- Web Site Searches
- Shipping Procedures
- Special Orders
- Return Policy
- Return Instructions
- DIY’ers
- Items not on our Website
- Guarantees & Warranties
- Technical
- Local Codes
- Privacy Policy
- Volume Pricing and Price Matching
- Color Matching and Fitment
- Lutron Related F.A.Q.
- Glossary of Terms
Web Site Searches:
Our entire site is based on a search system. If using the actual search box please use vague descriptions at first. When searching part numbers please exclude color preferences from those part numbers, i.e. Search DV-600P- and not DV-600P-WH. On most items with color choices you may select your color upon adding to cart. Also there is a box at the top right of most products pages labeled 'Refine Results' Click there to narrow your results. If it's just not working for you please send us an email and will respond promptly. For more tips on navigating our site click here.
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Shipping Procedures:
Order Processing: We will process you order the same or next business day (Weekends and holidays excluded). Example; you place your order Monday evening, and we receive it during operational hours and process, fill and ship your order. If there are any back orders or special order items we may opt to drop ship your order. Also, if you are closer to the manufacturer than to us we may also opt to drop ship your order.
Standard shipping times, UPS typically delivers most ground shipments within 3-5 day on the West half of the country, and 5-8 days on the East half. For those of you in Hawaii, Alaska, or Puerto Rico, well you should know how long UPS takes so preferably ship at least UPS 2nd day. For those of you in Canada, good luck, Canadian government is going to hit you with and import duty (no we will not make a false invoice or send ‘samples’) and shipping averages 1-2 weeks.
Expedited Shipping means just that, your actual shipping time will be expedited. We still need time to process and fill your order. Although most transactions are processed same day, please plan for 24-48 to process and fill your order, especially if you’re ordering some weird colors. A note on expedited shipping: some people are still confused about UPS 2nd day service (Blue). This doesn't mean you order it today and get it tomorrow. UPS will actually have your package 2 days.
UPS cut-off time for us is 2 P.M. (PST – Pacific). Any ‘in stock’ orders placed after 2 P.M. will ship the following business day.
Saturday Delivery, we urge you to plan better because UPS almost always screws this on up.
For Urgent Orders, please call (949-646-7777) so we may verify stock and shipping times. We are available from 7 A.M. – 5 P.M. (PST) to serve you. And we do not believe in voice mail, so you may have to be on hold for a minute, hopefully to a radio station that’s in tune, but you will get to speak to a real person here in California.
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Special Orders:
We stock more than 70,000 unique parts but that one we don’t is the one you need. Please simply contact us via email at sales@hankselectric.com with your request and we’ll do what we can to get it to you. Please note that our website is growing as fast as we can but still only reflects a small part of our most popular inventory. Please see our links page for a list of manufacturers we do regular business with.
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Return Policy:
Hanks Electrical Supply will accept for full or partial credit or exchange returned items that are:
Not installed in any fashion. No twisted up wires, scuffed or stripped screws, no knockouts removed, etc... If you've installed it, it's obvious to us, we've seen it all, don't even try it unless you want to pay to have it shipped back to you!
In the original manufactures packaging. Sealed if applicable. Just like you received it, including the instructions, wire nuts, screws, etc. If you just couldn't wait and ripped open the packaging to shreds, lost the instruction, needed the wire nuts for something else, simply get out the scotch tape, duct tape or masking tape, piece it back together, gift wrap it and give it to a friend for Christmas. Consider it early Christmas shopping, because we can't sell it as new and our manufactures won't take it back either.
In normal stocking quantities. (If you needed a Thousand Almond 3-way stacked switches, we can have them UPS'd next day to you, but when you receive them and realized you really wanted Ivory don't expect us to take them back without a re-stocking charge. If you are uncertain please request a color sample or more information.
