Good, Fast or Cheap? The Cost of Making the Wrong Decision

As of April 2021, the government updated landlord regulations to include the need for an EICR (Electrical Installation Condition Report) certificate before tenants could rent a property. This occurring within the pandemic, which had caused trade businesses to suffer, spiked a lot of interest as landlords across London scrambled to get their properties EICR compliant. 

With the demand high, this also brought about a high influx of pop-up EICR certificate offering companies. 

Each new company was undercutting the longstanding electrical tradesmen offering cheap prices, promoting quick turnarounds as landlords raced to get EICR’s under the belt, and allegedly offered good customer service albeit without a long history of service. Now – there is a cost here in making the wrong decision. Which is what many landlords experienced, and continue to experience to today.

The famous saying goes, ‘If it’s fast and cheap it won’t be good. If it’s cheap and good, it won’t be fast. If it’s fast and good, it won’t be cheap’. You can only pick two. Otherwise you are setting yourself up for failure I’m afraid. 

It’s not certain that companies offering a quick fix are NICEIC approved, or the quality of testing is up to the standards required by law. Resulting in numerous landlords reaching out to us for our help to double check the legibility of the reports they’ve received, and carry out the remedial works necessary following an unsatisfactory rating. 

Unfortunately, now creating double the work for landlords. We have helped to fix issues that were either incorrectly unidentified or fix hazardous concerns such as fuse wire replacements or fuse board upgrades that have been missed as a result of the careless inspections by these pop-ups. 

Providing some guidance to landlords – it is your responsibility to obtain a satisfactory rating from a qualified electrician otherwise you can face hefty fines. Where other electricians offer up to 10% of testing and installations, we offer up to 80-100%, so that nothing is missed. 

Our advice is, if it’s too good to be true. It probably is. You’re better of hiring an experienced company that can reliably deliver a fast service that is good, and worth the investment to get your satisfactory EICR certificate.