A-Rod Heating & Air Conditioning Inc

Reviews

• Anna Richardson

  Oct, 09 2018
  ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
  To be fair, I have I rated this company midway and will give both the positives and negatives. My elderly parent's power was out due to Hurricane Irma for several days. The power came back on and within a day, the AC started blowing warm air. The condenser was not coming on. Luckily, I was at their house when this company came out. The positive side was they came out immediately, while other companies could not respond out. They had quick, friendly service. The young technician took a panel off the condenser and air handler. He found that the AC unit was devoid of Freon and he surmised that since there was no oily substance outside, the leak MUST be somewhere within the A frame of the house and told us that it was due to a rusty AC Coil. He called his office and promptly quoted us $2750 to replace the Coil, BUT he couldn't get the part for 7-10 days. I thought the cost was high considering the national average to replace a coil is $1990. The unit was 10 years old and he said it was in bad shape, prompting my mom to the realization that spending $2750 on an old unit was fruitless and she should inquire as to the cost of a new unit. After several calculations and promises of a senior and military discount, they came up with a 14 Seer Bryant, 3 ton for $6100. They said they could add Freon, which would cost $600 but it may not last. They added that they would be going the extra mile for my mom by pulling permits, resurfacing the plywood that the handler sat upon and using hurricane straps outside. To the best of my knowledge, permits and hurricane straps are standard, not an EXTRA and the plywood did not need to be resurfaced. I told them we would get back to them, and they were kind enough not to charge us the service fee of $59 saying we would need it to replace the unit AND they could come back first thing in the morning to install an entire new AC unit. We then called A-ROD AC and Caldeco. Caldeco's price for the same unit was $5400 and A-ROD was $5100. A-ROD, Angel, came out and said he wanted to check out the unit himself. He called me over to the outside condenser and showed me an obvious leak. I could see the hole in the Freon pipe with the naked eye. He put just a bit of Freon in it to diagnose where the leak was and immediately saw it blow out a pin hole that occurred because a hot wire made contact with the cold Freon pipe. I could even see where the plastic wire coating was melted when it made contact. He soldered the pipe, fixed the wiring and recharged the unit for $525. The "leak" was not in the A-Frame as the AND technician has suggested. In fact, he never did any diagnosis or trouble-shooting except to visually inspect it. I assume this is because they had every intention of selling my elderly parents the most expensive part that they could. Imagine this... my parents paying $2750 for a new coil only to still have a leak outside at the condenser. The AND tech was friendly, but the officer person that quoted us the prices and gave the plea to earn our business sounded like a salesman. He proudly told me that they had over 600 positive GOOGLE reviews. Being that I read those reviews often when I pick a company and my mom did the same to call them in the first place. I thought it only fair to add a review of my own experience. They were quick and friendly, however higher priced than 2 other companies and I'm not so sure they didn't see opportunity to sell a high ticket item on the heels of power outages from Hurricane Irma. Remember, the coil part couldn't be installed for 7-10 days according to AND, yet both Caldeco and A-ROD could install that coil the next day. But again, since AND never really did appropriate diagnosis, they leaned on us to buy a whole new unit. I think the parting words were, "we have one install left on the schedule for tomorrow, so call us within the next half hour or it might be several days before we can get to you." I hate to use the words slimy sales tactics, but that's what it all felt like. A-ROD all the way.

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