Not Defective. We will assess items claimed to be defective upon return. Please notify us of your situation before returning supposedly ‘defective’ merchandise. If your item(s) are found to be in working order no credit or exchange will be issued and you will be contacted to pay shipping charges for return freight. True manufacture defective items will be exchanged at no additional cost to you, unless you need to expedite freight. Approximately 90% of our ’defective’ returns work just fine, in-fact a fair amount of the RadioRa in my home is comprised of these items. If you can't figure out how to wire it, you should have read earlier in the F.A.Q. about how Hanks recommends having a licensed electrical contractor do your installation. This would have saved you from reading this. If you can't figure out you're 3 or 4 way switching you should really stop blaming the switch or dimmer and visit the How stuff works page and maybe invest in a wire tracer or good voltmeter. If you've tried to hook up two 3-way dimmers together and found it doesn't quite work right, see note 2. You now have another Christmas gift and you also need to visit our online store and purchase a 3-way switch to make it work. If you bought a bunch of Lutron Maestro, Maestro IR, Spacer System, Radio Ra or other ‘Accessory (AD)’ or Remote (‘R’) dimmers to try and save a few bucks, you didn't fully read the product description and now have gifts for all your friends and family that are useless to them as well, Lutron accessory or remote dimmers and electronic switches require their respective ‘master or main (load carrying and rated)’ dimmer to dim or switch. And if your smoke detector starts chirping you probably need a new battery, if one needs it and there are multiple units wired together you might as well replace them all, after all they are there for your safety, if they are making a slightly louder and more obnoxious noise get out of your house, it's on fire. If you bought an Intermatic SS7C and have it switching on and off 3 times an hour, or just can't stop touching it and turning it on your self you might want to buy some rechargeable batteries or look into the G.E./Grasslin unit for a couple bucks more or just buy a bunch of batteries. If you've found out a regular dimmer will control you low voltage lighting, congratulations!, now bookmark our website so when your transformer fails we can sell you a new light fixture. If any of the above situations have happened to you or your having some other problem you can't understand please contact us so we can help explain it to you. We'd rather you be frustrated and well informed than frustrated and broke because you keep ordering the wrong part.
Non-electronic. Due to the delicate nature of electronic equipment none of which are returnable and will be noted in the description of the part before ordering. This includes but is not limited to: Test Equipment, electronic based dimmers (most of them), and motor control.
Not Special Order or custom ordered products.
All products marked ‘special order’ or ‘S.O.’; on our website are just that. They are ordered specific for you and cannot be returned unless they meet the above criteria and you are willing to accept a 35%-50% re-stocking fee as well as pay shipping to get the products back to us here at Hanks Electric or to the Manufacturer is applicable. Custom ordered products are non-returnable; this includes but is not limited to products such as wire and rope light.
Note on returns: If you have had to deal with Hanks on a more personal or regular basis you would know that we are very reasonable and would do what ever we could to resolve any issues including returns. We definitely encourage you to buy an extra wall plate or switch and will credit you for any extras as long as they meet the above criteria. However there are many people that just don’t get that we don’t, won’t and can’t sell used or installed product as new. The only used items we may occasionally sell are those that are no longer manufactured, mainly circuit breakers. No we don’t want to buy your used breakers either we have a reputable source that test and certifies them.
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Return Instructions:
It happens at least once a month that we get a return with absolutely no identifying marks, or no way of us tracing it to the original purchaser. Please include with all returns a copy of the order it was purchased on. If nothing else we nee an order I.D. or invoice number and date. Please also include an email or phone# incase we need to contact you. Return all merchandise to:
Hanks Electrical Supply
Attn: Internet Returns
1718 Placentia Ave.
Costa Mesa, CA 92627
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DIY’ers:
Even I fall into this category but there has to be line you draw when it comes to the safety of you, your family and your home. Hank’s Electrical Supply recommends having all your electrical work done by a licensed and/or certified electrician. You may be handy but that green wire that your buddy told you, you didn’t need to hook up could have prevented a shock or fire. Please don’t run extension cords in you walls or for permanent installations. Just because it works, doesn’t make it right or safe. In the future we may have a gallery of ‘what not to do’ and hopefully some nice installations as well. I was just reminded of this the other day doing some machining, WEAR YOUR SAFETY GLASSES. Even just using a screwdriver, you could arc it sending small bits of molten metal into you eyes and hands. Shameless plug: we sell some pretty stylish and extremely affordable safety glasses from Bomber. If you absolutely positively have to get your hands on it, just use one and keep the other hand in your back pocket. This is an ‘old school’ rule of thumb among electrical workers. If you’ve been shocked before, chances are you didn’t follow that rule. If you have to have both hands on it be sure the power is off.
