Ruel Electric LLVC

This company was the first the electrical contractor we contacted. The initial consult was conducted on a Monday morning (10:30am). We were charged $135 for that visit. The gentleman told us that we should be receiving a quote within a day or 2. It has been 8 days now and we still do not have a quote for services. After not receiving any news by Wednesday afternoon, we started calling. Left voicemails, and got no response. Called again the next day and spoke to what we think was the Office Manager. She explained that the owner was the person required to provide the quote, and she was the one to manage getting the information back to us. However, she was going to be out of the office for the remainder of the week so we wouldn't be hearing anything from them until the following Tuesday. While all of this was transpiring, we also reached out to 2 other Electrical Service Providers we found here on Angies List. Both of these other companies immediately contacted us, reviewed the work and provided us with quotes. And we are choosing to give our business to one of those companies. I would not bother ever contacting this company again. Clearly, responsiveness is not part of their core competency.

Ruel was professional and timely even on my initial emergency call on a Sunday. They always have someone answering the phones, and the reply back immediately. They were able to fit our large job in very quickly and guided us every step of the way. We had two other quotes and Ruel beat both by over a grand.

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Warning: This is extremely long. I hope I can save someone else the heartbreak and bank-account rupturing experience that I suffered through with this company. The short version:
-Ruel will overcharge you for their work.
-The company management doesn't care about being fair to its customers.
-Blame will always be placed elsewhere, and you'll get a lot of untrue sob stories.
-They will do your project in three to ten times the necessary time, for three or four times your budget.
I learned a lot about how to handle major renovation projects through my disastrous dealings with Ruel Electric. We bought a house built in 1915, which had never had any of the elctrical upgraded from knob & tube. We knew going in that it would be a major project, but our trusted contractor said she only used Ruel to work on old houses, and the initial estimate given by manager Kyle seemed reasonable. Kyle was a bit curt, and rescheduled our initial meeting several times without apologizing, but after meeting him in person we felt that he seemed knowledgeable and trustworthy, and we went forward with the project.
Work started in January, and Kyle initially said the knob & tube work should take about 4-6 weeks at the most, and together with adding new outlets, etc., would be about $21-24,000. By March, we had spent more than 80% of the budget according to the estimate, and had exceeded that time frame, but only about 1/3 of the house had been completed. We tracked Kyle down (any time you want to ask him a question he suddenly vanishes, especially if you request a phone call), and he casually said the cost would be another $14,000. At that point he explained that the house was newer than we'd thought (we'd been told it was built in 1900), and so had been hard-wired from the beginning, which made the rewiring much more time-consuming. I don't know why we weren't told that within the first few days when it became obvious, but that's water under the bridge.
Side note: Gerry, the master electrician on our project, is fantastic and very skilled. He kept the holes in the plaster walls to a minimum and is a lovely human being. All winter, though, Kyle kept pulling Gerry off our project to deal with emergencies or return to a previous project to do additional work, which of course slowed our work down considerably. There is clearly a staffing problem at Ruel, which takes on more work than it can handle without hiring any new staff.
With a new "estimate" of $35,000 in hand, we forged ahead. By the beginning of May, the re-wiring was still not complete, and we'd hit about $40,000 in invoices paid. My husband had several question about the work that needed to be done, and kept trying to get in touch with Kyle, who wouldn't return our calls. My husband said he wouldn't pay the 4/25 invoices (Ruel gives 10 days to remit payment, vs. the 30 days that seems typical, and invoices weekly until Kyle decides to get cute and invoice DAILY) until Kyle answered our questions. Those outstanding invoices totaled about $2900. On May 7, we also had in hand the 5/2 invoices, totaling about $3300, but not due until May 12. Kyle refused to call us back despite multiple calls to the answering service and multiple emails begging to speak with him; eventually he emailed saying we were past due $10,000 and he would be pulling Gerry off the job until we paid. Gerry was about to rough in the kitchen and all other work was on hold until that was completed, so we were desperate to proceed. We weren't in front of the computer and didn't know exactly what we owed, so after Kyle bullied and blackmailed us into it, we paid $10,000 that night and begged him to send Gerry back to work. He said he'd send him the next day (no promises about the following days), and that he would invoice us daily going forward. When we got the next invoices, there was no reflection of the $3800 credit in our favor resulting from Kyle's sloppiness, and in fact we had to run all the numbers ourselves multiple times to avoid overpaying.
After that incident we demanded to speak with Ray Ledger, the retired owner who has passed the reins to Kyle. I met with him in person for an hour, and we exchanged many long emails. He made it clear that Kyle hadn't acted properly at any point, and that this wasn't how he had run things himself. At that point, he was charming and friendly, and very responsive to our emails until my husband asked if there was anything they could do to take the sting out of the fact that we had by then paid $50,000 and still weren't done. Ray's response was to say that a firm estimate on this kind of work is impossible, and that they are a small company, don't inflate their charges, and work to build long-term relationships with their clients. He was utterly unwilling to make any concession for the fact that his manager misled us, failed and refused to communicate as more information became clear, coerced money from us that we didn't owe, and would, by the end of the project, have almost tripled the initial estimate.
We ended up getting a not-to-exceed price from Ray of $77,000. As we approached the finish line we had another electrician come through and evaluate the work; before he knew what we'd paid he said that including the 200 amp upgrade and generator, the project should have cost about $45,000. We ended up hiring an electrician to do the finish work that Ruel would have charged us $7000 to complete; that electrician charged us $4000 (not to exceed pricing) and said if he had done the work from the beginning and didn't need to get his bearings, pull a new permit, etc., it would have been about $2500.
By the time we had fired Ruel, Ray ceased to be charming or friendly. We tried to negotiate a discount on the amount we owed them at that point, since we had so clearly been taken for a ride, and ended up getting $1500 taken off the total. We paid a total of $68,000, and Ray acted like that 2% discount was exceedingly generous and unnecessary on his part.
If Ruel had communicated the changes in the scope of work from the beginning, in January, we could have adapted the rest of our renovation budget to make room, perhaps putting of other projects, etc. Instead we were kept in the dark, mistreated, dismissed, and betrayed. I feel sorry for Gerry, who is honestly an amazing electrician and deserves better than to be stuck in the middle of this kind of mess.
I'm sure Ray will come on and dispute this, and claim that we were in fact the problem. Don't fall for it. We've been hearing stories from our (wonderful) other contractors about other Ruel projects that have similarly run WAY over budget and time, and now that I've worked with another electrician, who completes in 2 hours projects that would have taken Ruel 2 days, I can see why.
UPDATE after 6 months of living in the house: Gerry actually cut multiple corners and we have had to have out new electrician fix several things. He left a live wire somewhere in the wall of the bathroom, put 11 high hats dimmer lights on one switch, so it heats up so hot during use that I burned my hand on the switchplate screw, and put too many outlets on each circuit so that in this newly-rewired house we can't safely use a space heater in my son's freezing cold room. (We used the same heater with no problems in our old apartment.)

