Desert Star Air Conditioning

Our first experience with Desert Star Air was terrible from the start. They were "assigned" to us through our home warranty company, and, if I had known how awful their customer service, technicians and office staff were, I would have immediately called the home warranty company and requested the use of just about anyone else. The first 107-degree weekend of the summer, we were left with no A/C. They scheduled with us to come out to the house between 8:00am and 12:00pm on Monday - meaning we had to schedule time off from work - but this appointment was crucial. That morning, they immediately called to push the time frame to 10:00am-2:00pm. Then, they again called to push it back to 3:00pm-5:00pm, at which time, their office closes anyway. At 4:15pm when we still had not received the "30 minutes out" call, I began calling the office, knowing my window of time to reach someone would be soon closing. Not a single person answered their phone. I left a voice mail, as well as sent an email, to the address provided in their outgoing message. I continued to call until 5:00pm with no answers or call backs. I called the home warranty company, concerned about my 2 children and 2 dogs, whom I had nowhere to take to get them out of the heat. Finally, I received a call from the company that they would still be out that day, but it would be closer to 8:00pm! I missed an entire day of work, inconveniencing my employer with my last minute personal day - for nothing. Finally, a technician showed up at 8:30pm and we had a temporarily working A/C around 10:00pm. Parts needed to be ordered and approval was needed from the home warranty company. A week later, we still had no communication on their part. We continued reaching out and leaving messages, with no call backs from them until we finally contacted the home warranty company directly. Every experience with them since, they have not only called to change the arrival time window provided but have always been late and completely outside of the window given. Our last appointment was the final straw. After the home warranty company had them install a brand-new A/C, what appeared to be a lack of communication between the unit and the thermostat began. I again had to take off work to make an appointment work. The technician who came out barely looked at the thermostat, did not attempt to look at the unit, wasn't even there 10 minutes and said, "there's nothing I can do" and left. No follow up, no suggestions. We were forced to have another company come out to check the problem. Within mere minutes of arrival, they discovered the problem was an improper installation of the wire providing power to the thermostat - it had been crimped as well as caught in the panel when it closed. This left just sporadic pulses of power making it through to the thermostat. This would seem to have been an easy problem for the original company to discover and solve had they tried. Instead we were forced to take more time off work and spend additional funds to have an error corrected by a new company that should have been the responsibility of Desert Star Air. We will never use Desert Star Air again and will immediately request that any home warranty service needed not be assigned to them.

Quite well, no very well..We paid our up front service call cost of $75.00, required by our Home Warranty Service Contract, while being made aware during the technicians visit we were in the need of a new system. Something we knew was probably the case but were hoping we could put off until we got through the extreme summer heat...We did substantial research to the cost of repairing the unit. This cost would run between $1800/2400 due to the high cost of R-22 Freon....& we would need to hope that this would be the complete fix.....& for how long..... While we are using up our last bit of R22 freon in the system & trying to decide which new unit we want & how much money we want to spend; we have experienced nothing but patience & graciouness from the owner Fernan & his office manager Alyssa.. This at a time when they are surely inundated w/calls for help.... as summer sets in....Thank you Desert star