Bowie Electric Service & Supplies

Responsive, extremely personable, professional and knowledgeable (and great value), I would strongly recommend Bowie Electrical to anyone in need of such services. I also appreciate they’re flexible payment options, accepting American Express — which is unusual.

I had the most unusual interaction with this company. I called them a number of times to discuss electrical work for my condominium. Each time I spoke with the same person, but got a different story. And for some reason, they didn’t offer to come out to discuss the job or see what would be involved. Essentially, they seemed incredibly uninterested. During the last telephone conversation that I had with them (Rick, I think was the guy’s name), when I indicated that I was confused by the changing stories and information that he was telling me, he became irate and quite rude. It was very odd but I have to conclude that their customer service is awful and that if I was to have hired them, I and the work would have been treated with careless disregard. I have rarely experienced such rude customer service.

Fast response, clean & nice – I do need to call them back tho, the reset fix to electric heat in condo, didn’t last long. Guy who came out and answered all my questions and that was very nice. He did admit he didn’t know much about my brand of thermostat and told me to Google it… next call: Mark came out he was really experienced, Knew exactly what the problem was and it was very familiar with my building; you ordered the correct part and assured me that it should arrive tomorrow. He apologized for anyone telling me to Google info and he left me with the correct paperwork to explain my device. I was called by phone within an hour with a quote for the new heater. fast response, fair prices, nice employees. I highly recommend them.

The electrical work performed was excellent. There was one oversight with wire placement that my general contractor had to fix.
What is unacceptable was that on the last day the electricians were on the job for finish work, they did a significant amount of damage to our new wood floors. By almost every outlet, there are gouges in the wood from their tools/​boots. It was mostly from the younger worker left behind by the more senior electrician. When I came home from work and found this, I was amazed. The extent of the damage would be so much to fix. I will not use Bowie again.

Excellent service, we called 7 am in the morning and they were able to send the electrician to my home right away. The electrician is very professional, able to identify the problem after a few test. The price is reasonable (I actually know the part price that he change out… walk in Lowe and Home Depot enough times). Highly recommended.

I used Bowie Electric Service because they were recommended to me by the prior owner of my home. They were expensive and not that professional. Instead of cleaning up after themselves they stated that it would be less expensive for me to clean up the mess they left — it would keep them from billing me for additional time. Unfortunately they worked pretty slowly doing the job so it still turned out to be very expensive. I would not use them again.

I used Bowie when we first moved into our house. We had several issues, which I did my best to explain over the phone. Once they arrived, I showed the electrician all of the issue at hand. He was only able to fix one problem (fixing a light bulb). He didnt want to get into the crawl space to check out one of the issues because his back hurt and it was dirty. He said we would have to get another person for that… Not impressed.

You know, they did a really awesome job!
Obviously experienced, knew what they were doing. The prices were competitive. The electricians were pleasant to work with.
Overall, I definitely trust them and I would use them again… so why only 3 stars? Because we had multiple scheduling snafus that cost members of our family (especially me) work time.
First someone told me they’d email me Friday but hadn’t done so by Tuesday, so I had to nudge again. Then they wanted to schedule it for the end of the month, when I’d already stipulated that it would have to be earlier to beat a competing offer. (They fixed this, and everything went fine in the end… but communication could have been smoother.) Then they flat out spaced on an appointment…
Bottom line, they are super busy (probably because they’re so good) and they NEED to hire a full time office manager in charge of scheduling. Once they do that, I would be happy to recommend them and update my star rating.

I’ve used Bowie to fix problems in 2 different houses and they’ve been great both times. On time. On budget. Scheduling can be a challenge, but I guess that comes with success.

I think the difficult part of writing a review is really where to start. I mean, I suppose I could start with the electrician dropping his heavy duty flashlight through a recessed light fixture from the attic down into our new $ 500 sink which had already been installed under the granite. But no, I think that’s too easy of a starting place, especially when confronted, he said, «I don’t care, I don’t have to pay, it’s my company’s insurance that will pay.»
So let’s scratch that and start with one of the electricians drilling too far through our kitchen and blowing out a hole through the sheet rock in the adjacent bathroom. Our handy man fixed it for him which we paid for, but you know, I don’t think I’ll start there either.
Wait, I got it, I’ll start with us giving them all the information for all the fixtures and lighting for our kitchen and them not listening and installing completely different hardware. They even put flip switches without dimmers for the main ceiling lights. I mean, who in their right mind would do a kitchen remodel, only to top it off with some flip switches to brighten things up 100%. or off.
Or how about I start with one of the electricians leaving a pile of cut up wires in my attic right next to the door? Thanks for that, I appreciate it, I always love a pile of wires, seriously, I do.
At this point, I don’t think I’ll even start this review, somewhat of a moot point. Maybe just ending is better since the above is only half of my complaint list. Bottom line is that it does no good talking to the electricians at Bowie since they don’t listen and/​or write things down. Plan on paying 25% more on your invoice which I’ve seen in other reviews as well.
Doing the job yourself and getting electrocuted 3 – 4 times is less painful than going with Bowie.
IN RESPONSE TO BLAKE: Blake, this review IS true, the events DID happen, your reply hits on everything except for the fact that your electrician (2^nd) had no idea what he was doing nor cared. If you’re not willing to improve your service, maybe the BBB will help you, case: 22 353 462.