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Items not on our website:
Again we have an inventory of approximately 70,000 unique parts and growing. Unfortunately it’s a time consuming process to add them all to our website. As a result, at the moment we have listed our most popular items. Please note that locally we have a reputation to stock a lot of items our competitors don’t. So please don’t hesitate to contact us for that little do-hickey you can’t find anywhere else. We can special order it if we don’t have it, or we can give you the bad news that it’s obsolete….
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Guarantees & Warranties:
Hanks Electrical Supply makes no claim to extend to our consumer anything more than the original manufacturers Guarantees & Warranties. In most cases this is 1 year. If you have a warranty issue we would like to work with you to resolve your problem not just replace your warranty-covered parts. Warranties are typically for manufacturer defects only; most warranty calls we get are blown up by the installer. Please turn off the power before installing anything or at least open the air gap (FASS) switch on the Lutron dimmers before installing live. Just because you lucky enough not to shock your self doesn’t mean you didn’t hurt the dimmer!
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Technical Questions:
We will be posting a directory of .pdf’s for technical reference. You may also email us you technical questions. Please note that we can only assist from our experience and all you work should be done or at least reviewed by a licensed or certified electrical contractor. If you are unfamiliar please ask before doing, we’re usually reply to email the same or next day.
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Local Codes:
Most electrical work in the U.S. is done to the N.E.C. code, however your local city, county or state may have additional requirements. Please contact your local electrical inspector before doing any major remodeling or electrical project. You’re more likely to have a positive experience with your inspector if they are involved from the get go. If you have a local requirement outside the normal realm of the N.E.C. we may not recognize it without your input. Please let us know so we can help you plan or order the appropriate parts.
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Privacy Policy:
Hanks Electrical Supply’s privacy policy is as simple as doing business with us. We only collect what info we need to process your transaction. We do not exchange, sell, or trade any of your information with anyone. Information stored and or passed through our website is done securely by our host. Effective on or about March 2007 (based on new website launch), unless otherwise requested, your information will only be held 90 days.
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Volume Pricing and Price Matching:
Hank’s strives to provide you with a great selection of reputable products at competitive pricing. If you needs are beyond normal order fulfillment you may request a special quote for the volume of product or business you plan to do.
If you find another authorized dealer for whatever you’re trying to save a few cents on we’ll try to supplement the income/time you lost by matching their price where we can. We recommend only using dealers linked to from the manufacturers site. If nothing else please check the site you are in question about for a physical address and phone number. Most of the bogus, cheapy sites will not list these or they will be false. Hanks has more than 30years experience in electrical wholesale, so you can rely on us to have the know how, reliability, and inventory to get you through any electrical situation.
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Color Matching and Fitment:
Although there are industry standard colors, we recommend sticking with one manufacturer to ensure consistent color matching for switches, dimmers and receptacles (or just about anything else).
Fitment of most devices is fairly standard across the industry; we have toggle style devices and Decorator/Decora/Designer style openings. There are a few exceptions like Lutron Nova and Vareo series and Leviton’s Acenti line. These require their own special or custom wall plates.
Fitment of recessed lighting is somewhat standardized between most of the importers Nora, Elite, Elco, Liton, etc.. and Halo. However there are some manufacturers with proprietary trim sizes we also need to know if you have shallow housing as some combinations of housing and trims just don't work or don't work well. Just ask before and save yourself the trouble of returning something that may not fit, or work together.
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Lutron Related F.A.Q.:
MLV. vs. ELV. Vs. Incandescent. There is a page on our Technical References Directory, which explains this in detail. Basically just get the right dimmer for the job and you shouldn't have any problems. If you’re not sure what load type you have you can either try and explain to us or email us a picture.
De-rating: When mounting multiple dimmers together, it may be necessary to remove some of their cooling fins or tabs. By doing this you have effectively de-rated you dimmer to some extent. Please see the literature you threw in the trash to see that your 600watt dimmer may now only be rated for 450watts.
Dimmers are warm to the touch. This is normal and to some people can seem ‘hot’. Don’t quote me on this but UL allows for just over 100 degrees as normal. Please just ensure you have the appropriate capacity dimmer for the job, de-rating applied.
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Glossary of Terms
Please visit our Glossary Page for info on some terms used in our industry you may not know or fully understand