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| Subject - Maestro dimmer - 4-way trouble | |
| kiwisholland |
First let me say, I feel like an idiot. About a month ago, I replaced what I thought was a standard three way circuit with Lutron Maestro master and slave dimmers, 1 each. The customer told me that there were only two ways to control this certain light fixture. Of course I never rang out the circuit, just replaced the 3 ways with the Maestros. Today, the customer called and said the light wasn't working. I showed up and found that the light was in fact not working. I hooked up some 3 ways I had in the truck and the light came on and "worked" via each switch. Now these people lose power all the time. I installed a whole house surge surpressor on their panel, but I thought that maybe a surge had fried the Maestros. Instead of trying the Maestros on another 3 way circuit in their house, I simply went to the supply house and got replacement devices. Went back to the home owners house, installed, and they still didn't operate the lights. Stumped, I started snooping around and found another switch in a seldom used hallway. The 4 way! Of course all worked when I switched the 4 way. How would you handle this? I spent probably three hours trying to fix this. The home owner assured me that the two three ways were the ONLY way to control the light fixture. My feeling is that a good electrician would have rang the circuit out first to assess the situation, so I feel at fault. Of course the Circuit might have rang thru anyway depending on the postion of the 4 way. Should I charge these people or eat it? |
| ohara7 | I would say eat it you are the electrician not the customer. we learn by our mistakes. besides customer sounds like they have used your services more than once. |
| aline | I would eat it. I would also document this some how so next time you will have a procedure for checking to make sure that there are in fact no other switches controlling the light. Something like a checklist or procedure for a tech to follow when installing these types of devices. Hopefully this would help prevent this from happening again. |
| aline | If you use a flat rate book most will have a description of how a task should be completed. You could add this into the description. |
| MONOLITH | I'm not sure there's any way to prevent these sort of things from happening once in awhile. I work in some large houses, and unless you know where every switch is, a 4 way could be easy to miss, especially if listening to the homeowner telling you there isn't one. I have a similar story; I installed the devices on an addition that someone else wired. There was a 3way set up, one switch in the new addition, the other in the existing house. I only had to install the switch in the new half of the 3 way, in the addition. The homeowner said " I want a dimmer on that. Can you do that?" "Sure" I said, and happily installed a 3way dimmer in the addition. 4:30 on a friday afternoon, I'm ready to go home, and the thing doesn't work. So I make the 'dammit' run to Home Depot to replace the faulty 3way dimmer I bought. Back to the house, install the new dimmer, doesn't work. "What the heck is going on". So I look inside the house, and there was already a dimmer on the other end, and you can't put two in Tandem. Here's the point...because the homeowner told me " I want a dimmer on that", I assumed he didn't already have one.  Live and learn, and always check stuff out for yourself. ALways double check the homeowners version of the details. |
| kbsparky | Should have sold him a Maestro 
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| MONOLITH | LOL. Indeed. I was actually going to start another thread about ethics; ie: selling customers things they don't really need. But after the Union thread disaster, I'm not touching senstive topics with a 250' fishtape. 
