Kinslow Smith Inc

Prompt, Courteous and Affordable Service

After struggling with trying to get a tripped switch to work, I conceded defeat and came to Yelp! to look for a local electrician. As I called the number, I was thinking that I would get a response the next day. Imagine when I received a call back less than two hours later! Once having received the call, though, I thought for sure that I would be told that there would be an opening available tomorrow afternoon or something like that. No, much to my incredible surprise, I was asked if it would be okay to arrive in 30-45 minutes. After the lights being out in half the house for two days, the answer was a resounding Yes!.

Mr. Smith arrived at my house by 8:30 pm. He saw the junction box, pulled off the cover, and immediately diagnosed the problem as a burnt wire and what he called a double-tap. It appeared that a switch had burnt out before and had not been replaced. So the wire meant for that switch was put on another one that was already occupied. Keep that in place for 13 years and we end up with a switch that eventually got burnt out.

Two new switches, correct wiring, 15 minutes and less than $115 later, the electricity was back in the house and I can now use my baseboard heater and my hair dryer without fear of my lights going out. I would definitely recommend them for  your electrical needs.

UNBELIEVABLE!! They blew off my appointment and had the nerve to blame it on me!  I made an appointment, called the day before to confirm, and even asked them to call if they couldn't make it.  No call, no show.  They later posted a response to my review on Angie's List blaming me for poor planning.  Stay away!

SCAM of a business. 4 voicemails and no response after they have cashed my check! Is this the twilight zone? I will be demanding that amazon local and groupon pull their offers AND they refund my money!  Terrible human beings are just that.  It's unfortunate that people like Ed and Nancy exist and give good contractors a bad rep.

Kinslow Smith-----great for all your electrical needs!  Ed is WONDERFUL!  Today was an outstanding, productive day all around  from start to finish------ without a minute wasted.  I am still beaming (no pun intended) as I look around my apartment at all the work they did for me today.  

First, I received a reminder email from Ed the night before, alerting me of the time that they were going to start.  The next day, Ed and his helper arrived early---yes, early!--- and ready to go to work on my list of 21 miscellaneous and sundry electrical/lighting jobs.  Unlike many electricians that baulk at certain jobs, Ed seemed actually to enjoy the challenge and the diversity of the projects.  He stopped at nothing to get each and every job done, working straight through until all the work was completed.

He is extremely knowledgeable and patient and will explain what he is doing before he does it (if you want to hear it, as I did).  Whatever I was missing in the way of parts to complete a task, he had in his truck.  You can tell that he really loves what he does and takes great pride in his work...no matter how small the job is.  His helper exhibited the same work ethic and was delightful to have around.  They completely cleaned up after themselves and left the apartment just as it was when they arrived.  

Aside from the phenomenal electrical work done, what stands out most for me is the integrity of this man.  After you meet him and watch him work for just a short time, you know that you are dealing with a good, honest, hardworking individual.  I actually had fun today and told them that I never knew that something like electrical work could make me so happy! :)  
This whole experience was a complete and absolute pleasure.

Let me start off by saying that their work is quality and end result was good, hence the 2 stars. If you are willing to wait and get 3rd class service with a good price then I suggest going with them.
Kinslow smith is run by 1 person - Ed. Ed is never available by phone. He has hired someone to answer his calls,Nancy, and email him with appointments and questions. I saw an amazon deal online and called before I purchased to see if I really needed to get it since most places honor the price with out groupon/amazonlocal purchase. I needed my chandelier installed with a new electrical source and Nancy set up a next day estimate with Ed. He was great and on time and promised us to get it done before Christmas with all work done by him only. On the day of his appointment he just never showed. No one picked up, we waited and waited. At last Nancy texted me 1 hour PAST my appointment slot saying Ed is sick and he won't be showing up. Why couldn't he just call me and tell me PRIOR to my appointment? So then the next 2 days I waited for someone to call me back and reschedule (even though I did not want to give them a second chance for such poor customer service but my husband wanted to use him bc of his prices). NO CALL BACK.
I called and called until I reached Nancy who rescheduled me and states she cannot apologize on his behalf. I told Nancy to have Ed call me personally...he never did. The day of our second appointment Nancy stopped picking up. I googled Ed's cell and he told me he was running a half hour behind...fine. Just tell me!!! Ends up he came with 2 other guys we never met and then Ed LEFT for the whole time. These 2 guys were training and he just left them. I was told only Ed would be doing my work. Luckily my chandelier is up and I am happy with the clean up afterwards.

Long story short, I personally would not recommend Kinslow Smith. Poor customer service in 2013 does not fly...may be 10 years ago it did.

Never showed up- on two separate occasions. And I confirmed both appointments the previous day. Which makes for 2 Saturdays wasted waiting for crews that could care less. They've also made no effort to remedy the situation since.

