Desert Diamond Air

Based on all the great reviews, I scheduled "tune ups" for my 2 older Trane units. The tech was on time, polite, and professional. This is not the problem. The problem is the pricing policy they use. Issue 1 - even though I already agreed to pay $89 per unit for the tune ups, the tech, upon finding 2 capacitors near catastrophic failure (80% out of tolerance) quoted me $220 each to replace them. Note that he had taken them off the equipment to measure them, took photos and put them back on! (OEM capacitors are $10 each and the upgraded ones suggested are about $15). Issue 2- refrigerant check found I needed an estimated 2.5 lbs of r-22. The quote for this was $525! This gas is being phased out and is not used in newer machines. BUT it is readily available in amounts as small as 2 lbs. at a local company for $40 per lb. Thousands of machines use this. Shocked to my socks at these prices, I declined the quoted work, and paid the $180 for the tune ups only. I emailed my concerns to Desert Diamond and subsequently spoke with Cody to understand how they could defend what I believe to be outrageous prices and practice. Cody defended this as due to a flat rate policy, overhead, truck roll etc.. which made no sense as the overhead and truck roll should have already been covered by the tune up charge, which was high in itself. I subsequently bought the OEM caps from Amazon and replaced them myself. I had another company do summer tune ups again (I did not tell them about the 1st company work or quotes) and finding I needed only 1lb. of refrigerant charged me $179 for the total 2 unit check and gas. Bottom line..beware.

Fast response. Quality service. Great price. Our A/C unit broke while it was 115 degrees outside and Desert Diamond sent some out to help that night. I appreciate their responsiveness and the quality of work provided. I would highly recommend them. They get the job done right. Thank you Desert Diamond.

Absolutely horrible and surreal experience with this contractor (DDM). Unprofessional, incompetent, confrontational, and unethical. No sense of ownership and responsibility for their work. Customer focus is totally nonexistent. In their universe, the customer is always wrong and they are always right. That about sums its up. Full details below.

I have 2 AC units, a newer Frigidaire unit on the 1st floor and older Goodman unit on the 2nd floor. I made an appointment for a tune up. Jeff showed up on May 21, and as I wasn't there, he emails me his written report. He said both units were cooling fine, but Goodman needed R22 top up (3 lbs), for about $700. I call him the next morning to discuss. He never mentioned any R22 leak, looking for a leak or fixing a leak. Because of high R22 cost quoted, I wanted to take a few days to ask for alternative quotes, so I ask him if this is critical or if it can wait a week or so. He said it can wait. Great so far (not so great about his total silence about the leak repair though). Or perhaps he wanted me to continue paying for leaking R22 at a cool $180 per pound? 

I sent out a few requests for a quote, all were lower than DDM and ALL asked if the source of leak was found and repaired. I called Jeff again and left a message with a question about the leak. No response.

Then my Goodman stopped working 2 days later. I called DDM and scheduled a visit on the Memorial Day. I told them explicitly that the upstairs Goodman was just serviced and now stopped working. Matt shows up, it's morning, I'm not at home, my guests ask him to wait some 20 min before going inside and in the meantime to start outside with the compressor. Matt goes outside and starts working on FRIGIDAIRE instead of Goodman, even though the former is cooling just fine. In fact, he ignored Goodman completely. He then goes inside and informs my guests that his work is done, that he found some "faults" with the Frigidaire, it'll take a "few days" to fix and he'll be in touch. And then he leaves. I call him a few min. later, and he tells me about "broken Frigidaire" that (as he was trying to convince me) was for the 2nd floor. I told him he was wrong and the 2nd floor unit was broken Goodman, that Frigidaire was fine and that I explicitly told him to work on Goodman, and that he completely ignored my instructions. He became very argumentative and confrontational, and instead of addressing my concerns he demanded I pay him immediately for his visit. I told him I want to speak to his manager. 

Then I called another contractor who showed up in an hour later and promptly fixed broken Goodman. They had to pump in 6.5 lbs of refrigerant which they said was the main problem why Goodman was not cooling. Better still, they found the leak and fixed it. They said the leak should have been QUITE OBVIOUS to anyone doing the tune-up earlier, as it was due to a missing $3 o-ring in the refrigerant cap, and damaged Schrader core. This immediately raised alarm bells in my mind as to the quality of work that Jeff (the maintenance guy) did just a few days ago. I also asked the new contractor to run a diagnostic on Frigidaire in the light of two conflicting accounts I got from Jeff and Matt. They did, and found nothing wrong with Frigidaire. 

In the meantime, I got an angry anonymous email from someone at DDM demanding the payment for the "excellent work" done by Matt and threatening to put me on "no-service list." No attempt to find out what happened, to get my side of the story, to get it resolved, nothing of the sort. Not even "sorry" once. Just pay at once or else. It later transpired that it was the Owner himself, named Carlos. What an attitude! In my long life, I've rarely seen worse. I responded giving my side of the story, but to no avail. Matt then calls saying he checked with Jeff and although I was right about which unit was for which floor, he thinks it was not his fault that he got confused because when he was there the Goodman was working and Frigidaire was not (nonsense!), and as he wasn't given access inside (more nonsense!), this got him even more confused. Perhaps Matt needs to find a somewhat less confusing profession.I told him I have someone else to clear his mess and finish the work. 

