ComplaintsforA & E Heating & Air Inc

• Initial Complaint

  08/14/2024

  Complaint Type:

  Service or Repair Issues

  Status:

  Answered

  More info

  On August 2nd, A&E **************************** came to my house for a diagnostic visit. I paid $250 diagnostic fee. My complaint is that I do not feel I got the diagnostic service I paid for. I explained over the phone my HVAC system had low refrigerant based on an error code from the system. They came out and confirmed I had no refrigerant in my system and sent me an estimate to find and repair the leak; they were gone in 5-15 minutes. They made no attempt to see if there was an obvious source of my leak and refused looking at the head units in my home when I offered to show them, even though they said the leak could have been located there. A leak is not an uncommon thing and experienced techs know where these commonly happen. I expected a good faith effort to do a basic look-over at different parts of the system so I could get an appropriate estimate. Not a full leak search ...just a cursory look at places a leak would be expected. They could not be bothered to look for visual cues like greasy spots, listen for things like a hissing sound, or note if they smelled freon anywhere. These are things other HVAC companies do as a part of a good diagnostic appointment. I called the business manager to ask for a refund. They spoke to me on August 13th and did nothing to remedy the situation. They did not give me a refund or any portion thereof, they did not offer to come back out and do a more thorough review, or anything else. I paid $250 but I have no idea what service I received other than they showed up to confirm what I told them on the phone.

  

  Business response

  08/21/2024

  When we booked the appointment, we set the expectations as to what would take place. The customer asked clarifying questions and understood prices and task to be performed. Part of the price was due to the distance from our office to the home. CSR did explain that the address fell in a zone three for diagnostic pricing. I listened to the booking call to be sure our CSR was clear, and she was. Ten days after the service the customer called back stating that after talking to competitors, she doesn't feel what we provided was reasonable anymore. That we should have done more, and she didn't get what she paid for. Quick explanation of our two appointments. First is diagnostic, second would be repair. The diagnostic is a fairly quick appointment to read codes, get readings, test pressures and temperatures, assess symptoms and diagnose what the problem is. This also assists in us returning to the job fully prepared for the repair if authorized. The return trip would have been the lengthy process of doing the leak search and repair. During the phone call I had with ***** she said that we should have tried to find the leak during the diagnostic. Finding the leak is part of the leak search and repair appointment. It's not part of the diagnostic process. We did not give the impression that this was part of what we would be performing at that appointment. I explained on the phone how the two appointments work, and what we do in each. Only after talking to other competitors did we fall short of her expectations. Besides the phone call I had with *****, you can see below are details Ive left in response to the ****** review to explain why there is no refund to be given. We followed through with exactly what we promised. We showed up on time, billed what we quoted and did exactly as we were scheduled to do.
  "Hi *****, I am the manager that spoke with you yesterday about your appointment concerns. I would like to review the items we spoke about on the phone and why there was no refund offered for your appointment. Before I returned your call, I listened to the booking conversation you had with our office staff. In that call our CSR explained what would happen in the appointment and how much it would cost before you booked the time slot with her. We are a flat rate company and make sure that the expectation you can hold us to is set at the time of scheduling the appointment. We can tell you exactly what it will cost and what will happen at the appointment so that you are not blindsided by anything. We want to be transparent and clear in our communication so that we can form trust as we work together. In the call you asked our CSR if it would be just the diagnostic performed or if it would be repair as well. Our CSR said that it would only be the diagnostic that would happen at this appointment. She explained what some of the factors could be when scheduling for the repair appointment as well. There was also some discussion about what our availability looked like going forward if a return trip was schedule. After I reviewed the call, I found that our CSR fully disclosed what to expect from us at the appointment, cost and task to be performed. We arrived on time to the appointment and performed the diagnostic as promised and billed as you were quoted. I could not refund you for the appointment because it was executed by our staff to our full expectation. At the appointment the technician provided you with three different quotes for us to perform the repair. One of the quotes he provided you had a membership discount applied saving you $748 on the repair. There is no obligation for you to choose A&E for the repair if you feel the pricing is not what you would like to pay for the services. Your particular repair is not small. It can be rather pricy because it is one that takes a long time to perform and will require refrigerant, which is expensive. Your system was completely flat on refrigerant, and this was the largest line item on your estimates. I can understand the frustration you might be experiencing as your system is down and then receiving the quotes for the work required. I did consider your request for the refund, but I found nothing done improperly by our staff. I hope you can have your system repaired and that you will be up and running very soon."

  Customer response

  08/25/2024

   
  Complaint: 22143732
  
  I am rejecting this response because:

  My complaint is not that the process started with a diagnostic appointment and that the repair would happen on another day. My complaint is that I do not feel I got a legitimate diagnostic service. I explained over the phone my system had low refrigerant. The only action taken at the appointment was that the tech confirmed there was indeed no refrigerant and thus a leak; they did nothing further to evaluate what was going on with my system. A leak is not an uncommon thing and experienced techs know where these commonly happen. I expected a good faith effort to do a basic look-over at different parts of the system so I could get an appropriate estimate. Not a full leak search ...just a cursory look at places a leak would be expected. They did not look for visual cues like greasy spots, listen for things like a hissing sound, or note if they smelled freon anywhere. They didn't ask me any questions about what I might have noticed. As noted originally, I invited them to look at the head units but they declined doing so.
  