We've had a horrible experience with KINSLOWSMITH INC. My spouse and I don't write bad reviews and try to resolve things with businesses in other ways.  However, our situation with Ed and KINSLOW SMITH has been so sloppy, fraudulent, unreliable, unethical and incomplete that we feel people need to be warned before ever hiring Kinslow Smith.  First and foremost, the work wasn't complete. We paid thousands and thousands of dollars for Kinslow to rewire our house and we've since found cloth wire.  We've emailed, texted and called Ed to come out and properly rewire our house and he has not come back to fix the fact that there are still cloth wires in our home.  Second, when we contacted Ed to buy his Angie's List deal, he told us to contact him directly instead of going through Angie's List.  We didn't think anything of this at the time, but now we realize this was shady. He wanted to be paid up front - before any work was done and left Angie's list out of the deal. Though we paid for a package - he ended up sending us an invoice for over $3,000 at the end of the job. His office listed a bunch of services that he never discussed with us or quoted to us. It was an unexpected, complete shock - much of it totally unethical.  For instance, on our initial walk through he told us he was going to put a used breaker box in our basement from another job - or we could buy a new one for a few hundred dollars.  However, he ended up charging us $1,598 for a new circuit box. He never told us about this or got this approved.  Another frustration is that Ed left us without heat for 24 hours in the middle of Chicago's frigid winter of 2014 - and I'm pregnant.  He was NEVER at our house to oversee his crew.  His crew was constantly telling us that they didn't know how to do this or that and couldn't proceed without Ed.  This was true of the thermostat as well. We would text, call and email Ed to come over to our house to help his guys and he'd say he'd be there in an hour, but he'd never show up. Sometimes, he'd promise us that he'd arrive for days straight - and never arrive.  On the day we were left without heat, we begged Ed to come over because his guys weren't sure how to properly handle the thermostat wiring. He ended up coming and telling us it was fixed, and it wasn't. We had a huge holiday party at our house that night and the temperature in our home was plummeting into the 40's. We had to hire another electrician to come out and help us. At our initial walk through, Ed said our job would take 5-7 days. It ended up taking over 2 months and it is STILL NOT DONE.  We now have the added expense of having an electrical inspector coming out next week to determine how much cloth wire is still inside our property. As we've given Ed numerous opportunities to come and fix his crew's negligence, we now have no choice but to get lawyers involved. Working with Kinslow Smith has been a homeowner's nightmare. It's been shady from start to finish and we feel as though we've been scammed by his company - paying thousands of dollars for work that wasn't ever completed.

STAY FAR AWAY from this business.  They are offering deals on Groupon and Amazon Local and not even responding to calls for quotes, etc...  They  will offer you an appointment over a month away and then simply not show up.  It is excuse after excuse from this company and their secretary is completely incompetent!!!!!!!  They don't even deserve a star.  They should not be allowed to operate a business in the State of Illinois or any other state for that matter and if enough people file complaints hopefully they won't!!!!!!!

Ed makes appointment, may or may not call to confirm them, may or may not show up for appointments, and in my case did both and left the project with things not working. I didn't realize things were not working until after he was gone. I see many of you had good experiences; I am highly disappointed! And yes he was paid 100%.

They book appointments with 3 hour window of wasted time (2 times I booked in my case) and they simply don't show nor call to advise as to why. Receptionist is also only contact in office and she is clueless as to how to handle customers or bookings (bad attitude).  Read their Angie's List reviews too and you will see it is a recurring complaint.  Their excuse for this poor service is emergencies or unforeseen problems. Not sure even a brain surgeon has as many emergencies as they do where they can't even update waiting customers. There are no apologies only excuses and lies. It was so bad I forwarded their ridiculous lies in messages we exchanged on Angie's list, saved a voice mail from owner who receptionist claimed had come out special just for me.  His voice mail had no apology, said his jobs ran late (oh really cuz receptionist said u came out just for me), but do I still want him to come at 4:22pm...window was late morning til 2pm. Receptionist referred to me as a snob because I didn't guess the guy who called was the owner and he apologized in his voice mail (which is also a lie as he didn't say he was owner or sorry).  Anyway Angie's List is fully refunding my money for this special offer I prepaid for. I'm sure based on other reviews they won't be on Angie's for long. I have all the backup, including voice mail and sent it all to Angie's List...so no disputing any of this.

This is the second time I have used their services, the first was perfect.  The second time I purchased a certificate through Yelp in early November.  They have been paid in full because it was (1) certificate to submit, Ed Smith said he'd come back to do the panel schedules, I trusted him because the first service was great.  He sent someone out to work on the the panel schedules but  to date the job is still incomplete, I still do not have the schedules even after making NUMEROUS phone calls and text messages to Ed.  In addition to that he never covered an outlet he installed.  I asked him what the problem was and he had no answer except he claims that he sent someone out twice, I gave him (2) different email addresses and haven't received one from him.  Even though, he knows my address and he could just mail out a hard copy.    I would not recommend this company to anyone, because he will take you for a ride, bottom line job is incomplete.