Excellent Service!
At no charge, via the phone, they helped my partner resolve an issue with our circuit breaker. A home visit, via technicians, would have been costly…
Have a nice day!

I’m giving two stars instead of 1 because the work they did was great, and the electrician that came out was courteous and professional.
I’m giving them 2 stars because when I hired them to do the service the final price they quoted me was TWICE the amount of their estimate. I understand prices vary from estimate to installation, but the difference of twice the cost is very unprofessional. When I asked the electrician if extra material or work was involved he said no. He was also confused as to why there was a price difference.
BE WARY OF PRICE GAUGING!
Note: 2÷15÷2012
I’m disappointed that the only communication from Bowie came to me today over my Unilocal account. Apparently they don’t really care about customers until they write reviews. When I had emailed them to let me know why there was a drastic change in the price they never got in touch with me. They never got back to me until today. Through Unilocal.And I still stand by my above review. I was told no additional work was done, and the price was roughly twice the quoted amount.
For a more professional company I recommend Kemly. I’ve since shifted to them, and I have been very happy.

Great price. Easy to get a hold of. Offered up suggestions on how to do the job diffrently then we first thought and saved us a bunch of money. They added a sub panel to our existing panel. They make sure they get a permit and it passes inspection. Would never use anyone who didn’t do this. It wasn’t even a questions with Bowie. Will use them again and recommend to friends who need electrical work.
Thanks Bowie!

We lost power to half of our building in the South Lake Union area. This outage affected 3 businesses. It took us a while to determine that we needed a professional electrician to look at the problem. I spoke to Rick about the problem. They sent Jim out pretty quickly and he determined that we had a breaker in our main service that had failed. Because the panel was originally put into service in 1966, it was an odd breaker that to be special ordered. Jim came back out and got us back in service in the time they had told us they would! I have worked with Bowie in the past which is why I called them first. I have always had good experiences with these guys and highly recommend them!

Had these guys do two jobs. Quite a good experience but too large of a company for my taste.
You can count on them. But you can also find more personalized service from smaller companies.

We have uswd Bowie Electric for years on our rental proprties. They always deliver great work with their experienced technicians. Big or small jobs not a problem. They are good about getting the job done right and fast, ultimately saving cost.
They are great at converting fuse boxes to breakers as well. They get the required permits and finish the job with a final inspection from the city.
This is a very experienced company and highly recommended.

I must confess that I hate dealing with service/​utility contractors/​companies. Nothing makes me drag my feet longer than knowing that I must call for a plumber, electrician, heater repair guy, etc., — especially when the issue isn’t urgent. Bowie was the third electrician/​company I contacted for just such a non-​urgent job, but rapidly became the standard I judged the others on.
Phone inquiry and data gathering was great, but not hand-​holding. I got more information about what my job would take in the first few minutes than in my entire inquiry time with the other providers, and the information that wasn’t volunteered was heaped on at the slightest request. Talk about being informed from the get-​go. Scheduling was timely and I had a guy out in less than a week. The technician was great: on time, professional, informative, and when the job was done, he left the area neat.
At the end of the job I had what I requested, the work was done quickly, and the price was excellent. I have a second job I’ve been stalling on for about a year now, but at least now I know which electrician I’ll be calling to get it complete.

If you like your electricity done correctly, use these guys. They have been in Ballard since 10 minutes after it was invented. Their staff will sell you what you need, and probably rescue a puppy from a sewer pipe if the moment calls for it. They are a busy shop, so plan ahead. When you are that good, it happens. If you need immediate assistance they will be there promptly. I have had residential and commercial work done by them, and have been impressed every time. I know a thing or two about the craft so I feel like my opinion matters, unlike when I review Yugoslavian slasher movies (take those with a grain of salt).
If you need it wired, call these guys. In the meantime, keep the hair dryer out of the shower.

As they did with Amani, when I called Bowie, the man I talked to asked me lots of questions and then gave me some homework to do (a few things to run around and check on myself), with instructions to call back if that didn’t fix the problems.
It didn’t, so they sent one of their guys out within two days. He was very nice, got the work done quickly, and also advised me of a few things that I could do myself to make our house safer, electrically. I really appreciated that they weren’t interested in taking advantage of me and helped me trouble-​shoot first.

My poor electrician electrocuted himself, not once, but twice! while installing a new flush mount light for me.
His response was, «eh, it’s part of the job.»
He could probably tell I was concerned/​fascinated by what happened and patiently explained to me how the insulation on old wiring can become brittle and cause it to pop like that. Who knew?
They also replaced my old breaker panel that had fuses in it made of glass, two things that looked like M-80’s, and live wires only slightly out of my reach. I kind of miss the excitement, but safety first!
After that they installed an electrical outlet in my bathroom. Yeah, my new place is quaint and all but the only outlet was a non-​polarized paint encrusted plug recessed into the light above the sink. Life was hard without the Sonicare.
The bill came in at exactly what they had estimated. It wasn’t the cheapest, but then again I wasn’t the one electrocuted.