Electric Fire Repair Near Me
Ensuring the safety of your home’s electrical appliances is important - and maintaining the health of your home’s electric fire is no exception. Attempting to DIY with a ‘quick fix’ instead of hiring a professional can be both dangerous and costly if you end up doing more damage to your appliance than you started out with.
Finding a reputable electrician to work on your electric fire repair is vital. Instead of spending hours scrolling through hundreds of search results, you can receive tailored quotes from local electricians from just one search by using MyJobQuote’s quote form.
In this article, we’ll take you through the relevant steps so that you can find electrical contractors quickly and easily - let’s jump in.
Table of Contents
Understanding Electric Fire Repair Needs
To ensure a smooth quotation process, you need to identify the suspected problem with your electric fire and share this with your potential contractors. This will help to start your electric fire repair project in the most efficient way possible.
You should think about including the following details in your initial contact:
- What’s the make and model of your electric fire?
This is a question specialists will ask of you, so it’s best practice to give them the most important information in the first instance to allow them to help you as quickly as possible - What’s the nature of the problem?
While correctly assessing the technical issue may be hard, you can give contractors a general idea of what’s going on. This could be that you’ve noticed that the fire doesn’t heat up efficiently or doesn’t turn on/turn off properly, or perhaps there may be physical damage to the unit that needs attention. Highlighting these issues can help to make your enquiry as direct as possible, and in turn, get your problem fixed fast - Has there been any water damage?
The presence of water with electrical appliances can cause circuits to short and can lead to actual fires. For the safety of yourself and your home, it’s important that you let your contractor know if this is the case with your appliance - How urgent is the repair?
Determining the immediacy of the repair is important. If it’s the middle of summer and you just want something to so it’s ready for the colder months, it won’t be a high priority, but if you are in winter and have suddenly lost your main source of heating or have had an electrical malfunction, it’s much more pressing
Being as clear as possible with your request will help to speed up the process of your electric fireplace repair, getting your heating fixed and up and running again in no time.
Utilising MyJobQuote's Online Directories
If you enter ‘local electric fire repairs’ in a search engine, you’ll be hit with hundreds of possible services, and it can be overwhelming. While some results may be local to you, there is no way to refine your search by budget or by availability - which is where MyJobQuote’s online directories come in.
Using MyJobQuote's online directories can help you find reputable, nearby electric fire repair specialists. Instead of moving between multiple websites, you can consider contractors’ ratings, reviews, costs, and availability from just one page.
You can also take advantage of any before-and-after pictures listed on service providers’ profiles to help you gauge the quality of their work. It’s very easy to say you are the best in the business, but the real proof lies in the evidence of a contractor’s past work.
So, instead of spending hours on search engines and wading through unsuitable results, you can use MyJobQuote's online directory to streamline your search, providing you with a list of vetted electrical specialists in your area.
Verifying Professional Credentials
Unlike some home renovation jobs, electrical work requires licences to be carried out professionally and safely. If you come across a trader who doesn’t have an electrical licence but tells you they know what they’re doing, it’s best to walk away from their offer as it’s likely to be full of issues.
Electrical professionals can be part of different trade associations, such as the National Inspection Council for Electrical Installation Contracting (NICEIC) and the Electrical Contractors’ Association (ECA). Having an association with these bodies is a mark of the contractor’s commitment to correct working practices and can help to verify their abilities as an electrical professional.
You should ask to see evidence of their experience with electric fire repairs and pay close attention to any projects that bear a resemblance to your problem. If you are having part of your electrical fire replaced, seeing how they’ve completed that task for another party can be useful for you to see what sort of finish you can expect.
If there are no customer reviews available on the service provider’s website, make sure you ask them for proof of their past projects. Seeing this kind of evidence will help you to assess the reliability and quality of their work - and if they haven’t got anything to show you after years in the industry, it might be best that you look to take your trade elsewhere.
Engagement and Effective Communication
One factor that can make or break an experience with your electric fire repair contractor is how they communicate with you. They can be the most experienced specialists, but if they can’t communicate openly with you, they might not be as good as they think they are.
Pay close attention to how a potential service provider talks to you during the quotation process. Do they respond promptly, with full answers, or do they take weeks to respond and use one-word replies?
If you’re met with the latter, it’s best to carry on searching for a suitable trader as this can be an early warning sign of how the company may continue to speak to you during the course of your repair project. Poor communication can lead to costly additions to your project, as well as unresolved issues.
