Trustindex verifies that the original source of the review is Google. For 17 years, we paid this company semi-annually to come out and do routine maintenance on the AC unit they installed in 2008. A few days ago, the AC suddenly stopped cooling the air, and with us having a heat wave, we called out a tech slightly after hours, which incurred a $149 fee just to come out. We accepted that and he came out relatively quickly. He seemed friendly enough, and as he checked things out, he determined the unit was low on refrigerant, meaning there was a leak. He immediately went to put two more pounds in without even really asking me, as I stood with him the entire time, and neglected to tell me first that it would also incur a fee of $130 PER POUND. And then he claimed to be doing us a favor by not charging us even more for actually trying to locate the leak itself, which took less than a minute. I know next to nothing about HVAC work, but he only checked the condenser coil for leaks. The condenser coil did have a small leak, but he did not check the evaporator coil (I may have these two coils backwards, but that is besides the point), which if he had, he would have seen a major leak that when pointed out to me, I could see with the naked eye. This was brought to light upon having another HVAC company come out and give me an estimate for either a repair or replacement, as they actually took most of the outer layer of the unit apart, rather than only a couple panels off one side, which I might add took almost 2 hours, after 5, and they did it entirely for free for a brand new customer with no obligation.
The $260 of refrigerant the tech put in without informing me of the cost beforehand was gone within a few hours at best. The tech then said he did it just to "get me a little AC for a while" while giving a quote of "over $2000 to repair" and $8500-9500 to replace the unit entirely. However, when we inquired the next day about the feasibility of a repair, the final cost, with tax, would have been $5700 (other HVAC company price to repair was $3800). As the unit was 17 years old, this was not an economically sound repair option, and it would have been for nothing anyway because replacing the part he looked at would not have fixed the major part of the leak in the other coil. Even still, "over $2000" becoming nearly three times that was clearly just a ploy to instead force the purchase of a new unit from them. They are no longer trustworthy in my eyes, especially when the techs from the new company said that if maintenance had been being done on my old unit over the years, it was amateur work at best.
While all of this shady business was already enough to have me seeking another HVAC company, it is not why I am choosing to write this one star review. I am writing this review, because after the new HVAC company I hired installed my new unit today, I called Charlie's to cancel our maintenance contract with them. A woman named Abby answered the phone. I first told her I wanted to cancel, and while she at first seemed disinterested, I began to tell her the reason why. I did not use any inappropriate language beyond saying I thought their tech that came out, Chris, was unprofessional regarding the refrigerant. Before I could even mention the major leak he didn't find due to not taking the unit apart a bit further, she stopped me, told me a bunch of "facts" that she had heard from Chris, and told me she would not listen anymore to my "rudeness and disrespect", implying I was lying. She then hung up on me. I was never rude, I just explained to her what happened and why I am choosing to end my 17 years as a customer with them. I then had to call my 85 year old grandmother so she could call them to make sure they would still be coming to service her unit, as we always had them done on the same day and the account was under her name.
I have absolutely no reason to lie about what happened to anyone. I understand wanting to defend your coworker from someone being unreasonable, but all I did was try to explain what happened from my perspective. If anything, I was the one who was disrespected.
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