Not All Heating And AC Repair Is The Same, Horror Stories From Several People Who Learned The Hard Way
A lot of people are concerned about the turnaround time on repairs or convenience when it comes to choosing the right heating and AC repair company. They don’t actually investigate things such as customer service and accuracy, but this is where you should start because these two factors can make a major difference when it comes to your overall experience. The number one reason why things go south during an AC repair is usually due to inexperienced technicians or poor customer service, so checking those reviews before you hire an HVAC company isn’t a bad idea.
The following are a few horror stories from people who really didn’t know just how badly an HVAC repair could go. The one thing they all have in common is that they didn’t research the heating and AC repair company before scheduling them to come out to their room, and that turned into a massive mistake. Each of their stories is a great way to learn about what to look out for when hiring a company and things that should make you apprehensive about allowing someone to continue or start a repair.
It is important to remember that you never have to let a heating and AC repair company finish a job. You are not obligated to use them just because they came out to your home. If you feel uneasy or are nervous about a few red flags, listen to your instinct and tell them you would prefer it if you leave. Doing so can save you a lot of hassle and sometimes even thousands of dollars. Your HVAC equipment is extremely expensive, which means there is a lot of room for things to go wrong when they do. Save yourself from ending up like some of the people in these stories by screening any HVAC company thoroughly before inviting them into your home.
Lots of Characters… No Solutions
When Amelia and David chose an HVAC company for air conditioning repair they expected a one-time visit. They assumed the company would come out to their home, do the repair, and then leave and everything would be good again. This is what most people think will happen when they realize they need to deal with heating and AC repair, but it is not what usually happens. Usually, there is a diagnostic process followed by a brief passage of time while parts are ordered and then the repair. However, in Amelia and David’s case one repair turned into a multi-month affair.
Amelia called an HVAC repair company after she noticed that the AC system was blowing warm air out of the vents. Instantly she knew there was a problem, and with two kids in the house, she knew that she had to take care of this issue. Summer in Texas was too hot to deal with this for too long. Amelia called her husband, but he told her that she should just call whomever she found that could come out quickly. The couple had only owned a home for the past year, and it was their first home so they didn’t really have a preferred HVAC company yet.
Amelia said okay and then hung up to start looking for a heating and AC repair company. The internet was full of names, and she had no idea where to even start so she started just going down the Google search results. Her first question was always what does your availability look like, she was quickly learning that almost everyone was booked for the next two weeks. They always told her the same thing, summers were always very busy, but they could put her on a waitlist.
She would then decline and keep looking because David told her to just find someone that could out right away. It didn’t occur to her to look at their ratings, certifications, or even any reviews because she was on a mission and ten calls in she was starting to lose faith that someone was out there. It made no sense to her how there could be this many heating and AC repair companies and not one of them had openings. How many people in her area could be dealing with a broken AC system? Did half the city not have air or something?
Finally, she landed on a company that said they could come out tomorrow. Amelia was immediately filled with relief. At first, she thought she would only settle for someone who could come out today, but after the first dozen calls tomorrow seemed like paradise. She quickly took down their phone number, and company name, and gave the receptionist a brief description of what was going on. They told Amelia that they would have a technician out to her house around 8 am. She did some quick mental math in her head and said that would work fine.
David had a big update at work, so she knew that he couldn’t take off work. She was supposed to go into the office tomorrow, but she would just switch her in-house days with her co-worker and send the kids to daycare. This way she could be home to let the technician into the house, but the kids would be out of the heat and out of the way during the repair. If she took them to daycare around 7:30 she could easily get back in time. Happy now that she had a plan in place, she called David and told him that they had a company coming in the morning.
The two briefly talked before Amelia said she was going to take the boys to the library to get out of the heat. They decided they could rough it out for one night, and that at least it would cool off a bit when the sun went down. With that figured out, the couple hung up and went about the rest of their day. They just needed to make it about 15 hours at this point and the end of this situation would be in sight.
The morning came around and David went off to work and Amelia took the kids to daycare. She got home in plenty of time and then turned on her coffee to brew a quick cup. No one had gotten a lot of sleep last night because of how thick the heat seemed to be, so it was a relief that someone was coming today to address the problem. She sat in the kitchen sipping on a coffee contemplating turning it into an iced coffee when she realized it was almost pushing 9 am. She was slightly concerned now, where on earth was the heating and AC repair company.
Amelia quickly put down her coffee and called the company. No one answered, so she called again and this time luckily got a receptionist. They said that someone may have gotten behind on a call but they should be at her house soon. They also said that they would send out a page to get an update, and someone would call her back with an ETA soon. That made Amelia feel a bit better, but she didn’t like how late the company was and they hadn’t even got started yet. Punctuality was a big deal to Amelia as a former military child, and it annoyed her that they hadn’t even shown the decency of calling to let her know.
