Do not use Ambia. This is the most expensive mistake I have ever made. It has taken 6 months to get to this point. Despite our panels being turned on, Ambia is still not done with their job. The only thing that has gone right was the application and first install. Everything since then has been painful, difficult and time consuming. To start, after installation, it took a month for the inspection to happen. Ambia blamed the city. I don’t believe that as I have never had those issues before (and other reasons I’ll address shortly). The first inspection failed. It took weeks to reschedule maintenance. I felt terrible for the tech because he came in the evening during below zero temps, spent hours the first night and another one or two hours the second night. The repeat inspection was schedule more quickly when I called in frequently. There were still issues with the work, but the inspector allowed the Ambia tech to correct them on the spot. The building inspection surprisingly passed the first time, but Ambia did not collect the information they needed and wanted us to do it. The meter witness test took another 4-6 weeks to schedule. It failed the first time. That poor tech had to come out on a Sunday. The rescheduled test still had issues, but thankfully the Xcel person was willing to let Ambia correct them on the spot. I do not fault the technicians. All the technicians were friendly and punctual. The problem is with Ambia leadership. This company is so compartmentalized very few people actually know what is going on. We received more wrong information than anything. In most cases, I do not believe this was intentional. For instance, when Abbey and Parker from customer support told me their supervisor, Bree would be in touch with me. I like to think they believed that. However, Bree never reached out to me. I received a single, unsigned, unhelpful email and no more. I appreciated Tania from interconnections. She was kind and did her best to help, even when she didn’t know anything about the process. She tried to explain the timeline for passing a meter test, but gave an incorrect timeline (one of the only times incorrect information worked to our advantage as it took less time than she said.) I appreciated her efforts, especially after speaking with Rachel in her department, who outright lied to me. She was in charge of scheduling our meter test with Xcel. She told me there was no phone number to call; she could only contact them by email. I wanted to call Xcel to check on the status, since we were already at 5 months into this process and not getting good information from Ambia. Not only was I able to find a number, I also received a call back from Xcel. When it came time for Rachel to schedule our second test, I verified with her the timeframe Xcel normally respond and said if I didn’t hear back from her, I would call her by then. When I called, she refused to answer, gave Tania incorrect information, and was on the phone with Xcel and had the date within 15 mins. She apologized after I sent a recap of the conversation to the text message everyone in Ambia has access to.
At every step of this process, we had to call Ambia to get anything done. It was as if they lost our file after each step. Instead of using case managers, they have departments that do not communicate or work together. No one is aware of what the other is doing which leads to chaos and misinformation. On multiple occasions we were told we did not need to be present for that step. Every time we were told that, we needed to be there. We had to leave work and take time off due to Ambia’s lack of training/communication/understanding of the process. Ambia’s lack of concern for their business practices is concerning at best and fraudulent at worst. They take payment upfront and nothing matters after that. We got shoddy work, failed inspections and months of having to track down employees to do their jobs for tens of thousands of dollars. It’s always someone else’s fault. They city’s fault or Xcel’s. Once mine for asking for appointments on my off days.