Sep 04 2008
Calling all honest people
About a month ago Cassandra called while I was at the Willowcreek Leadership Summit to inform me that our Air Conditioner wasn’t working. We live in a house that isn’t more than 3 years old. It was built by a national homebuilder who has a good reputation. So Cassandra called the people who installed the AC.
A man came out from this large Charlotte AC company and acted like he cared about us. Then he gave us the bad news. Our new AC was broken and couldn’t be fixed. Labor alone would be $1,800. He went ahead an “filled up” the unit with coolant and said we should make it through the summer. We were just praying that the AC unit would be under warranty. Our pastor thought something sounded fishy so he had us get in touch with a handyman he knows. The handyman thought something sounded fishy about the large companies diagnosis and said call him if needed.
Well Monday night the AC froze up again and it was 90 degrees in our house. So yesterday the handyman came out to check the system. We figured it was a leak and were expecting the worst that the large company warned us about. I could feel our account draining even more. But the handyman said something strange was going on. He said the Unit was “OVER-FILLED” with coolant and this would cause the unit to freeze up. In fact, he feels the big company did it on purpose knowing that it would freeze up and we would call them to get us a new unit.
Where are all of the honest people in the world? I’ll pay people honest wages and charges but I hate it when people lie and take advantage of others. Had we just trusted the large company, we would have forked out almost $2K. Most of the companies here in Charlotte are on commission so the repair people get a commission for every unit they sell and install.
I’m tired of dishonest people. I’m calling for people to tell the truth.
What do you think?
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4 responses so far
Frustrating for sure K. I feel as you do. I am blessed with a man in the church who does Heating & AC for a living so when our furnace went out in less than a year after moving into the house I had the warranty guy come. He diagnosed it as a heater core. I called Mark and surprise of all surprises he said the same thing. But I had Mark install it. There is a definite lack of integrity these days even among Christ-followers. We must learn to be honest people.
On the side: have you considered calling the national homebuilder to tell them about it? That may change the way they work with the cheaters and liars. Just a thought. Also glad it was nothing serious.
Bill(cycleguy)’s last blog post..Leadership and Failure
We bought our brand new house 2 1/2 years ago, in the dead of winter. We have a two story house, and two units. The downstairs unit didn’t seem to work well…so, I called the company and they came out to check it…Apparently, when they were installing the unit they forgot to hook it up to electricity! So, one unit was trying to heat the entire house…Not only did the company not know this…the inspector “missed” it…So, they hooked it up and the heating seemed to work fine.
When summer came along, we couldn’t cool the house. Another call. This time, they found out that they “missed” putting coolant in it! We had a one year warranty on the unit…after the first year, we’ve gone with another company!
Our previous house…they failed to hook up the hot water heater…nothing like a cold shower in early November!
I don’t trust most repair people…too many of them have proven to be nothing more than crooks! Don’t even get me started talking about car repairmen!!!
M. Steve Heartsill’s last blog post..And the Winner Is…
Sorry to hear about your troubles.
We just took my wife’s care to get fixed at another nationally recognized shop. They wanted to charge us about $300. We called a friend who use to work on cars, bought the part ourself, and got everything done for $60. The company was charging OVER 2X the price of the part AND they were charging $1 per minute of labor. Ugh.
And a second note, my parents just tried to get their 2 bathrooms remodeled. They paid a contractor $16,000 to do the work. The contractor sent a POOL DIGGER to do the work. Needless to say it is horrendous. The sad thing is that my parents researched the contractor before contacting him. Everything checked out at the time. It has been almost 6 months since the project was started and one bathroom is completely torn to shreds, the other is worse off then it was before. Unfortunately, the contractor abandoned the job and my parents had to file suit (not something they would normally do).
It’s just a sad thing when people take advantage of people. I hate to see it, but it is everywhere.
Michael’s last blog post..Is There A Right Way To Do Church?
Kevin, I understand your frustrations. My sister and I bought a townhome in November of 2002. By January of 2003, we were having problems that were indicative of foundation problems. We started checking with neighbors and sure enough they were having problems too. We purchased from a “reputable” builder but he had somewhat shady subcontractors and we were stuck with totally devalued homes. Long story short, we all had to sue to recover the values of our homes. Makes me seriously gun-shy about EVER buying a house again that I don’t personally oversee the building of on a daily basis.