  As the company noted, in calling around it was clear to me these are things HVAC companies do as part of a good diagnostic appointment. ******************** told me if they found a small pinhole leak they could add super seal to fill it on the spot. Comfort Solutions told me if they couldn't find the leak during the diagnostic appointment (in ***** min) they would they would set an an appointment to search the whole system. Hybrid Heating told me if they couldn't spot the leak in the diagnostic appointment, they had additional tests that could be coordinated. These are all companies that charge a diagnostic fee, and also said they may have to do more expansive searches and/or repairs on following days ...again, that is not the issue. The difference is in the quality of the diagnostic service. Based on the businesses response, I am not clear on what I paid for other than their time coming out to my home.
  
  Sincerely,
  ***********************

  

  Business response

  08/29/2024

  I understand that the complaint is not about needing to have two different appointments. Its just one part of my previous response. For any service business to be consistent, a decision has to be made as to where the line falls between services offered in each appointment type. You wanted us to do something during the diagnostic appointment that for us takes place in the repair appointment. I cant change our company service structure because someone doesnt agree with how we have decided to split the tasks. We believe 100% that this is the best way for us to do this as a flat rate company with no surprises to the customer. A diagnostic for an assumed leak is treated the same as a diagnostic for an assumed compressor failure as for an assumed bad pump etc. ********** services from us no matter what a homeowner tells us is the problem. A diagnosis, by definition, is the identification of the nature of an illness or other problem by examination of the symptoms. That means we go and diagnose the problem. Thats what we did at your appointment. We did not go beyond the diagnosis process to start finding things beyond what you asked us to do. There has been quite a mention of what other companies do in comparison to ours. I really cannot explain their process, procedure, business structure or why they chose to do things as they do. I can only be concerned with the choices and integrity of our own company. We dont allow what other companies are doing to sway what we believe is in everyones best interest. We have to be able to stand behind our process and work, and we do stand by splitting the diagnostic from the leak search and repair in this way.  

  To address diagnosing the same issue as you told us: We get phone calls every day for a system not working. The homeowner tells us what they think the issue could be, but they dont have the expertise to be right 100% of the time. In fact, they are regularly not correct, or dont know all that is going wrong with their system. We do not schedule any job based off of the homeowners opinion or even another companies diagnosis. We take it on advisement that it could be the case, but we require our technicians to perform their own diagnosis. In fact, we perform a SYSTEM diagnosis instead of a SYMPTOM diagnosis because multiple things may be taking place and not all issues are visible. We do this to make sure that we dont overlook another issue taking place at the same time and having to return again for not doing a thorough examination. Not only could multiple things be taking place, but one issue could have a ripple affect leading to other parts or system failures. We examined your system and came up with the diagnosis that, yes, there was a leak. You were correct. If there had been other issues that were not known to you previous to the appointment, he would have identified those for you as well. The diagnosis is what you asked us to come and give you, that is the appointment that we booked,and that is what we provided.

  
  I think you mentioned more than once not knowing what you paid $250 for. Im ok with giving you a very complete explanation of what goes into our pricing. Your diagnostic fee paid for the support staff to take the phone call, schedule and dispatch the technician. You paid for the programs and tools (phones and tablets) for us to use to keep track of your job, invoice and payment correctly and efficiently. You paid for our technician to sit in his van for 50 minutes and drive 31 miles across and through downtown ******** to get to your residence. Which I see now means your appointment should have been billed as a zone 4 at $285 instead of zone 3 at $247. That drive costs not only that employees gas and wages while he drives, but a portion of his health benefits, SL and PTO too. You paid for an employee who makes a good wage and cares about his job and respecting your home rather than someone at minimum wage who just wants to get to the end of his day and leave. You paid for the training and experience of a professional HVAC technician to come and assess your system instead of just the symptom. For him to confirm your suspicion of a leak and let you know that he didnt see anything else wrong at that time. Beyond all of that there must be something left over to go towards even a tiny portion of the company over heads, insurances and expenses that we definitely cant go in depth on here. I chose to explain all of that because it is a very common misunderstanding that he was only here 20 minutes means it should have been cheaper than that. Being a flat rate company means that the customer pays for the task to be done. If it takes the technician 20 minutes to get the diagnosis, its the same price to you as if it took the technician an hour to get the same diagnosis. We believe it's not the customers fault if they get a faster more experienced technician vs. someone whos a little bit earlier in their career and taking a bit longer. We dont stick our customers with a bigger bill for that, but its common for people to want a lower bill if they are faster, thus penalizing the better employee. We dont do that to our customers OR our employees.

