R & L Heating and Cooling

Richard Philbrick, owner of R & L Heating improperly installed a furnace & A/C unit April 30, 2008 for $5107.43, this included a $155 service agreement and a $300 A/C cap. He failed to appear or call on at least 4 scheduled appointments, the last being on 4/12/10, nor did he furnished the A/C cap. I left a message on 4/16/10 requesting a refund for the $455 I was owed and gave him a deadline of 4/23/10. I called again on 4/20/10 and talked directly to Richard Philbrick about my request. At that time he said he would talk to his accountant ?Michelle? about issuing me a check. The check was never delivered. On 4/27/10 I hired another company to service my furnace, at which time they found the furnace improperly installed, the condensation pump burned-out, no filter door or access and improper electrical hookup. I was also informed that Mr. Philbrick's claim that the furnace did not require filter changes was a lie, and that there was no such product available as the "A/C cap" he had sold me. I paid $1891.00 to remedy the damages directly caused by Mr. Philbrick?s negligence. