"Danger - Stay Away"

TL:DR - Orange Fox disassembled a socket during an inspection and left it unsafe, then charged me again to fix the damage, caused more damage whilst fixing it and threatened to take me to court if I didn't pay.

I called Orange Fox Electrical to replace one socket and inspect another as it was occasionally tripping the circuit when used. Whilst I wasn't concerned about what style of socket used, the replacement socket that was fitted isn't straight, and tiling around the new socket is scratched up but that is just the start of the problems I had with this company.

For the inspection, the engineer spent the entire visit on a video call with a supervisor, who from my perspective was essentially coaching him through the whole job. The engineer disassembled a second socket and identified that it was a spur wire off of it that was no longer up to regs, so he disconnected the spur on the first socket, put this second one back together and went on his way. He left saying that an estimator would be booked to come out and give a quote for rewiring.

I later discovered that the second socket the engineer took apart began to fizz and pop as soon as I plugged anything into it, signalling a dangerous electrical problem and a serious fire risk. Either the engineer had failed to notice any "wear and tear" and reassembled a dangerous electrical socket, or had caused the additional damage and failed to realise and/or mention it to me. These things happen - it could very easily have just been a simple mistake that was quickly solved, but instead this is where it all went downhill.

I called their office to let them know I had a problem with the socket their engineer had disassembled during the inspection, but after turning up, they instead declared that the socket had instead failed due to an inexplicably sudden onset of "wear and tear" (despite being perfectly fine before it had been tampered with). I explained that it had been perfectly fine before being disassembled, and that it'd broken following the engineer taking it apart, and that I hoped this to be resolved as a mistake on their part and not treated as another call out.

After being informed that they didn't offer any assurances or guarantees whilst conducting inspections because my property was "too old" and that they'd be charging me again, I made it clear that this wasn't explained to me at the time of booking the job and now just wanted the socket to be made safe with no further work needing done. The Director became verbally aggressive with me on the phone, declaring that he would bill me anyway to make it safe, and threatened me with court action if I didn't settle the invoices.

The second engineer then replaced the socket and has claimed he "had to knock out cement" to do so, which I've had no choice to accept due to the socket being unsafe and at ground level with young children in the house.

Orange Fox have refused to accept any accountability or liability for the distress and damage they've caused my family and my property. I have a house full of young children, some with additional needs - knowing I have no way of proving the damage they've caused, I have been strongarmed with multiple threats of legal action despite attempting to resolve this matter by offering to settle the first invoice in full along with paying for the materials supplied on the second visit.

Their "good will" gesture is to knock 10% off of each invoice, and even that was then followed up with "Pay the invoices or we'll see you in court".

The two engineers that visited me were both pleasant and polite, but I'm now left with damage to my walls and I'm left over £350 out of pocket as I ended up having to call another company who identified all of the actual issues and solved them with no problems in half the time.

Stay away from Orange Fox Electrical and choose another electrician.