It reached 9:30 am before someone called her back, but this time it was the technician calling to let her know he was behind, but on his way. He told her that according to his GPS, he would make it to her house by 10 am. She appreciated that he did call this time, but was still a bit put off that they had handled this like this.
Eventually, the technician got to her house and asked to see the outdoor and indoor components. Amelia was so relieved to have an air conditioning and repair technician with her that she welcomed them into her house without a second thought. She left the door open as well and told them that they could come and go as they pleased. This left them room to make themselves comfortable, and apparently, they did because at one point Amelia heard them heating something up in the microwave and using the bathroom. Neither of these things annoyed her too much, but she felt it was a bit odd that they had made themselves at home before even talking to her about what they were doing. Still, she didn’t say anything because she wanted them to fix her AC system.
About two hours after they arrived they found Amelia and told her that she was going to need to have a few parts replaced within her AC unit. She was a little bit weirded out by this because she assumed they were already repairing her unit. What exactly had they been doing for two hours? She didn’t hear any noise and they hadn’t really brought many tools into her home outside of what may have been on their tool belts. For all, she knew they had been playing games on their phones in the utility closet because she certainly hadn’t heard much more.
However, Amelia needed to get that AC working, and she planned on letting David call to talk to someone about all this wasted time that they were no doubt going to get billed for so she asked them politely how long it would take to get the parts. They didn’t really answer her question directly but said that it would probably take a few days as they had to deal with a distributor and they didn’t handle the orders. Apparently, someone from the office took care of that so if she wanted to know exactly how long it would be she could call the office.
Amelia then questioned them again, asking what they had been able to do, and they said that they tried to meld a few things together but it didn’t work so now they would have to replace a part. They were pretty vague about the work they did and seemed ready to move on now. Of course, they remembered to take her payment for the time they were there (even though nothing happened) and Amelia let them out.
She couldn’t believe that she was going to be without AC for another few days while this heating and AC repair company ordered the parts. While she understood that things took time, she felt as if they were undervaluing what an inconvenience it was going to be for everyone in her family to live without AC for a few days. When she called David to let him know he was not too happy either, what else could they do?
Things got slightly more intense when David got home and went to check on the work that the team had done to the outdoor and indoor units. He found that they had not put the cage on securely to the outdoor unit which greatly agitated him. What if an animal had crawled in there to nest or even worse, what if their kids had discovered that it was slightly loose and started playing with it potentially damaging something even more? Or getting hurt?
That was bad enough, but then David found something that made him even angrier. The utility room door and the wall near the unit both had blowtorch marks on them. It turned out that they must have burned the door with the blowtorch when they were trying to mold the pieces back together, but no one had bothered to tell them about it. This made David intensely angry and he asked Amelia for the phone number to call someone right away. She couldn’t believe that they had done anything since they seemed to have sat around the entire time. So it was even more frustrating that the one thing they did they had horribly failed at.
While neither David nor Amelia really knew how to use a blowtorch, both knew enough to know you would have had to be extremely careless to leave burn marks behind. What if they had started a fire due to their negligence? This was simply unprofessional and unsafe. At this point, the team of heating and AC repair technicians had done nothing to help them but now left more damage for them to deal with. They could repaint the wall but weren’t quite sure how they were going to handle it and David was convinced they weren’t going to be the ones dealing with it.
Amelia was silently fuming that she hadn’t said anything when they used her kitchen microwave. Here they had made themselves home in her house all while knowing that they had damaged it. That seemed to go above being rude, it was the next level up. Plus, everyone in the house was hot and cranky and that did not help anyone’s mood. What hurt even more is when they attempted to call the heating and AC repair company to tell them what happened and to get an update about how long it would take for the pieces to come in. As of right now, they didn’t even know when their AC was going to get fixed, and after six phone calls it didn’t look like they were going to find out tonight.
Amelia and David both took turns calling and neither had any luck until Amelia got asked to put on hold. Delighted, she said yes. Finally, she had reached an actual talking person and after a brief hold could address all of her issues. Except that is not what happened. About 20 minutes after she was placed on hold the call was dropped and she realized that the receptionist had hung up. Taken back she immediately called again, but no one answered and the phone kept running endlessly.
The couple took turns calling for a few minutes but quickly realized that it was only getting hotter and they had to get the kids from daycare. This mess would have to wait a few hours while they figured out what they were going to do while they waited for the parts. Ultimately David decided to go to his parent’s house to borrow a portable AC unit that they had used to cool down the dog’s room last summer because it didn’t seem to cool as well over the garage. The dog could live in another room for a few days so that David could use the unit at his house.
While David mulled over how much he didn’t like that he was now essentially borrowing his parents’ dog’s AC unit, he at least felt a bit better that he could create a cool place that everyone in his home could use to cool off when the heat started to get to be too much. It seemed that this might be the situation for a few days and they weren’t going to waste their vacation money renting a hotel down the street from their own home.
