Powers Generator Service

Originally we had agreed to getting one very expensive generator for our aunt who is elderly, but then she died after my husband had paid them in full for it to the tune of 13,170.00 but before any work had happened,so we decided to get two modest generators instead, one for her house because we were keeping it, and one for our main residence. You would think that $13,170.00 would be enough for 2 modest generators but they wanted more money, and we reluctantly agreed. We stopped agreeing when they wanted to charge even more to move a heater we had recently installed, so we cancelled the job and they sent a refund check. After discussing it we decided to cancel the generator to our main home as well because we had only decided to install it because they already had so much of our money, we really didn't need a stand by generator, and we quite frankly felt like they were ripping us off after finding out we could get a similar generator for 5k when they were charging us 8k. Instead of refunding the money minus 15% of THE DEPOSIT as their contract states, they kept a random amount of money. I am just going to give you the text as it was written by Greg Linton and myself: There was some question about the refund amount we provided from the canceled generator purchase so I wanted to try and address that. We had a deposit amount of $13,170 for installing two generators. When the first project was cancelled we opted not to charge a fee since we were still going to install a second generator for your family. When the second generator was cancelled we opted to charge a fee consistent with our costs of the projects. So we were entitled to an overall cancellation fee for the two projects of $1975.80 but opted to only charge $820. My response: As I understand the check was mailed and that is fine, I am not going to get into a big fight over 200 dollars, but I do want you to understand the following: First, I assumed that as any good business would do, that because Ed and your line guy told me that they would not be able to install the generator in Wilmington unless we spent $1700 more than the contract indicated, given that your company was unable to honor the original terms of the contract as it was laid out, that good business practice and legal necessity would have driven the company to a full refund. That you were unable to perform constitutes, in legal terms, an anticipatory breach of contract on the part of your company, which voids the contract and thus you were not entitled to retain any of the funds related to that job. Second issue is that the deposit was not $13,170, just because my husband gave you more up front than what was indicated on the contract as a deposit doesn't make all of the money deposit. The contract itself indicates specifically that the deposit was $4105, with the balance due at the completion of the job being $4105. hence my expectation that 615.75 would be withheld and no more. If you are going to try to interpret all monies received prior to job completion as deposit then I am certainly going to go to all of the review sites and let people know that they shouldn't give you any more money up front than is required unless they want to lose more than they were counting on if for any reason they need to back out. I want you to understand that I do sympathize with you and Ed as salespeople, I am a real estate agent and have had many situations where I ran around for people and spent my time and then had the deal blow up and it ended up being a loss for me. That is just the unfortunate nature of sales. I understand that you feel that your losses exceed the 615.75, and perhaps they do, I am not privy to your accounting or what type of financial investment you make up front on these deals. That fact does not, in my estimation, create a situation where you are justified in using tricky math to take more than was contractually agreed upon. We had given a substantial sum of money up front, if it isn't worth your time to work within the parameters of the money we actually have to spend then fine, but my opinion of the company has been downgraded, and you should know that reputation is everything now more than ever with all of the review platforms available. SO, Greg opted to get creative about what constitutes a deposit to justify keeping more money than they were entitled to. They did not have a deposit of 13,170.00, the deposit was 4105.00, they happened to have more of our money than just the deposit, but that doesn't make all of the money deposit, as the amount of the deposit was clearly stated in the contract. Further it should be noted we had a very nice generator installed by one of their competitors for $5000.00. They wanted over 8k for our home generator and almost 7k for the one at the aunts house. I gave them the option of retaining the business by simply coming back with a more reasonable price, meaning staying within the very generous amount of money that we had already given them, but they refused. You can decide for yourself if that seems reasonable or if they are too expensive.

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Tech arrived on time. Completed maintenance & function check in about 90 minutes. Communicated clearly & was pleasant to speak with.

The Powers Generator Service team was terrific.  They were courteous, they knew what they were doing, and they explained it all well.  I had major problems with Suburban Propane when they connected the generator (I should have gone with the company Powers uses).  The woman on the phone at Powers was able to set the propane guys straight on one issue, the techs then found a leak from the propane guys when they came back.  The difference between the two companies was astounding.  I felt some comfort knowing that the Power's folks looked over the propane connections and spoke with those workers to make it safe.
I also appreciated that the scheduled all the inspections along the way.
Since the installation we had one issue with the generator that turned out to be human error (oops), but Powers was pretty good about responding.  And the generator is wonderful with all the outages we get.

Brief history to provide reference point. Called this company over a year ago to troubleshoot and fix a problem. They were prompt, professional and effective. I was super happy. Soon after I began receiving regular calls asking me to sign up for a Maintenance contract, (opted not to).
Called them this spring to complete an annual service and troubleshoot a problem with the system draining the battery. Technician arrived got right to work on the service. Before he left my wife called me so I could explain the issue I was having with the battery, I could sense he was only half paying attention. He said he checked the battery and it was ok. I asked if he had a miliamp setting on his meter to check for a drain on the system, he never answered the question, made some comments on how it was probably a short from the clamps associated with the Solar panel I had installed to try to keep the battery charged...I explained that the problem existed prior to the solar panel being installed. (He did mention to my wife that the panel was junk and that they could install a much better one). He said and quot;you should be all setand quot; and we finished the conversation. As I had expected 1 week later battery is dead.
My wife called the office to arrange another appointment to fix the battery issue, mentioned that we did not feel it would be appropriate they charge the customary and quot;service chargeand quot; because the technician had not, in spite of my encouragement, fixed the problem. Office told my wife they would check on the charge and the schedule and get back to her. We waited 48 hours, no call, so we called the office again. We explained the issue all over again, the person answering the phone transferred the call to another person who was not rude but quite matter of fact, acknowledged we had called a few days prior and should have gotten a call back... but that she would have to check with someone about waiving the charge, but would call us back before 4:00 that day....it's been over a week now and still no call.

They can monitor the generator's status remotely. It was not installed properly but they did stand behind it and did not charge me for re-wiring. I did not look for pricing anywhere else since this company was the only one that offered what I needed. They tried to work with me.

Powers installed the generator in 2007 and performed all the annual inspections. Prior experiences were fine; however, this one was markedly worse. It took more than four months to get the appointment booked although we've had an exceptionally mild winter. The technician was on time and competent, but his service notes did not provide needed information about a gas leak he found. When I called Powers to get more information, the manager was very rude and condescending. The manager told me that he was not about to call the tech to get any further information and all he was willing to do was read the brief service notes back to me. (I also had a copy of the service form.) I will not use Powers Generator again and would not recommend them.

The job went very well. They were on time and did a clean job. They sent professional licensed people to do the job. I would recommend them. They coordinated all of the permits and different companies needed for the installation.

I have used them for a number of years. I would recommend them. They are very customer oriented. They schedule a regular tune up at our convenience. They have a gentleman who services my area. They are an extremely professional company. During the severe ice storm last year they were very attentive and helpful to the customers. They came out and performed the additional service after the generator had been running for quite a while during that ice storm. They make sure that their customer is in good shape. They are excellent.