Mister Sparky

Summary

Mister Sparky, which bills itself as a national franchise of electricians, is, in my opinion, a scam. If you are pressed for time, you need read no farther. Just don't hire Mister Sparky (https://www.mistersparky.com/). This assessment is, of course, only my opinion based on the following experience.

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Carolyn and I purchased a range hood for our new stove and began looking for someone to install it. She went to HomeAdvisor (homeadvisor.com) and entered our request with the specifics of the project. Within five minutes she got a hit from Mister Sparky. Impressed with the quick hit, we hired Mister Sparky to do the job. So far, so good.

Brian from Mister Sparky showed up at the appointed time and we briefly discussed the project. Then, Brian said he needed to see our circuit breaker box. This seemed reasonable since I figured he wanted to shut off the power to the range. We went downstairs and, without asking, Brian immediately removed the circuit breaker box housing. He looked at all the exposed wiring and began running off a litany of everything he claimed was wrong. He said it was an urgent situation and cautioned me the house could burn down if we didn't do something. That's when the red flag popped up in my mind – not about the circuit breaker situation, but about Brian himself.

To digress a bit, it's not uncommon to have an old circuit breaker panel that is out of code. We recently sold another house where that was the case. During the transaction of that sale, all we had to do was to agree to have the system brought up to code at our expense.

I pointed out to Brian we had been in the house for 30 years using that same electrical panel and the house hadn't burned down yet. I also told him we had been using an excellent electrician in town for that time period and if there really was a problem, I'd have him look at it as a second opinion. In addition, I mentioned, we would be using that electrician for this project except he doesn't  install appliances.

After that discussion, we went back upstairs to proceed, I thought, with the installation of the range hood. Not so fast. Brian whipped out his handy-dandy iPad and proceeded to give us a sales presentation on the Mister Sparky program designed, in his words, to monitor the electrical system in our house. He gave us several options ranging from $99 a year up to the-sky-is-the-limit, depending on the length of the contract and services we signed up for. Notice at this point the whole transaction has been about Mister Sparky trying to get us to sign a service contract and not about the installation of a range hood.

Just to get things moving I told Brian to email me the contract information and said I would look at it (knowing I would immediately delete it). So Brian, after about a 45 minute delay, finally got to the original job of installing the range hood. He then showed me the outrageous price for the actual job. I noted his service fee was more than the range hood had cost – by a long shot. Brian, of course, felt the need to inform me the real cost of appliances is the labor to install them. Exasperated, I told him just to install the thing and went off to do some work of my own.

Later, I came downstairs to find the range hood out of the box but no other work done. Brian was pacing around the kitchen in a tizzy talking to his office.

I had exactly two words for Brian, "NOW WHAT?" Inquiring minds want to know.

Brian said he had discovered the wiring for the range hood we had purchased was on the right side of the unit, but the contractor had installed the lead-in wiring to the left and it was not long enough to reach over to the right hand side. I asked why he didn't just extend that wire so it would reach (a question which, I later found out Carolyn had also asked).

Brian informed me that wire could not be extended and said he was on the phone trying to locate a new range hood for me that had its electrical wiring setup on the left.

Let's go over that one again. Brian, Mister Sparky's master electrician told me that a house's interior electrical wiring cannot be extended and he was conducting an emergency search for a new range hood for which he would no doubt charge me a fortune.

At that point I had two more words for Brian, "You're fired." I offered to pay for a service call and scrap the rest.

Brian blew up at me. He told me to forget the service charge and slammed the front door as he left.

Bottom line: Mister Sparky is more interested in selling you a contract than anything else and, in this particular case, Mister Sparky's representative was incompetent. In my opinion, never do business with Mister Sparky. As a corollary, be very wary of recommendations from HomeAdvisor.

Finally, shown at the right is the original range hood, which Mister Sparky said couldn't be installed, properly installed and working. The house hasn't burned down yet.