  
  I really hope this makes sense, but would be more than happy to explain any part of this further. I have listened to the call when the appointment was booked as well as spoke to the technician who came to your home. I am confident that we did exactly as you asked and exactly what we promised. We provided you with a diagnosis, but no, we did not start on the process of the search and repair which is what you are saying we didnt do right. 

  Customer response

  09/06/2024

   
  Complaint: 22143732
  
  I am rejecting this response because:

  I hired another company to solve my HVAC leak problem (The Heat Pump Store). The new tech who came out identified the leak in maybe 2 minutes looking at the same outdoor unit that the tech from A&E Heating and Air saw on their diagnostic appointment. This is the crux of my complaint - that A&E Heating and Air did no real diagnostic service, they came out and charged me for an estimate. As a result of the poor diagnosis by A&E Heating and Air, they gave me an estimate of about $9,000 more in price.

  A&E Heating said they perform a system diagnosis but they did not look at the whole system. They said if other issues were not known to me, they would have identified those as well. But they did not even identify the very issue in front of them.
  
  Sincerely,
  
  ***********************

• Initial Complaint

  01/28/2024

  Complaint Type:

  Service or Repair Issues

  Status:

  Resolved

  More info

  Company came out in July 2023 to fix issues with our heating/ac unit. That was completed but the problem was that the tech bumped the gas switch to our unit that resulted in our unit freezing and we lost heat for 9 days during the most recent cold snap during the month of January ****. We did not know this till another company came to assess our unit as A&E did not return my phone calls. I think it is reasonable for them to reimburse me the fees they charged me as well as the invoice for ********* Air Heating and Cooling for correcting their mistake.

  

  Business response

  01/30/2024

  Customer profile does not have any records of calls between July 2023 and January **** when the complaint was made. A&E was not notified that there was an issue or we would have gone out to make it right. Please see the response I left to the poor ****** Review that addresses two concerns that came to mind while reviewing the customer profile. One being that another HVAC company probably worked on the system in July and why didn't the issue show up as the furnace was being used in the cold months leading up to the storm. We do not plan to refund the $400 paid to us for the service call in June as those services were rendered without any issue. We don't see reason to reimburse for any further expenses because we were not able to correct the issue ourselves, as we would have gladly done. 

  ****** Review Response: Hi *******, I appreciate the feedback on your experience with A&E. I can see that we did perform a maintenance in June of 23'. There is no way to know what happened that long ago but we do not deny that the possibility exists that we may have flipped the switch as you suggest. As I was reviewing your service records and listening to your phone calls with us, I did have two questions come to mind. I see that you did call for an appointment in July for 'system not cooling' and then canceled the appointment. I wonder if you had another HVAC company come out and service your system? Is it possible that another company could have the same potential as us in this matter? The other question that came up for me is that it was not noticed until the extreme conditions we had in January. Had your system been functioning in the other cold months leading up to this storm? If your system had been showing signs of not heating properly then we could have addressed it before the storm, had we been notified. We value the opportunity to correct situations that are not to our clients satisfaction. Because this is the first time you've told us that there was an issue, we didn't get the chance to correct it.

  Customer response

  01/30/2024

   
  Complaint: 21211377
  
  I am rejecting this response because:
  Correction,you are correct it was in June that you did come out to visit. Attached is the invoice I signed.  How can you come out to rectify the incident you created if you dont return my phone calls?  I called 3 times and you never returned my phone calls & going 9 days without heat is still pretty long.  Not returning my phone calls is still failure on your part.  
  6-7 months is a long time, however, no one went up into my attic in that time.  Not myself or my husband needed to go up there in the past 6 months.  When the other company came to our house and removed the panel, he immediately spotted the problem.  He is the one who said to us that whoever put the panel back on bumped the switch off.  Im not saying it was on purpose but the outcome was the same, being without heat during a crucial time.  The last individual to touch that panel was your tech and because of your tech we went without heat.  I implore you to own your mistakes and failures to contact me in a timely manner.  I had to reach out to the BBB to get a response from you.  
  
  
  Sincerely,
  
  **************************************

  Customer response

  02/02/2024

  So I reached out to the General Manager ******** and we talked and tried to resolve this.  This was on Tuesday, Jan 30, 2023.  She promised me she would be back in touch with me the next day.  Both January 31st and Feb 1st came and went, no phone call from GM ********.  I just now called and left a message.  Once again having to leave a message chasing after them.  I honestly cannot comprehend how stupid this company is.  Poor customer service, poor professionalism;  I cannot recommend them.  

  Customer response

  02/02/2024

  Hello, 

  The GM ******** finally called me today and said that she had called me back and left a voicemail message.  I never received said message.  Anyhow, they stated that they want the invoices and will reimburse both the fees from the other company and from the visit in June 2023.  Please standby as they say they will be cutting a  check.

   

   

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