Is it unreasonable to be ticked off when an electrician made an appointment to be at your house between 8am and 3pm and calls at 5 pm to reschedule?

I would be ticked at first. Then I realize that life happens. If it happens twice then I would hire another electrician next time.

Nothing wrong with feeling how you feel.

It’s not unreasonable to be ticked off, but you might consider the pros and cons of other approaches.

I tend to assume people may flake out and/or have other things come up, and plan to be prepared for them to show up or not for appointments, etc. In some cases it can be more or less of a problem if someone doesn’t keep their appointments and/or doesn’t communicate, and I realize I have choices about what to do and what to communicate about that.

So this is one of the busiest seasons for electrician’s due to the hot weather. I went through the exact same thing last year, twice.
While your feeling’s are understandable, getting in right now isn’t easy, so sometimes it’s better to just roll with it and get the job done. My response is usually, ‘Okay, well thanks for letting me know at least, I’ll see you tomorrow.’

We know stuff happens. But it is 2021. We all have phones in our pockets now. He should have called. He wasn’t performing open heart surgery. Whatever he was doing it could have waited 2 minutes. That would have saved you so much grief.

If you were close I’d stop by and we’d do the job together.

@LuckyGuy It’s likely a tough job. Squirrels got into the small space between the kitchen ceiling and roof and also the walls. The are all gone now but one electrical circuit (microwave and 2 outlets) function intermittently (never triggering a circuit breaker). Might have to tear out the ceiling and or wall to repair the damage (Cha-Ching!). I live in Tacoma.

I agreed to pay $200 just to assess the problem.

It was such a beautiful day to sacrifice hanging around the house all freaking day for nothing.

Just a little common curtesy and an apology would have been nice.

Find another electrician. Screw that guy.

You do have a right to be mad. And I would have said what you said, except that around here it is hard to find anyone to show up for any appointment. I had appointments for four different companies to remodel my kitchen. Only 2 showed up and only one gave me an estimate. You may not have that problem where you live, though. So I would be at his mercy and I would’ve given him another chance with a firm conversation about calling to let me know his schedule that day.

I had an experience with a painter whom I was going to try. He didn’t show up at the appointed time. I texted him and he said he was sorry but he’d had to take his mother to the hospital. He said he could probably come on Saturday. i texted back with a couple of available times and didn’t hear from him again. I texted him the following week and said I had found someone else and thanks for his interest.

I think it’s rude to hang around waiting for someone and not have them bother to text. I could have forgiven my guy once but not after that.

Yeah you have a right to be mad, just like when a service says they will send a guy out Tuesday and he never shows up, thing is they never said what Tuesday you just expect it to be the one coming up.

I’d be annoyed. Especially when you called at 2:50 they should have said right then that they were running late and offered to reschedule and apologize.

I recently had someone not show up for an appointment and I still am going ahead with him only because a neighbor used him before.

No!! I’d be annoyed as hell!

I agree with @LuckyGuy and I say this all the time. If someone really wants to make a phone call or send a text, it takes 30 seconds. You can even do it while sitting on the toilet. That’s why, to me, not calling someone to cancel or tell them you’re running late is inexcusable, unless there’s some tragedy or illness (family member, ER visit, emergency like a fire, etc.).

Time to get a different electrician. If they did that about the appointment, what will they do about the job at hand.

I’ve had delivery and service jobs like that and sometimes things just happen out of your control. You don’t mean to, but some calls take longer than you expect and time flies. The electrician was wrong for not calling. You can’t excuse that. Communication with the customer is crucial. Still you have to realize how many calls they put on their workers. Then when customers get mad because the company overbooked the service people, we had to take the earful from the customer. Very frustrating, but once again not the customers fault. I’m torn on the situations cause I’ve been on both sides.