Clear communication between service providers and homeowners is crucial to address any specific concerns that may come up during your project. For example, if the timeline needs to change as a result of a supply issue or because of an illness, being informed of this in good time and in an effective way is much better than someone who lets you know at the last minute - or not at all.
Utilising MyJobQuote's Quote Form
Ready to start receiving your quotes? Using MyJobQuote’s quote form couldn’t be easier - here’s what you need to know:
- Select your job category - electric fire repair falls under ‘Heating/Gas Work’
- Define your search further by selecting ‘Fires and Log Burners’ from the next list
- Click ‘Electric fire’ on the next screen
- Select the type of work that best fits your needs, from a like-for-like replacement to removal or repair
- Use the text box to explain your job in more detail - be sure to name your current electric fire’s make and model, the age and the suspected issue, as well as the urgency of the job
- Add in photos of your electric fire and the damage or issue it has
- Enter your postcode
- Pick your budget from the options
- Choose your project’s timeframe, from ASAP to flexible timing
- Enter your email to get quotes in your inbox
From one detailed search, you can receive tailored quotes from the best electrical fire repair services in your area. You can then start to compare the experts with one another, taking note of their customer reviews and ratings all in one place, making it easier for you to choose the right specialist for your specific needs.
Adding in this level of information helps companies to give you tailored responses with more accurate quotes than if you were to explain the problem loosely. MyJobQuote will ensure that the results you see are specific to your geographical area, so no time is wasted on specialists who sound perfect but are located on the other side of the country.
Seeking Personal Recommendations
There’s another route to consider when searching for electric fire repairs near me - and that’s seeking personal recommendations from friends, family and neighbours who have recently had work done on their own electrical fireplace.
While online reviews are important to consider, personal referrals can also provide valuable insights into the reliability and quality of a repair specialist’s work. When you take advice from a trusted friend, you can also take advantage of seeing the contractor’s work in person if they’re willing, letting you see the first-hand results of their work.
You can also ask your colleagues for their recommendations. Perhaps they don’t live in the same area as you but have had similar work done - this can still be useful information if they can share the name of a national company they have used to carry out their work.
It’s worth mentioning that personal recommendations can go both ways - you can get a glowing review or a big ‘stay away’ - and both types are of equal value. Either way, the recommendation is to help you save time in your search by either matching you up with a reliable trader or helping you to deftly avoid a rogue trader who will likely do more harm than good.
Lastly, be sure to still carry out your own personal research into companies - even if you get a full five-star review from your friend. Your personal preferences and standards may be different to theirs, so it’s prudent to make sure you’ve done your due diligence before booking the specialists to work in your home.
Service Terms and Agreements
No electrical job should go ahead without a written contract in place, and electric fire repair projects are no different. Before any work begins, make sure you have physical service terms and agreements in place so that both parties are aware of what’s involved in the job.
If you find contractors who say that written quotes are archaic and that they prefer to run with verbal agreements instead, be wary of continuing the process with them. This approach leaves you open to being manipulated with agreed prices and timelines, and your service provider can easily misrepresent the truth and make you believe different things to their original claims, invariably ending up with you paying more than you anticipated.
Your written agreement should clearly outline the scope of your electric fireplace repair, including an itemised summary of costs and their associated payment terms. Be sure to check if VAT is added - or if it needs to be - as paying an extra, unexpected 20% at the end of the project can be a nasty surprise if you’ve not budgeted for it.
The agreement should also contain any warranties or guarantees for the specialist’s work. Be sure to check if these cover just the supply and appliance costs or if they also include the contractor’s labour costs.
Before signing a contract, make sure you completely understand all the terms and are happy with the pricing. If you are unsure about anything, ask your contractor for clarification - it’s much easier to do this at this stage than it is when the project is already underway.
By now, you should be aware of the importance of choosing a competent and reliable electric fire repair specialist - not only for your own safety but for your entire household and your neighbours. Thoroughly researching potential experts is the best way to go to ensure that your repair helps and doesn’t hinder your situation.
Using MyJobQuote’s online directory can trim down your search time, giving you local results that are tailored to your specific job needs. From here, you can easily compare the best electrical fire repair specialists with each other to make an informed decision and get your electric fire roaring back to life.
Last updated by MyJobQuote on 12th June 2024.