Amelia suggested they just put the AC in their bedroom and the twins could sleep either in the bed or on the floor. David was not a huge fan of this because he knew he was going to end up with someone’s foot in his back, but he also knew that they had to all share a room so it might as well be their room. While he got to work installing the unit he asked Amelia to go back to calling the heating and AC repair company to see if she could get anywhere. Amelia called for the next hour but either the phone would ring endlessly or she would get put on hold and then hung up on.
Around 6 PM the phone switched from ringing to a voicemail message that stated it was now after hours and there was no one there to take the call. They could leave a message and someone would call them back in the morning. Amelia smirked at the fact that no one was on time this morning, and no one could take her phone call now, but they had managed to turn on the answering machine exactly at 6 PM. Apparently, they could be timely when they wanted.
Everyone slept in Amelia and David’s room for the night and then after the kids were in daycare Amelia went back to phone the company. After about an hour she was just flabbergasted and upset about the fact that she still couldn’t get a hold of anyone. It was beyond her how anyone could run a business this way. The entire thing was just absurd. She needed to know when those parts were coming in so that her family could plan around it, but she couldn’t even talk to someone.
Once she figured that out, then she could talk to them about repairing the damage when they came out to make the AC repairs. Ideally, they could take care of both at once, but she would have to let them know about the damage because she was sure that the technicians had not reported their error to the heating and AC repair company. They probably had no idea that the wall and door had been torched during the failed AC repair attempts by the so-called trained techs. Of course, first, she was going to have to talk to someone.
She tried for an hour when she finally decided that enough was enough. She went online and looked up their physical address. She wasn’t sure if it was a real business address or just a place where they stored their trucks, but at this point, she was willing to try anything. She grabbed her keys and messaged David that she was heading down to the company headquarters. Something had to happen, and it was going to happen today because she was fed up with being hot and ignored. She paid too much money to be feeling like this.
While she was online looking up the company headquarters she noticed that they had a lot of bad reviews, and the more she looked the more she saw that she wasn’t the first customer who couldn’t get ahold of them and reported damage. It seemed that they were known for poor customer service once they had the money of a customer. She signed thinking that this would have gone better if she had read the heating and AC repair reviews before she booked them for the job
If she had then she may have never hired them and kept searching for a heating and AC repair company that was available. At very least, if she had been forced to hire them since they were one of the few with open availability, she would have paid a lot more attention to the technicians and made sure that they didn’t have the freedom to make such shoddy mistakes. She also would have demanded they call the office and find out what the wait time for the order was going to look like so that she wasn’t in this position. However, she knew hindsight was 20/20. These were all things she would do if she ever needed help with her HVAC system again, but for now, it was too late. She just had to get out of her current mess.
She got to the company headquarters which did just look like a place to park their couple fleet cars and walked right in. Immediately Amelia asked to speak to a manager, which turned out to be the first person she saw inside of the office space. They looked a little shocked and it was clear that customers were not really supposed to show up at the office, but the door was open and Amelia was able to walk right in. She felt a little awkward, but since they didn’t answer the phone what else could she do? The manager was very helpful and knew all of the right things to say, but wasn’t ready to actually offer a solution.
At first, she stated that she would look into it and call, but Amelia said that she had no problem waiting. All she had waiting for her was a hot home which seemed to drive the point home that she wanted things fixed. The manager then went and spoke to someone and came back to tell Amelia that it would be three days for the parts to come in. She would send out a technician as soon as they had the parts to get the AC fixed. This made Amelia feel a bit better, but she also wanted to talk about the door. The manager stated that they could review the door at the visit and that she was sorry this happened.
True to their word this time, it took three days for the parts to come in, and then the heating and AC repair company called Amelia and said they would be out the next day. Technically that made it four days which is not what the manager originally said, but she accepted. The last couple of days sharing one room with the AC unit had been tough and everyone was getting a bit cranky from being stuck in the same room all the time. The rest of the house smelled funny and taking showers in the hot heat had been interesting, to say the least.
The crew showed up in the morning an hour late, which didn’t surprise Amelia this time although Dave was a bit annoyed since he had taken the morning off to be home for the heating and AC repair this time around. This time there was only one technician, an older man who also seemed to have no problem making himself comfortable in the home. While he worked on the AC unit under David’s watchful eye, he also spent a lot of time talking to the couple and showing off his MMA moves on their couches. In fact, he was a bit too comfortable relaxing on the couch with his phone while things were set up (or so he claimed) and chatting away with them.
