Reinhold Electric — Local services in Mehlville

I really wanted to have a good experience with Reinhold. We’ve used them in the past and they did good work, we thought… recently our garage’s power stopped working, which is fed by a panel on the pole that they installed in August of 2022. We NEVER had a single electrical issue until after that pole was installed which is starting to make sense.

A few months ago we began having electrical issues in our house, so we called Reinhold because we thought they did a good job when installing the pole that fell in 2022. The technicians that were out to see what the cause of the electrical issues in the house were said that the lines under ground were corroded (which may have been true), so we accepted to let them fix it. They hand dug by the electric pole, buried conduit and ran new wire to the house and everything seemed to be fine until we recently started having issues with the electric in our garage.

The location where they dug and buried the conduit for the wire going to the house is in a very close location to where the conduit goes for the wires going from the pole to the garage. I called for an estimate and was told $5,000 worse case scenario which may be understandable considering that would include cutting asphalt, trenching, new conduit, new wire and labor so I get that. Upon receiving this news I decided to just take care of it myself. I went to the building department for our county to take the test to do residential electric work, paid for the permit to be pulled, had everything cleared with Missouri 811 incase I needed to dig and bought $700 worth of new wire. I pulled the old wire, saw that there was a break in the wire due to corrosion from water getting in the conduit underground so I started digging right where the conduit meets the pole that Reinhold installed just to see if there was a break in the conduit. Sure enough, there’s a small section of conduit that was crudely placed over where the old conduit underground is and the new conduit where they installed the pole. They had it lightly wrapped in what looks like some kind of landscape fabric (thought it was electrical tape at first). So there was no protection in the conduit against water getting in which was what caused the wire to corrode to the point of no longer working. Mind you, Reinhold is THE ONLY company we’ve had at our house for electrical work since owning the house.

When I saw this piece of conduit being very improperly “connected”, I took pictures, and videos and sent them to the estimator who came out to give me a quote for fixing the electrical issue in the garage. He said he would give me a call back after speaking with the technicians that were there more recently to fix the electrical issue with the house as well as the ones who installed the pole in August of 2022. After speaking with them he said that none of them claimed to do that and that their technicians would never do something like that and all these denials of my claim. He then told me that he could come out and fix it for $500-$600 FOR A 3” LONG SECTION OF CONDUIT THAT NEEDED TO BE REPAIRED FROM THEIR PREVIOUS WORK. I am not the type to ask for free stuff from ANYONE, I’m incredibly happy to pay for good service by good people and I thought that’s what we were doing with Reinhold until yesterday. They completely denied the fact that their technicians made a mistake, and didn’t offer to fix the issue or anything. I was told that all of the technicians that have been on our property did not do it and that it would be $500-$600 to fix something they installed incorrectly. I understand if a technician didn’t remember every little detail from a job they did in 2022, but there is no integrity or accountability on their part with this issue. It was either done in 2022 when the new pole was installed or a few months ago when the new wire was put in with new conduit...

Go elsewhere if your health is compromised. I specifically told the estimator that I am immunocompromised and that he’d need an n95 mask or better when he came. He showed up not wearing a mask and then when offered an n95 from my own stock he put on a surgical mask and seemed put out by it. This was after a seemingly difficult time getting in contact with him. I thanked him for his time and cancelled our appointment. The person I initially spoke with to get to the estimator was great. Made an excellent first impression, so this follow up behavior was a surprise. So I guess if you’re in good health give them a call. But if your health is compromised or you like being listened to you should probably go elsewhere.

Update: called to speak with someone to give them a chance to clear things up, or at least make sure this doesn’t happen to anyone else. Was given a number for a supervisor. Called him and he said he’d call me back because he was in a restaurant with no power at the moment. Told him to be safe and that I looked forward to speaking. Never heard back from him. So aside from the folks handling incoming main call lines they seem indifferent at best toward residential customers.

After thinking on the inability to use a proper mask I’d be concerned about their technical knowledge. If they don’t know the difference between a dust mask and a respirator, how could I trust them to use the properly rated components...

Used them once for a major project last year and all went well. Unfortunately, had them come out for another project that was a totally different story. I had asked them to replace several outlets with GFCIs, which they had done the first time 15 months previously and charged $15 apiece for. This time, I was shocked when the invoice came in for 20A GFCIs at $49.56 apiece, when the possibility of installing the 15As that were installed in the first job was never presented by the electrician. In fact, I was never asked to sign an invoice before the electrician left, and only found out about the cost when the final invoice was sent. They also billed for 3.5 hours of labor, when I had on camera an arrival time of 9:30 and a departure time of 12:06.

The customer rep I spoke to afterwards on the phone said this was a new electrician and that this was not following the company’s standard operating procedure. They said I would be contacted by someone in management who might be able to explain why these issues occurred; it has been about two months now, and no one ever reached out.

Will definitely be using another vendor from now on. If transparency of billing up front is important to you, look elsewhere. Really unfortunate given how smooth the first project went; not sure if there’s new management or what, but no doubt this was a tale of effectively two...