Response from Anything Electric
I showed up at the member’s about 10 minutes early, she had problems with both the front and back yard landscape lighting and she wanted both systems checked out. In the front yard none of the seven lights where working. I started by checking the lighting transformer for voltage and it was working fine. Then I went to the first lights to check for voltage. Each light had to be taken apart to get to the bulbs and this took some time because her lighting system was old. At this point, I found that the bulb was blown. I replaced the bad bulb with a bulb I had on the truck and the light worked. The member did not have any replacement bulbs on-hand and said she would go to the hardware to get them. While she was getting the bulbs, I continued to remove the other bulbs and check the fixtures. Once I had checked the rest of the fixtures in the front yard and found that all the bulbs where bad. I moved on to the backyard, which was also an old system that was not working. I checked the transformer for voltage. The transformer was fine. However, the member had an aftermarket plug-in timer that was controlling the power to the transformer and it was defective. I plugged in the lighting transformer directly into the outlet and it worked fine. Once the transformer was working, I started checking lights and found that the first two lights worked fine but the rest of them where not working. By this time the member returned from the hardware store with the replacement bulbs so I began re-installing the new bulbs in the front, which fixed her problem in the front. At this time, I had been on the job for 1 hour 25 minutes. The member wanted me to continue troubleshooting the backyard system. I went back to the backyard and checked the main low voltage underground wire and found that the wire was damaged somewhere underground after the second light. At this point I was now at the job 2.25 hours. I let the member know and she decided that the backyard system would have to wait. I charged the member for the time spent over the two hour coupon she had purchased. I am not at all sure why the member has any problem with the service. Both landscape lighting systems were not working correctly and troubleshooting the problems took so time when you have to take-a-part all the fixtures to get to the problem. I’ve done some math to show how long it took me to find the problems. Checking the transformer for power and output voltage= 7 minutes. 7 light fixtures not working, accessing bulbs and checking fixtures 10 minutes each. 7x10=1 hour 10 minutes. Now we’re at 1 hour and 25 minutes to troubleshoot the front yard landscape lighting and fix the problems. Backyard landscape light system Troubleshoot transformer and fine problem with a defective plug-in timer=10 Minutes. Now that the transformer was working, I started troubleshooting why three of the five lights were not working. 40 minutes to find that the underground low voltage wire had been cut and locate where the damage was located. So if you look at the math the total time on the job was 2.25 hours. I charged the member for the time spent over the two hour coupon. I perplexed about why the member unhappy with the work. I’ve worked hard for all my customer’s for over 25 years. I feel that I went over and above for the member, as I do for all the customer’s who call me. As many can see via Angie’s list, my record speaks for itself.