There were few more email exchanges with Carlos in which he kept repeating "not our fault" excuses, not a single "sorry", but finally he announced that he'll waive the Matt's service fee. Lucky me! I told him I want my money back on the garbage "tune-up" work done by Jeff on Goodman and a refund on Frigidaire tune up as I had 2 conflicting diagnostics from DDM and had to pay for a third one. I also pointed out that I was charged $79 per unit for tune up while DDM website is running $59 "special". All completely ignored, just repeating his old excuses and boasting how great they are and how everyone loves them. 

What a disaster. I wouldn't touch DDM with a sterilized 15' pole, even if they pay ME. Stay away.

The first hot weekend of the year, I turned on my AC only to find that is was not running. I called Desert Diamond as I had used them in a prior year for an AC repair. Jeff was sent to my home. He was professional and thorough, even calling to discuss it with someone else on staff for a second opinion. He took the time to explain to me what he was testing for and why. Unfortunately, the 20 year old system needed to be replaced as the compressor had stopped working. Jeff made sure that I had a portable AC unit to use until the new unit was put in. Within a few days, Desert Diamond had my new unit and I was scheduled for the replacement. On the day of the replacement, Ben and Frank were prompt, polite, and professional. When entering my home to replace the grille for the cold air return, the thermostat, and etc., both gentlemen made sure to put covers on their shoes and brush off any dust or insulation before entering. Among other things, I appreciated that they did a very good job of cleaning up after they were done. I have recommended them to others.

The job was performed quickly. Good job!

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They are the ones that accidentally sparked a fire in my house after the A/C service. As a result I have a big hole in the wall and the A/C is not working. We've been living in a hotel for the last 4 weeks. I paid them $1000 and now the A/C has to be replaced after this event. The $1000 was for a few parts. I had used them before and they were really great. They had installed another new A/C in a rental home that we own. Within the last couple months that new A/C that has only maybe 4 years on it sprung a leak and they had to come out to repair it. Now this event happened to my own home. Just the way they responded to this event I give them an F rating just because this happened. They did not offer me a viable solution. I think the A/C damaged in the fire should be replaced by the ones that did it and get it up and running. They really dragged their feet so I had to go on my own to find a different company to install a new unit. So they lost my business to install a new A/C as a result. The insurance found that the A/C was damaged by the fire so they were willing to replace it with a new A/C. The only money they refunded was my routine maintenance where they check the A/C on a yearly basis but they didn't' refund anything else. They didn't reach out to me to see how I was doing. The tech worked on it maybe about 10 minutes before the fire started. The timing overall was very suspicious. The investigator couldn't pinpoint the cause and the insurance didn't want to invest the time and resources to go after. They wanted to get the situation covered and get us back in our home and it wouldn't be as messy. That is why I gave them a low rating. They are not taking care of their customer. We were out of our home and only got moved back in a few days ago. Everybody was safe and that's the silver lining. I brought quite a bit of business to them. Not only did I have the other A/C unit installed by them but I referred them to my family to have an A/C unit installed at their home also. I know I paid a lot more than if I had gone with someone else but I had had work done by them before. Other A/C companies would have charged me as much. They would have charged maybe 50% of what I paid. I think overall the tech tried his best but he did something that led to an accident that was probably very difficult to foresee but if he had just stayed another 5 or 10 minutes he would have seen the problem. If he had been experienced and not had to rushed to another site he would have seen the event and see that the electrical fire started. They were responsive at the beginning but their response after what happened, and they were afraid they were implicated in what happened, they dragged their feet because of the owner. If the owner had reached out every few days and said hey are you guys ok. Instead I had to call him and then when he did call it was at the end of the week and said he has an emergency. I didn't want to bother him and his family. It was on a Friday so I had to wait till the next week and then no response until the end of the week again. The owner left me stranded. When I called them for the service the punctuality was good. They were on time when they promised to be here and did work. I didn't spend the time arguing back and forth even though he was really dragging. After doing business with them over the last 5 years I won't use them again.

Hard to believe that somebody could show up with a smile on their face when it's 115 degrees. I was impressed with Desert Diamond and Steve Schilling from the start. I recently had my carpets professionally cleaned and without having to ask, Steve walked into my home with coverings over his shoes to protect my floors. He was instantly able to diagnose the problem and save me hundreds of dollars over what I was quoted by somebody else. Our new Trane unit was up and running the very next day. I would like to thank our installers Ben and Frank for all their hard work in this harsh environment... I can't imagine spending half a day up in my attic. I would highly recommend this company to anybody, thanks again Desert Diamond! Tammy Smalley

Did a tuneup on my ac unit, very easily could have sold me a new unit, but only recommended a hard start kit. and told me my unit was still good to go. Mind you my AC unit is 16 years old. Cody was super nice and I even bought a PMA or maintenance agreement for my AC. We had a bad experience with another company, but this is one company I will sing praises to and recommend to EVERYONE!!!