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| John A. Peters | I might offer to split it with the customer. I am assuming the client volunteered and also insisted that there were only two switches not three, when you asked him the second time. On the other hand if you asked just once, and did not verify or just assumed the customer know what he was talking about, without double checking, then it may be your nickel. However - there is another view point. I like the saying one of my men gave me. "Trouble shooting is trouble shooting. You have to go down all the blind alleys to find the problem." This means that you let the client know this in front, and then you charge for all the work you did. Of course you want to keep in mind that you should do extra checking before you spend time driving, to eliminate some of the gotchas. There is such a thing as "dead out of the box" which means that maybe the guy on the assembly line got tired that day and built a bunch of bad product. In trouble shooting it is all ways much more likely is that a human caused the problem. Go down that route. Be a good skeptic. Double check everything you are told. Also imagine the job as if you were the designer. Where would a 4-way switch make sense, etc. P.S. Are you saying the Maestros worked for a week and then quit? If so the client must have switched the 4 way right? If this is true then he had to know about it! Did switching the 4-way account for the symptoms you got? Now you have me wondering! |
| MONOLITH | quote: Actually, you may have a valid point John. he said "about a month ago" he put them in, which means they worked until the homeowner hit the 4way. That being the case, and since your initial install worked for almost a month, you might be able to say "oh, you said you didn't have a 4way...that required a different installation" and at least recover some of your cost. Maybe like John said, offer to split it with him. |
| kiwisholland | This is a new house. The homeowner has just recently moved in. Also, I always try to out-think the guys wiring the house new. But sometimes other electricians do things I wouldn't do, as I'm sure I do things they wouldn't do. This 4 way was in a very illogical spot. Architect or electrician? The switching must have worked for a month until they happened to step into that seldom used hallway and instictively hit the switch. It have to eat it. How can I sell a premium service and not GIVE premium service? As far as the deal with the Maestros, I truly think they are great devices, and am not trying to scam the customer. I wanted to offer them quality, which I feel Maestros are. I offered them a choice of dimmers and THEY CHOSE them. I wasn't selling them something they didn't need. I only mentioned them by name to see if others had had any quality issues with them. Just trying to be thorough so as to give you guys a feel for my situation. Thanks once again guys for the helpful insight! |
| wilkie | kiwisholland, We focus on doing things for the customer, not to the customer. I believe you run your business the same way. We would have done the exact same thing(upsold the customer a great product, installed and warrantied it). So what if you lost some time. I bet you will laugh about this call if you are not already. I am sure your customer believes in the value of services that you provide. I wouldn't be surprised if you recieved a referral or repeat business just from that one dimmer problem |
| stedder | Ya know, I never get a break when someones t.s.'n mytruck, somethin' don't work, it's full rate till they find the problem. I'd say use your'e discretion, you know the customer bettern' we do maybe just bill fer a service call to cover your petro. If you can sleep at night, that makes all the diff. |
| MONOLITH | Kiwisholland... Just so you don't misunderstand me about the ethics thing, I wasn't referring to your maestro at all. I was starting a post about 'ethics' a day before, and cancelled it for fear it might be controversial; it was kbsparky's comment and wink that reminded me of it. I wasn't implying you or your situation in any way. Sorry for any misunderstanding. |
| YukonRay | Gentlemen, I have a hard time with this issue also. To eat it or not. First of all you are a professional. Your time is worth something. You were directed by the customer. You did due diligence and test the circuit. I am not sure what ringing out the circuit would have done. You would not have noticed the 4 way. It would have been transparent. I think the best way to resolve this issue is to charge the customer for your time and offer a credit or discount of maybe an hour. This will show the customer you care and feel for his trouble. But if you split it with him or not charge him at all it will make you look like an incompetent electrician even though it was not really a mistake. Remember you where following the customers directions and you were concerned the amount you were going to have to charge hime to begin with. That is why you did not "check out" all of the wiring in the house. Now when it did not work when you got back and you did not find the 4way right away - there may be some time comming back to the customer. Maybe I won't be so grumpy tomorrow and will have a diffent view. |
| Lghtning4u | Well ya know, you should just eat it! We all know that we can't rely on the customers info when it comes to wiring. You feel in the "assume" trap. You have to check things throughly nowadays, the liability is to high. |
| John A. Peters | We would charge for the third remote dimmer. Just the regular price it would have been had you known about the 4-way. So you eat the part that came from assuming there were only 2 3-ways and he pays for the other remote. However due to the passage of time and indecision we would write it off to tuition. That is to say, you learned as much as you would if you paid tuition for a class on the subject. You have the knowledge for the next time, (and so do we, thanks to you sharing it with us). You saved having to go to a semester of night classes to learn what you learned here. |
| electricbill | i find you can't take the homeowner's word as expert opinion (that's why they call us) he might honestly not known about the 4 way ...but the kid/wife/dog did. as stated before...think like a designer and you'll find stuff the H.O. didn't even know! i do like that you subb'ed 3ways sw. in the circuit and tested before you traveled for the new parts... bill |