Cowboy's Christmas Lights

It went really well. Jim came by and gave me a quote. I discussed his quote with my wife and decided what parts we wanted. His quotes and pricing is very straight forward. He did a great job

Jim was great. Very nice guy. I think the price was in-line with other light companies. We connected initially over the phone and did the quote over text and email . Very seamless and happy with the results. My neighbors asked for his contact info after seeing the results.

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This provider initially provided a quote to me for holiday lights on my house. Then when I sent the quote back to him asking him to remove an item and double check sizes on a few holiday wreaths, he replied to my email with and quot;Thank you for your interest in Cowboys Christmas Lights. Unfortunately I have decided not to submit a bid on lighting your home. I just don't have the time. Thank you again.and quot; This guy wasted my time and I was going to give him the business once he revised my quote as requested. This, to me, is a sign of lack of professionalism and unreliability. Do not quote waste someone's time with measuring and quoting, then 5 days later say you don't have time to do the work when a potential customer asks for a quote revision.

The service was pretty good. I was initially not happy with the timer of the lights, but he returned to fix it, winning over my satisfaction.

After we ran into an issue with the person who was originally going to install our lights, we (our HOA board) were now tight on time. We were also in the middle of switching management groups, so that is why I (the President of the HOA) took on the task of trying to find some bids for lights. I called Mr. Christ at Cowboy's Christmas lights and asked if he could do an estimate that day and put up the lights the next day. When I was told yes and we got an estimate that seemed reasonable, we went through with it. We should have backed out right at the start, because when I got back to him with a yes answer, (which took three hours from the time I received his estimate, because I am dealing with a board and have to get approval) he told me he had already booked a job for the next day. That was the whole reason I was going to go with him was because he could do it the next day. He acted all surprised and then condescending when he said, and quot;What, do you have an event tomorrow?and quot; I said, and quot;No, that it was just late in the season and now we were going to be another day without our Christmas lights.and quot; He said he would try and start on them in the afternoon. Well, we lucked out and it snowed that morning (it prevented him from performing his other job), so we got our lights done that day, but I had called him with a request that morning and did not hear back from him until that night. Turns out, he does not check his office voice mail until he gets home. I went to check on our lights after he put them up and I was not that thrilled with them. On one corner there was a big gap in the lights, on another corner he wrapped the lights from the bushes to the trees instead of separately and on another corner, a couple of the strands were not connected (I fixed it myself). I discussed the gap in the lights and he said, and quot;Oh, you wanted lights on dead bushes.and quot; I said, and quot;Yes, because it looks bad with the gap.and quot; I said or you could put them on the rose bush instead and he said, and quot;Oh, we don't do rose bushes because they have thorns and the lights don't work right on them.and quot; He did put up the strand of lights, but I can not believe I had to tell him to do it in the first place. It looked so bad beforehand.
The next issue that came up was that our lights kept being out because the GFCI outlets were being tripped because of moisture. I noticed that he used indoor extension cords and white ones on top of that so it looked really bad during the day. I called Mr. Christ about the cords and he said they were not the problem and to just call him when the lights were out. Well, the problem was that I had to notice that the lights were out to call him, which meant I had to drive around every night and look. If I am driving around and they are out, I might as well just jump out of my car and go hit the reset switch. Every time I noticed the lights were out, it was already dark and we had already lost some time not having the lights. If I called him to come reset the lights, he lives in Lewisville and that could take another 30 minutes or so to get the lights working. It was much faster for me to just do it. After the fourth time they were out, I called and spoke with a master electrician, the City of Plano code enforcer, another Christmas light company that does the city of Southlake and they all said the same thing that you never use indoor extension cords with outdoor Christmas lights.
I spoke with Mr. Christ at Cowboys Christmas Lights again, the Sunday before Christmas (not Christmas Eve), but he was still saying that the extension cords were not the problem. He kept saying how he had used them on all his other jobs and he had not had a single problem. He also brought up the fact that we already had indoor extension cords outside with our Christmas wreaths (I was told by another board member there were not any, but if there were any, they were old and bought by a previous board). I told him, and quot;We bought them, and if we wanted to use indoor extension cords that was our choice, but we were paying him a supposed professional to use professional equipment.and quot; He then tried to blame our outdoor spotlights because they are sharing the outlet, which was not the case. He also tried to blame the electrician we had out there doing some work on the spotlights (mainly changing the light bulbs). He also tried to blame me for not calling him more. Why should I have to be calling this guy all the time?!? He says he is so responsive, and he then proceeds to tell me how the other Christmas light installers do not work the holidays, but he does. Since I was getting no where with the extension cord issue, I tell him we have a strand out (thinking he would fix it that day). He then proceeds to tell me that he will not be able to do it that day and that he does not work Christmas Eve or Christmas, so it would be Wednesday (which was the day after Christmas) before he could fix it. What happened to that he worked the holidays and other installers did not?
Whatever you do- avoid this guy/company, because he will blame everything, but what is the right thing to avoid doing the correct work. Also, he uses indoor extension cords outside and charges you what the other lighting companies charge you, but they use outdoor extension cords. The difference is indoor extension cords cost about $4 and an outdoor extension cord cost about $15. I know also for a fact that other companies use outdoor extension cords, because I went around and made pictures of several different HOA's Christmas lights. The setups between ours and their's was night and day. Their's were so much more professional.

We were so upset about this company's service that we had our management company withhold the last payment on the lights. We had paid half. Three of the board members felt like we should not pay the rest. Our lights were up about three weeks and they were out about a 1/3 of the time. This owner called one of our board members, who had not been participating at all that year and complained to her. He told her his version of the story, which was not all the facts. This board member had no idea of what had been going on with the lights. On top of me driving around resetting the lights, another board member took over while I was out-of-town for Christmas, so there had been a total of two of the five board members driving around resetting the lights. The board members finally agreed that if he would take 20% of the invoice, we would settle. Our management group then messed up that negotiation. We finally told our management group to just pay it. Our management group then contacted the owner (without our permission) and tried to renegotiate after the fact. He got upset and then sent a nasty letter to our board. He threatened that if he did not get all his money he was going to sue us, but the funny thing was he also said that he was going to sue for mental anguish that I caused him for my phone call right before Christmas. Really?!? I called this man and left a professional message and then he returned my call. I talked to him very civilly. All I asked about were the indoor extension cords, again. I did bring up the fact that I had talked to professionals who said that he should not have used indoor extension cords outside. I never screamed at this man or used any kind of foul language. It was a professional call. It did last about 45 minutes though, and took away time from me being with my family at Christmas. If anybody should have been suing, it should have been us. In the end, he took down our lights a couple of days early, but he did drop them off at our management's office. What was really funny? After he told our property manager that he had used outdoor extension cords, he dropped off the lights with the indoor extension cords still connected to them. One cord still had a tag attached to it that said, and quot;DO NOT USE WHEN WET.and quot;

Couldn't be better. Arrived on time and completed the work in about 1 and 1/2 hours. Three person crew worked together well and were obviousily highly experienced at what they did. Communicated well, cleaned up and left the yard looking exactly as it was before they arrived.