projects."
"Thank you for your review, and kind comments. You're right, we do have great electricians; they do everything in the power to help you solve your electrical problem as efficiently as possible and leave things looking just like they found it. Please let us know if we can assist you with any projects in the future."
was one of the more stressful and upsetting experiences of my life, and the canned lights were installed with flexible conduit, which is counter to building code.
I hired A Plus to perform the electrical work for a kitchen and living room remodel ? pulling additional circuits up to 2nd
floor, moving and installing 15-20 outlets and installing 14 canned lights.
At the end of our (paid) estimation session, George told me that he estimated that completing the job would take a week of Monday-Friday work, with 1 man working for the first 1-2 days, and 2 men working for the remaining days. With George present and looking on, I sat at my computer and calculated that, at $80/hour, that meant that the hourly work would be around $5200. I added $800 to be safe, for an estimated project cost of $6000. George did not indicate that my estimate was missing anything. He did not indicate that the first hour of each visit would cost more than the remaining hours. He also did not indicate that he was omitting any part of the work that would be necessary to complete the electrical portion of my project. We agreed that I would purchase outlets, switches and canned lights on my own, so I figured that the materials costs would not be more than a few hundred dollars (hence covered by the cushion I had put in my $6K estimate), but we did not specifically discuss that part.
I GC?d my job myself, and this was the first construction project I have been involved in. At the estimation meeting, George expressed a great deal of discomfort with that, saying that he usually worked with general contractors, and expressing doubts
because my ?plans? were hand-drawn cabinetry pictures, and I was not very knowledgeable about construction. However, he accepted the job. As the job progressed, I found that George indeed had no idea how to work effectively with someone such as myself. I knew up-front what appliances were to be installed and what the room layout should be, but did not think to provide George with a mapping up front of where each outlet needed to go for each appliance, and he did not request
such a mapping. Whenever he requested that I buy a material or provide a piece of information, I did so promptly, but
he repeatedly expressed frustration that he did not have project blueprints (though he had known when he accepted the job that he would not have these), and used this as his defense whenever he had made a mistake or had not been transparent.
During the job, there were three unforeseen things that arose, which occasioned an extra 3 ? 5 hours of work, so an overrun of around$450 above the $6K expected would have been understandable. However, what actually happened was that, the rough portion of the electrical work cost $7500, George insisted that he had to be there for the inspection and wanted to charge me additional money for his time waiting for the inspector, and George said that his original estimate had not been intended to include the finish electrical work (installation of fixtures and outlets, etc.), so there would be additional charges for that. Perhaps if I had been a GC I would have understood that George?s estimate did not include these items, or perhaps he was casual himself in estimating and did not really think things through ? either way, he definitely did not make it clear to me during the estimation process that there would be additional charges for these things.
Just as bad as the cost overruns, interacting with George was a miserable process. He did not seem to know how to take responsibility for a mistake, apologize and move on. Instead, any time I brought up something that I found less than satisfactory, he got defensive and started saying it was my fault because I didn?t have blueprints for the job and I had made a mistake that caused him extra work (though that extra work took him only between 1 and 3 hours. Also, when it served his argument to say that I had terribly inconvenienced him, he said that fixing that mistake was 2-3 hours' work, but later when I had a chance to get reimbursed by another company for the time, he said it had taken only 1 hour, so I'm not sure which timeframe to believe). It did not seem to matter if I was complaining about $1K of cost overruns and the items he was citing could have caused at most a small fraction of that, nor did it help if I acknowledged accurately the actual impact of my actions ? George still spent his energy citing my errors and deficits instead of taking responsibility for his own. Also, while all of my complaints or discussion were specific to the job and the interactions at hand, George at one point strayed far beyond that to tell me that maybe it was my fault that my former contractor (who has now been sued by the Illinois State's Attorney, and who has been sued 15 times in circuit court prior to my case) stole my money.
Equally frustrating, it was very difficult to get out of a contentious conversation with George. Unless I was happy with him and agreed with him, and even if I calmly and repeatedly suggested that the conversation was not necessary, that there was no
decision we needed to make at that time and nothing impeding his work, and that we could at least table the conversation until sometime later when tempers had cooled, he wanted to keep on discussing, so during the week that he worked for me, we had multiple hours? worth of arguments from which I found it extremely difficult to extricate myself.