Their estimate was prompt and they just delivered on time. They were great. The customer services were gentlemen. Kyle was as great. He was in contact the whole time. We couldn’t find anything more for the price. I could not expect anything more for the quality.

The worker who came was great. He was very effect   . He is the only reason Ruel Electric got any good marks. Ruel charge for an half hour more then they where here. It was only a half hour but it does add up. So, I do not trust them to charge correctly for any other work needed. Had to hire another company to come in to correct the problem.

There were 2 smoke detectors that needed changing, a light fixture, and an outlet.  The electrician was polite, on time and cleaned up after himself.  They were easy to get hold of, we emailed at first, then talked later to set up a time.  If we weren't moving away, we'd usre them again.

We bought a home in July of 2009 with an electrical system that practically gave our home inspector a panic attack.  By September of 2009 half of our kitchen appliances would regularly shut off, so we found Ruel Electric in the phone book and gave them a call.

Ray Leger was fantastic -- as this was my first home I didn't know much about electrical systems, and he explained everything very clearly.  We originally contacted him to replace the circuit breaker, but he explained that because of the electrical code, he would actually need to move the wiring so that it entered at the front of the house instead of where it currently was in the back.  (We had attempted to get the seller to have the electrical fixes made before we bought the house, and the electrician she got a quote from didn't mention this at all.)  He also explained how he'd ground the cables and why it's important to do.

When I inquired about changing from 120 volt to 240, he didn't try to upsell or encourage it at all, but explained the difference in price and let us make our decision.  

Almost three years later we have had zero problems with our electricity.  I would be very content to use Ruel Electric in the future.

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