The most remarkable thing to Amelia was the way the heat didn’t seem to bother him because it was clearly bothering her. She wanted to retreat to the cooler room during the process, but both she and David were afraid to leave the tech alone for fear they wouldn’t work (and this guy was obviously easily distracted). In the end, he did end up fixing the AC after about four hours although it wasn’t clear if the repair really should have taken that long. Finally, the AC switched on to the surprise of everyone it seemed (even the tech seemed a bit worried) and he said that he was going to be on his way.
David asked him about the burnt door and wall, but he said that no one had told him about any repairs. He asked if they were sure that those marks were not there before, to which they replied they were absolutely sure. There was absolutely no other time that a blowtorch had been in that room. The tech was pretty nonchalant about the entire thing and said that he would have to talk to someone and then call with information.
While the AC was finally working, Amelia and David were not surprised when the technician did not call and despite continual attempts to call, no one picked up the phone. They were on the same roller coaster ride again and really getting old with the lack of customer service. Amelia is currently looking into legal action to get their door and wall repaired while David is ready to just give up on the situation and count their losses. Both are skeptical about the AC repair, but for the moment it appears to be holding which is at least comforting.
The one thing they both know is that if they need their AC repaired again they will be headed to another heating and AC repair company. Working with this company had been nothing but a hassle and they were sick of being given the runaround at every single turn.
Inexperience Leads to a Wet Situation
Elijah called a heating and AC repair company when he noticed that his AC was not cooling the house the way it should have been. The air coming out of his air ducts felt warm to him, and he thought that he had spotted a leak in the unit. For three days Elijah watched the unit and monitored the air before calling his home warranty program to request a service visit on the AC.
They stated that he had the choice of finding his own heating and AC repair company, and then he could submit receipts for reimbursement or use a company they contracted with. Elijah didn’t want to spend the money upfront, so he said he would just use whoever they wanted. However, this soon turned out to be a mistake that would cost him thousands of dollars. It also taught him a valuable lesson about why it is important to screen any HVAC company that walks into your home.
Elijah assumed that any HVAC technician would know enough to fix what appeared to be a simple problem. He assumed that an AC unit that wasn’t really cooling was fairly common and since this was Texas, technicians should have a lot of experience fixing these problems. Evidently, that was not the case as the person the heating and AC repair company sent out seemed to be overwhelmed from the moment they walked into the house.
They seemed a bit lost and distracted and when Elijah had questions they weren’t able to address any of them. The technician loved to tell him that he would talk to someone and call him back, but wouldn’t give him any real information. He looked over the system and stated there was a leak and that it would need to be fixed so that there wasn’t any water damage. Elijah agreed and asked if it could be done today. The technician looked uncomfortable but said if he could get the parts he could do it. Apparently, he could get the parts, but Elijah was second-guessing allowing this guy to do it. Something about his mannerisms and comfort on the job site made him wary about the entire thing.
However, he wanted his AC fixed and didn’t want to wait for the heating and AC repair company to have time to send a second person out so he told him to go ahead. The tech ended up replacing the coil and then the drain pan. To do this he had to remove the old drain line and then relocate the way that the old line would feed into the drain pan. The process was noisy but semi-quick (although Elijah didn’t really know what he should have been expecting as this was his first AC repair) and then the tech took his money and left.
Elijah had asked him a few questions, but of course, he didn’t have any answers other than to say that this was the standard course of action. The tech seemed to have something else on his mind and was not willing to explain what he was doing, why he was doing it, or to offer him any extraneous information. At any rate, he was glad it was done and that the cool air was back. Everything seemed to be going fine until one morning when Elijah happened to pop his head into the attic and noticed the floor was damp.
He normally never went into the attic, so the fact he did was pure luck because he discovered that water had been leaking into his home from the AC. He immediately called out a water remediation service and called the heating and AC repair company to find out what had happened. After being put on hold and hung up on three times in a row, he finally got to talk to a customer service agent who told him it sounded like a plumbing issue and to call someone else.
Elijah was still suspicious because the only person to have worked in the attic was the AC technician, but he called a plumber just to make sure. The plumber discovered that the tech had dislocated the primary drain line at the place where it should have met the main vent. As a result, instead of draining down and out of the house, it was just slowly getting released back into the corner of the attic.
After discovering this, Elijah immediately called the heating and AC repair company back but struggled with getting anyone to answer the phone. Again he would get placed on hold and eventually hung up on by the robotic answering service. The few times he did get through, he was stiffly told that water damage was not their responsibility and they would not cover a drain line repair or any damages.
Had Elijah read the reviews, he would have seen that this company is known for its poor customer service and costly mistakes. He knew he should have trusted his gut and asked for a second opinion, at the very least when he was uncomfortable with the technician, but now it was too late. His only choice was to get a lawyer and take the heating and AC repair company to court, but it could take a year in civil claims court before he would see any real money.
If you need AC repair and want a company you can trust to get the job done right, contact One Hour Air Conditioning & Heating of Dallas today. We offer excellent customer service and stand behind all of our work.
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