Also, after the job was completed, I learned that there was also a significant code violation in the work that George completed. George used flexible conduit to connect the canned lights in my home together. Two other contractors have told me that code requires rigid conduit to be used for this. They said that, while it is not a safety risk, the reason for the code is that if rewiring is ever needed with flexible conduit, it is very difficult to push wires through flexible conduit, and it is often necessary to open up the ceiling to complete the rewiring. To be clear, I do not think that this was intentional ? from everything I could see, George valued doing good work and in spite of our conflicts I do not have the impression that he intentionally sabotaged the job in any way, but still, I was left with an installation that violated code.
A Plus did make some accommodations ? they charged me only half of the extra daily first-hour fee, since I had not been aware of it, and they did not charge me for the hours that George detained me arguing. They also in the end did not
charge me for George?s time on the day of the electrical inspection. They also did work overtime to ensure that the job got done within 5 days. One of the office staff for A Plus spent about 2 hours discussing the job with me, and her view seemed a little more balanced than George?s, but she still flat out refused to believe me that the estimation session had gone as it in fact did, and refused to provide any discount based on the wild inaccuracy of the estimate.
At the end of the A Plus's work in my home, my rough electrical work had been completed, but I was very stressed from interacting with George, had spent $1500 more than expected to g
"As much as we would like to defend the inaccuracies in this review, we feel it's best to point to our previous reviews to see how happy our customers are with our work. This was a large project (total kitchen remodel, adding new circuits, plus multiple changes in living room/ dining area) and the customer was acting as a general contractor with no previous construction experience, no blueprints, and only a vague idea of what she wanted. Our electricians had the best of intentions to help her with this project despite its lack of organization. We did pull a permit for this project, our work was inspected by the city of Chicago and passed all building codes on the first inspection. Sadly, this customer was difficult to satisfy. Please read our previous reviews for an accurate portrait of our electricians workmanship and professionalism, our electricians are highly complimented for their work and recommended by our customers. Thank You."
George arrived right on time, was helpful in explaining what he was doing and the options that were open to us. After he completed his work, he left the space cleaner than when he found it.
If I need additional electrical work done at my home, I would call George back in a second.
"Thank you for your kind review. We're very lucky to have George, he gets many compliments for clearly communicating with customers throughout the service process. Thanks again for sharing your experience, it was a pleasure working with you."
"Thank you for your review, we enjoyed working with you. Please let us know if we can help you with anything in the future."
"Thank you for taking the time to write a review, it was a pleasure working with you."
"Thank you for your review, it was a pleasure working with you."
"Thank you for your compliments and for taking the time to write a review. We look forward to working with you in the future."
explained everything that he was doing, and suggested options for
handling every problem. He successfully repaired the outlet and
diagnosed the broken bathroom fixture, which he will return to replace
when we have purchased new fixtures. The work took a little more than two hours. I will be using his service again
and would highly recommend him.
"Thank you for your recommendation and for taking the time to share your experience with our company. We’re happy to hear you were pleased, and we look forward to working with you in the future."
"Thank you for your kind review. We’re happy to hear the job went well and we look forward to our upcoming appointment. Thanks again!"
After looking at the issue, George gave a very thorough explanation of what was wrong, options to fix the problem and pricing as well. His professionalism and thoroughness was excellent and I will be calling A+ again for future needs.
"Thank you for taking the time to review our services. We’re pleased to know everything went well and will be happy to serve your future needs."
"Thank you for your kind review, we’re pleased to know you’re happy with our service. We’ve enjoyed working with you over the past 12 months and look forward to working with you in the future."
"Thank you for your recommendation. We’re happy to know everything went well and look forward to serving you in the future."
"Thank you for your compliments and for taking the time to write a review. We’re very happy you were pleased with our service. We look forward to serving your electrical needs in the future."
"Thank you for your nice review, we’re happy to know everything went well and would be happy to work with you on any future projects."
Licensing
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