ComplaintsforO'Brien Service Company; Heating & Air Conditioning

• Initial Complaint

  02/24/2022

  Complaint Type:

  Service or Repair Issues

  Status:

  Answered

  More info

  O'Brien Service Company told my now 80 year old widowed mother, ******* ******** when they originally installed her HVAC system that it would last the rest of her life. She has paid a monthly fee for the silver warranty for 14 years & she originally purchased a $10,000 unit. (She has a 1100 sq ft house so a 10k was ridiculous. ) My mother's house has not been heating properly for years so she has called them from time to time to come out & check the unit & has had it serviced annually. Her house has been cold so she called them & they came out & it took them THREE trips. They charged extra for troubleshooting which in turn cost her over $600. The "trouble shooting" result that the serviceman gave was that there was no leak & the last O'Brien service person didn't screw on the cap for the freon when he filled it so the freon leaked out. The house was STILL cold so they came back out & put in more freon & installed a blower wheel with motor chain & yet it never warmed her house. They then told her she needed another unit. My mother was encouraged to go with another company by a family friend to install the new unit because she has been cold for months! The new company came out Saturday & when they were removing the old unit they discovered that there was NO freon at all in the unit & OBrien had originally installed the wrong size copper pipe for the freon. It should have been larger & that is why there had always been issues with freon. Every time Obrien came to the house they tried to sell her a new unit when the issues with her unit have always been due to their errors. She has paid $400 of the $600 & is returning the $340 blow wheel. They are sending her threatening letters for the balance. (They also have a 3 ton unit listed on the invoice when it is 2) They told her that the "silver warranty had been discontinued but it has been drafted from her bank account for 14 years & she was never informed that is was useless.

  Business response

  07/10/2022

  Business Response /* (1000, 5, 2022/03/01) */ Dear Ms. *****, Your mother has been a long-time customer of ours and we appreciate her loyalty throughout the years. Your mother's unit was 15 years old and the average lifespan for a unit in this area is 10 - 15 years. As far as the Silver Warranty is concerned, this name was changed to our current maintenance membership, the Energy Savings Club. This membership has the same benefits as the Silver Warranty. We would like to assure you your mother's payments were not useless. The caps you mention are not designated to be the device the holds the refrigerant in the system. It is the same as having a loose cap on a bike or car tire. The unit will not leak freon just as a tire will not leak air because of a loose cap. Unlike car and bike tires they are solid and can be put on very tight, but they are to protect the valve assembly not to hold refrigerant in the system When our service techs come out and recommend a repair, they give an estimate first and the customer can either accept or decline the repair. Parts and labor are included in this price as well. Please remember there is a difference between the estimate and the invoice. The estimate will have everything our service tech recommends with pricing for each recommendation, and the invoice will have the price of the work that was approved. We've been out three times in the past three years one of which was to perform the work that was quoted in the previous visit. One for no heating in which we did the leak search and did not charge for the diagnostic fee. The second in which we performed an extended leak search and replaced the Schrader core. We did not charge your mother for the Schrader core and relieved over $150 of your mother's outstanding balance. The only other call we have had, other than an annual maintenance visit each year, was a no cooling call in June of 2019. During that call we found a bad capacitor and contactor, nothing to do with the refrigerant side of the system. Back in 2007 when your mother's heating and cooling system was installed, the line set for the system was approved. Since then, HVAC has seen incredible technological advancement in equipment. In the estimate our Comfort Specialist quoted, the line set would have been changed out with the install of the new unit. Again, the lifespan of a heating and cooling system is 10 - 15 years. Once a system hits that age range, we do begin recommending replacing the system or save for a replacement. So of course, we did recommend this to your mother. We did this because the older a unit gets, the more repairs that need to be done, and the cost of repairs could become more than a new unit. We are also confused as to your statement that an invoice listed a 3 ton unit. The only time we see a unit size listed is for the blower wheel replacement which says "1.5 - 3 TON UNIT DD BLOWER WHEEL". This is a repair task to replace a blower wheel in a system that is between 1.5 and 3 tons. As you said your mother's system is a 2-ton system. Lastly, the reminder letters we sent out for the balance were just that, reminders.

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