Clean up service panel and install new receptacles
I would encourage those who have had electrical work done by Howieco to get the work professionally inspected. That's what we did -- and Howieco's work failed the inspection. It cost us almost as much to get an electrician in to fix their work than what we paid them in the first place. Then a few months later, thinking that we had finally put the whole ordeal behind us, we learned that the "wires that go nowhere" that Howeico removed when cleaning up the service panel were actually the power source to our commercial air conditioning unit. So, we had to fork out another several hundred dollars to have the air conditioning unit reconnected.
We are a small charity that provides support services to women. The money we paid out to Howeico was money that we had to pull from program delivery. It's a real shame! We got some of the money back - not from Howeico, but from the Electrical Safety Authority. They reimbursed us the permit fee that we never should have been charged in the first place. And one of the inspectors who came out felt so bad for us that he couldn't help but hand over a personal donation.
- Approximate cost of services:
- $1,000.00
- Company Response
We don't normally respond to reviews, although we do appreciate very much all of the positive feedback from our awesome clients. However we are extremely disappointed to see this blemish on our pretty spotless record and we do need to defend ourselves and perhaps shed a little light on the situation at this job. This small job of cleaning up the service panel & installing a few new circuits was done at a discounted rate for the North York Women's Centre, because we believe in trying to give back to the community whenever possible. We took out a permit for the work, and the work was inspected as per normal procedure. The work that we completed passed inspection (something which we can easily prove), however there was some other wiring in the building which was not completed by Howieco that the inspector noticed while on-site, as per his email to me. If the work that we did had failed inspection, we would have been required by the Electrical Safety Authority to fix it and have it reinpsected. We are an approved contractor with the ESA and would never jeopardize this by doing faulty work or refusing to repair something that was our responsibility. The air conditioning circuits to which our former client is referring were not connected at the panel when we arrived to complete the work, so they were capped and rolled up neatly to the side of the panel for future use should that ever become necessary. We were hired to clean up the service panel, not find the source of every wire running into it. The wires were still at the service panel, and reconnecting them should not have cost several hundred dollars... Perhaps if we had been allowed to come back and take a look at the problem once we were advised of the defect that the North York Women's Centre's wiring received, we could have reconnected the air conditioning wires for them and saved them some money. We would also encourage anyone having electrical work done to have it inspected; however all of our work IS inspected by the Electrical Safety Authority. Again, we are very disappointed to see this dishonest representation of our company and our reputation after so many positive reviews over the years.