Ponderosa Hearth & Home

PERFECT We are very happy!

It took forever to get them out here. My first call to them was in October. They were booked up and we couldn't get them out until November. That was a call just for the general cleaning and servicing. But by the time they came out for that call, the pilot light was starting to act up. It wasn't holding the flame and it would shut itself off and wasn't staying on. So, they came out and did the cleaning and stuff for that and then they found that they had to order parts for it. This was the real problem. We didn't get it fixed until April. It took that long to get the parts from the east coast. I wouldn't give them high marks pretty much on anything but I know it wasn't entirely their fault. They actually gave me the name of the parts guy to call myself just to confirm that it wasn't on them. I wouldn't rate them well because they were not very communicative in what was causing the delays. Weeks would go by and I would have to keep calling them up and asking, "What's going on? Can you give me an update because we don't have any heat in our house and we're freezing?" So that part of it was a miserable experience. But their technician was really good and really nice. It's a family-owned business and I don't think they had the office staff to really keep following up on things like they should have. For the multiple visits and the parts and everything, we were looking at close to $900. That was kind of majorly expensive. They were the only ones that did that. So, they can pretty much charge what they want.

Fireplace insert stopped turning on and off with the remote. Ponderosa came out to check on this as well as do some routine maintenance. The technician diagnosed the problem as a defective on/off switch. Somehow, although not really explained to me, the remote started working again, but the on/off switch stopped working all together, although it did work before. Technician did not have the part to replace the switch and said he would have to order one. If they were to come back out and install the switch, per Company policy, and this was explained to me prior, they would have to charge me another $120 to install the switch. Technician did say that he thought I could install the switch myself as it was very simple. I did end up doing this myself and it was very simple. The technician was very courteous and very clean, but did have a very hard time pulling the insert away from the wall and never did get it back fully against the wall. After installing the on/off switch myself, I discovered that that was possibly the reason the switch stopped working in the first place as with the insert flush against the brick wall, it bent the connectors for the switch. So when I installed it, I made sure not to push it flush against the brick wall. The time waiting for the switch to arrive was unacceptable to me. Took about three weeks. I think the part about this experience that was most disappointing to me was the return charge would have been $120, IF I had not been able to do this myself. $120 for a little switch. But, to be fair, this policy was explained to me up front. Also, when I went in to pick up the part, I spoke with someone, not sure his position, and he did tell me that if I had a problem, they would come out and not charge me the $120. Still a lot of trouble to go through for a little switch. I felt that the $170 charged to me was very high considering the amount of work that was done, which didn't seem like that much, although this is not my area of expertise.