David Ballard Electrical Contractors

I called on a Wednesday and they made an appointment to come out the following day at 8:00 a.m.
At exactly 8:00 they showed up, The two young me took a look at the project and gave me a price which I agreed to. The job took right around the amount of time they estimated. They were professional, clean and did excellent work. Looks like I found my new Electrician.
Thanks.

Hey I want people to know when hiring a contract for repairs or installations, always do your homework. First, I have had no problems with the work and installations that Ballard Electric has done for me over the years. Part of this success with choosing Ballard Electric or any contractor for that matter, is that I made sure I understood what the scope of the projects were. This help me manage my expectations of the contractor. In reading some of these reviews of dissatisfactions it occurs to me that these people were not informed and are very one sided on their stories. Once again Ballard Electric has done everything I have asked of them in a professional timely manner and I would recommend their service to anyone.

Can I give a negative rating?
Ballard has done electrical work for me for the past several years and today I fired them. I have never been treated so poorly.
His daughter, called me and yelled at me for complaining about some work they had done previously. I asked her what was she talking about and she said that an invoice had been pulled and from that she knew that I called to complain and wanted the work redone for free and there was no way that they would redo any work. I told her that I called to make an appt. on a new issue and asked if they could send out the same person as before, because he was very good, but a I couldn’t remember his name. Dave’s wife, who answered my phone call, said that she would pull the invoice to see who it was. I explained this to the daughter, she snarled, «Oh». No apologies, no, oh, I misunderstood.
So she sends out a young man (not the one that I requested) to look at my electrical problem, which is I am getting shocks while in my bathtub if I touch the hot water faucet handle! Pretty serious, right? He walked around saying pretty much that he had no idea and had never heard of such a thing and he would have to call his supervisor. He said that he would like to check the voltage on the outside garden faucet but he didn’t have the equipment. He did check the circuit breaker, that’s about it. In fairness, he was very nice, but not qualified.
48 hours later I got a bill for $ 100!!!
Oh, and I never heard back from the supervisor on this serious problem!
So today is day #8 and I called Dave, whose response was ««We’re not the psychology dept.»!!! If people don’t like the tone of our voice, too bad!!! And he said maybe you don’t have an issue because our guy couldn’t find anything!!!
So getting shocks in the bathtub must be my imagination. And not serious.
I told Dave that he had several unhappy customers on Unilocal and he said they were cranks who weren’t customers anyway.
You cannot reason in with crazies.
I am not a customer either. I fired his ass.
Hi Maureen, David B. sent you a message on Unilocal:
Subject: Your Review
«Maureen — please remove immediately or you will hearing from our lawyers for slander»
Reply to Message
To change your notification settings, click here
Copyright © 2014 Unilocal Inc., 140 New Montgomery, San Francisco, CA 94 105, U.S.A.
Hey, Dave, the TRUTH is not slander.
slandr/​
nounLAW
1.
the action or crime of making a false spoken statement damaging to a person’s reputation.
«he is suing the TV network for slander»
defamation (of character), character assassination, calumny, libel; More

We emailed the company to inform them that we were not pleased with their customer service. They responded that with future contractors we should «treat them as partners and not like a servant who you are doing a favor.»
I have never been treated so poorly by a company!
After deciding to make some changes, I called Ballard to ask for a new estimate that would reflect the work we wanted done. The woman who works at the front desk refused to give me another estimate and told me that I had wasted their time and resources by requesting a change to the original proposal. She barked at me to «trust them» and just schedule something already. She wanted me to authorize them to charge up to the original estimate — even though we were eliminating $ 1,000 worth of lighting. When I told them I wanted a new estimate so that I could know the price before they started and not just authorize an amount that well exceeded what we were going to have done — they yelled at me.
It is not good business practice, and rather plain stupidity, to commission work based on trust and not an actual figure. All she had to do was a change a word document, but her refusal and rude demeanor left us no choice but take a lighting renovation elsewhere.

I’ve used these guys a few years ago in 2010, without any issues, so I called them to come out for more work recently. Boy, what a difference a few years makes.
Fast forward to 2014, now I agree with the other reviewer, I pretty much had the exact same experience that she did. Basically, if you question the proposal or estimate in any way, these people (both the office manager and the owner) get angry. I have been hung up on, yelled at and told that that is how they talk to all customers.
Not really worth it to me to suffer through shoddy treatment. Unilocal has many listings for electricians in Orange County, lots with 4 or 5 stars. It is really too bad because the actual workers did good work in 2010, and the gentleman who came out to estimate the work more recently was really nice.
Customer service makes a huge difference, too bad these guys don’t agree, I guess that is their choice. Luckily for me, I have choices too, they won’t get my business or my money.

I did a search on
for an electrician in our area and found Dave Ballard. I left a message and within an hour got a return call and a visit was scheduled to give me an estimate to do electrical work which I felt was very reasonable. The team that worked at our home were punctual, courteous, and cleaned up thoroughly after completing the work. I highly recommend Dave Ballard Electrical Contractors. I agree with previous review — they are top notch!

You know… some people say that contractors are lazy and try to rip you off. But I haven’t had these experiences… at least not with Dave and his team of VERY capable electricians. I have been using Dave for 15 years. He has put in ceiling fans, outdoor lighting and repaired electrical that has gone bad. Totally prompt, professional and clean. A top notch service provider!