Last night we lost power to all electrical outlets in our house. On checking the board, I saw that it was the earth leakage, which I was unable to turn back on. This is a story about AAA Electrical (also know as AAA Plumbing, or AAA Electrical or AAA Plumbing & Electrical), and how they tried to defraud me, and appeared to have done it to many others. Don't use them. If you need a reliable & honest electrician use:
Andrew: +27 82 443 7762
It was a Sunday night, the fridge was off, and the prospect of no espresso in the morning was galling. I phoned the first full page ad in the yellow pages mentioning my area and "no callout fees, free quotes", AAA Electrical. The lady who answered, Cynthia, was polite and efficient. However, neither her, not the two other electricians I phones were able to give me even a ballpark figure. 20 years in the business it said, evidently earth leakages are still too tricksy to hypothetical quote on.
An hour later, Kenny and his partner Eziechiele arrived in an Isuzu bakkie (GP plates, started with an S). He unscrewed a bunch of wires in my board, set his ammeter to them, and proclaimed he had found the short; "It was a surge from the grid" he said. That's strange, nothing blew, none of the flats around me were affected. I didn't believe him. He then phoned Cynthia at the "head office" and returned with a quote of just less than R5k! I asked how much it would be to just replace the earth leakage switch, and not "clear the short", just less that R2k! This was clearly outrageous, so I sent him packing, but not after paying their R395 "call out fee", oops, they mean "quotation fee", no wait the ad said they didn't charge that either, ok, it's an "analysis fee". I also asked that he put everything back the way it was...
I then phoned the next electrician, Willem, who balked as I did at the outrageous quote, and said he could do it for half i.e. R2.5k. Wow.
Finally, I remembered that a good friend used to manage several electrical contractors and I phoned him for advice. He gave me the number of Andrew, listed above, and said he'd trust him with his kids. Much better. I phoned Andrew at 8am the next day, and by 9:30 he'd been round, performed the trivial task of resetting the earth leakage (you have to push it down hard, my bad) and agreed to charge me nothing more than his basic call out fee. What he did point out, is that Kenny had left several wires improperly screwed, and the neutral wires completely unscrewed. The only thing he attempted to screw right, was me.
It's sad that these guys can't operate an honest business, and feel they need to make their money through quoting for radically unnecessary work and attempting to damage your electrics further. This is the definition of fraud I am using. It appears I'm not the only one who's had a run in with them, several, others got screwed much worse.