I own a home in California and was emailed by my property manager about an electrical problem with an outlet. The outlet was fixed according to the tenant but the repair man through the manager thinks there is still a problem. Just wanted to know if this sounds right or if I'm being scammed. This is the email:
"I installed a new outlet as needed in the upstairs guest bathroom. I also tested each of the bathroom GFI circuits and they are now operating properly. The old outlet failed on the inside and melted. The plastic covering on the wires were also meted. Because of that I also started checking some of the other circuits in the bedrooms. I'm extremely concerned based on the tests I did on a few random bedroom outlets. I found an amperage issue. Normal amperage is either 15 or 20 amps. The bedroom outlets that I tested were pulling 36-49 amps. This is very dangerous. I would need to test all of the outlets and switches in the home and outside the home to trace where the amperage issue starts. I will also need to go through the main electrical breakers one by one. The volts aren't an issue here, it's an electrical outlet, switch, breaker, or bad wires pulling a high level of amps. High amps like that will make the wires heat up and melt the plastic coating off. If that plastic coating is melted due to the wires heating up, it will allow the copper wires to touch each other and that can potentially cause a fire. Because I will need to open up each outlet and switch one by one and also test all the breakers. It will take several hours. The estimated cost of labor will be $340. If we need to replace more outlets or breakers or even wiring in the walls obviously the price will need to be revised to accommodate the cost of any new parts. Please let me know ASAP If you want me to proceed. I can move it to the top of my list because it's a life and safety issue. This issue is not only very dangerous, it can burn out any products that are plugged in to outlets, such as TVs, stereos, and any electronic devices. I told the tenants to unplug any high dollar items just to make sure nothing will get damaged due to a surge in amps. Again please let me know how to proceed as soon as you can. I'm afraid this problem may cause a fire. It also might be a good idea to replace all the smoke detector batteries if they haven't been done for a while. That would cost $50 in labor and $40 for all the 9v batteries. The cost of the batteries are high because due to the new law when detector batteries are changed, they need to be replaced with the 10 year batteries and the date of install marked on each one. If you go online you can check the pricing of the batteries. Unfortunately the required 10 year batteries are twice as much as the regular 9v batteries. "
That would cost $50 in labor and $40 for all the 9v batteries
what a scammer...that alone pisses me off. Who can't change their own smoke detector batteries, for whats he's charging he should throw that in...