- Aug 2, 2017
- 1,643
- 4,345
I recently had a tech come into my home to work on my upstairs AC unit. He was sent out by my home warranty company. I was overseas my wife had to deal with him. After he said he found a slow Freon leak and charged us $600 to fill it up, he said he would be back in 2 days to fix leak.
2 days later a different tech came back, I was still overseas, and found the first tech had left the drain pipe disconnected while the AC ran for 2 days. My wife and kids never noticed the water stains on the 1st floor ceiling or the stains on the wall of the garage. He went on a rant about this particular company had hired people with no experience working on these type calls and that he was a certified tech who was tired of cleaning up after them. He spoke with me on the phone and apologized. Said he would fix the Freon leak and reconnect the pipe and that I needed to call my warranty company, and he would call his company and report what had happened. Unfortunately he did not leave any documentation of this with my wife. Calling my warranty company was a nightmare in itself as I could not get past the overseas call center who only read off a script and refused to put me through. (My 20 year affiliation with then is coming quickly to an end with them over all of this but I digress.)
I called the company who caused the damage and they called me a liar, said they were in my house a month earlier and had video and pictures of the damage already being there. All provably blatant lies. The then called me a joke and hung up on me. In their report to the warranty company they said the same thing about existing damage and that I was lying. When they were told we had pics of wet ceilings, walls and floors they changed their story to the homeowner disconnected the pipe themselves, not them. They said their tech never touched the pipe even though he could physically not open the unit without doing it. Of course, I was in Dubai at the time and my wife doesn’t even know what a drain pipe is so another provable lie. In the end, my insurance is going to cover the damage which is likely to exceed $30k or more after I pay my deductible. They will go after company through subrogation but told me they aren’t likely to succeed. I did try to talk with the company one more time to try and give them a chance to make it right but after I countered all their lies with actual facts, they told me to have my lawyer call them and to not call back.
So, this leads me to my question. The BBB and Yelp reviews on this company are staggeringly horrific and full of stories just like those above. (Yes I should have looked at those before letting the warranty company send them but have never had an issue like this before and didn’t see the need). I will definitely add to those but what other avenues do I have to try and make try and sure these inept crooks don’t damage anyone else’s home? Chamber of commerce? HVAC certification boards? Anyone else have any an experience like this with any kind of company and get any good resolution from it? Thanks in advance for any input.
Worst part about this is we had just replaced our carpet upstairs with hardwood in April and now will likely have to redo it all again, which explains why my wife would have crawled up into our AC closet and disconnected the pipe, so we could live through replacing floors entails all over again 2 months later..
2 days later a different tech came back, I was still overseas, and found the first tech had left the drain pipe disconnected while the AC ran for 2 days. My wife and kids never noticed the water stains on the 1st floor ceiling or the stains on the wall of the garage. He went on a rant about this particular company had hired people with no experience working on these type calls and that he was a certified tech who was tired of cleaning up after them. He spoke with me on the phone and apologized. Said he would fix the Freon leak and reconnect the pipe and that I needed to call my warranty company, and he would call his company and report what had happened. Unfortunately he did not leave any documentation of this with my wife. Calling my warranty company was a nightmare in itself as I could not get past the overseas call center who only read off a script and refused to put me through. (My 20 year affiliation with then is coming quickly to an end with them over all of this but I digress.)
I called the company who caused the damage and they called me a liar, said they were in my house a month earlier and had video and pictures of the damage already being there. All provably blatant lies. The then called me a joke and hung up on me. In their report to the warranty company they said the same thing about existing damage and that I was lying. When they were told we had pics of wet ceilings, walls and floors they changed their story to the homeowner disconnected the pipe themselves, not them. They said their tech never touched the pipe even though he could physically not open the unit without doing it. Of course, I was in Dubai at the time and my wife doesn’t even know what a drain pipe is so another provable lie. In the end, my insurance is going to cover the damage which is likely to exceed $30k or more after I pay my deductible. They will go after company through subrogation but told me they aren’t likely to succeed. I did try to talk with the company one more time to try and give them a chance to make it right but after I countered all their lies with actual facts, they told me to have my lawyer call them and to not call back.
So, this leads me to my question. The BBB and Yelp reviews on this company are staggeringly horrific and full of stories just like those above. (Yes I should have looked at those before letting the warranty company send them but have never had an issue like this before and didn’t see the need). I will definitely add to those but what other avenues do I have to try and make try and sure these inept crooks don’t damage anyone else’s home? Chamber of commerce? HVAC certification boards? Anyone else have any an experience like this with any kind of company and get any good resolution from it? Thanks in advance for any input.
Worst part about this is we had just replaced our carpet upstairs with hardwood in April and now will likely have to redo it all again, which explains why my wife would have crawled up into our AC closet and disconnected the pipe, so we could live through replacing floors entails all over again 2 months later..
