Four steps, and the third one is the only one anybody argues about

The four steps

1. 01

   You ring, an electrician answers

   Under a minute

   Not a call centre and not a booking form that emails someone in the morning. You describe what is happening and you get told, honestly, whether this is a tonight job or a Tuesday job. Plenty of calls end with us telling you to turn a breaker off and book you in for the week.

   You speak to someone who can actually diagnose it, first time.

2. 02

   We book a window, not a day

   Same day for faults

   You get a two-hour window rather than 'sometime Thursday', and a text with the van on its way and roughly when it lands. If a job before yours runs long you hear about it from us before you have to ring and ask.

   A two-hour window, and a text before we leave the previous job.

3. 03

   Price agreed before a tool comes out

   Before any work starts

   We diagnose, we show you what we have found, and we give you a number for the repair. You are free to say no and pay only the attendance. Nothing gets added to the invoice afterwards that you have not already agreed to in front of the job.

   The number you hear is the number on the invoice.

4. 04

   Tested, certified, tidied

   Before we drive off

   Everything we touch is tested, an Electrical Safety Certificate is issued where the work calls for one, and the site is left cleaner than the state we found it in. You get the paperwork by email the same day rather than having to chase it.

   Certificate emailed the same day, and the mess leaves with us.

• Electrical Safety Certificate

  Issued for every job that legally requires one, under EC 13927, and emailed the day the work is done rather than when you chase it.

• An itemised invoice

  The same figure you agreed to before the work started, broken into labour, materials and anything you separately approved on the day.

• A note of what was found

  Plain English, no jargon. It matters if the place is tenanted, if you are selling, or if you are claiming on insurance.

• Test results, where relevant

  RCD trip times and insulation readings, written down. A tested safety switch with no recorded figure has not really been tested.

A residual current device compares what flows out against what comes back. A 30 milliamp difference for more than about 30 milliseconds and it opens the circuit. A ceramic fuse cannot do this and never could.