First Choice Electric Service Co

He was knowledgeable and quick in his service.

Their prices are reasonable.  They are a small company but they follow through. They were able to get out here on short notice

I have been pleased with the service provided and the commitment to service. The last two times I have used the company, the owner has sent out the same electrician. As a single woman, I feel more comfortable if the person being sent is not a complete stranger and appreciate that the electrician, Kelly, remembered working in my home before, and was familiar with my electrical system. On one job, I asked the owner to keep the total cost under a specific price, and although the job provide more challenging than anticipated, I was only charged the agreed upon price.

It did not start out auspiciously.  I had originally called them up and requested that they schedule me for a Friday, any Friday, after 11 am (this was to give me time to get to the work site from my home, it is a rental property 75 miles distant). I didn't have a pressing requirement to get the work done soon, and I wanted to be present when they started to explain the scope of the work.  They assigned me a day about three weeks distant for an 11am appointment.  As I drove to meet them at about 9:30 on the appointed morning I got a call from my tenants at the work site, telling me that the electricians had already showed up!  I was not happy about this, and told them to direct the workmen to start on some of the simpler items.

The two men they sent were competent, and quickly wired up the bathroom fan.  However, I was disappointed to see that they used switches that didn't match the color of the other switches in the room - I had switches that would have matched the color, but I had not arrived yet.  They progressed through my punch list of items, and quickly accomplished everything but the three-way circuit.  This turned out to be a difficult problem; a previous tenant had started to re-wire the circuit, and stopped short of finishing the job.  As a result there were wires going to places through walls that could not be identified.  I went up in the attic to see the situation, and I could see that this was a nearly hopeless job to untangle without committing to opening up walls and running a completely new set of wires.

I decided to just get out of the way, and let them puzzle on it for a while.  To my surprise, they worked it out and got a three-way upstairs / downstairs light switch circuit working!  I was quite impressed by this bit of detective work!

On balance, my experience was a bit mixed.  The scheduling mixup really bothered me, and resulted in some things being done in a way that I would not have approved had I been on-site.  On the other hand, I admired their tenacity in getting that attic circuit figured out.

Would I hire again is a tricky question; I learned that I was paying their time to travel a fairly long distance compared to some electricians that were more local, so on the basis of cost alone it probably makes sense for me to use a different company.

Mik came out today and did great work. Efficient, friendly, punctual, neat. We recommend First Choice Electric highly. Mike called a few minutes after his scheduled appointment time of 9 am to tell us that he was running late -- about twenty minutes. Heck, for lots of service guys being half an hour late is the same as being on time. This shows how much Mike cares about his customers, and his commitment to good service.

As I was writing a check after the work was completed, Mike and I chatted about how important it is these days to please customers as much as possible. Both positive and negative "reviews" can spread quickly through social networking, Angie's List, word of mouth, and such. First Choice recognizes this. Mike got a thumbs-up from my wife when he walked in, said his shoes were clean, and asked if it was OK to keep them on. All my wife had to do was start to say "But there's carpet on the stairs..." and Mike instantly told her, "I'll put on some booties." A good first impression is important. We'll be using FirstChoice Electric again.

Lastly, some electricians charge for their travel time. We live quite a ways out in the country, so we appreciate how Mike only charged us for one hour of work, ($80) with material being the other $82 in the total bill of $162. Some other Salem electrical firms charge from the time an electrician heads for our home.

He cleaned up the mess quickly and thoroughly, too!

I wasn't present to witness the job being performs, but the outlets definately work now.

They came out the next day, fixed it in a few minutes, and charged less than their hourly minimum.

Mike and his colleague were very pleasant and easy to work with. They were punctual, asked for guidance when they needed our opinions, worked steadily and cleaned the worksite when completed. When one of the electrical parts was defective, Mike replaced it right away. Would definitely hire this firm again.

Overall we were very pleased with Mike's work, punctuality and quality. We have to give Mike a B in quality only because he misread or misunderstood the construction drawings which required the removal and patching of on outlet box and the repositioning of one outlet and wires to the peninsula and the range hood. His positioning of the can lights and pendants were excellent and all of his cover plate screws line up--a testament to his attention to detail. He was attentive to our concerns and was more than willing to carry out our petty requests. The only suggestion we have is that he could do a better job of cleaning up after himself. The speed at which he and his colleague accomplish tasks is remarkable.

Mike and his colleague called to tell me they would be about 10 minutes late after a previous job taking a bit longer than expected. Then they showed up within the 10 minutes. They didn't have the right size sensor on the truck so had to go get one, but the job still only took about 1 hour.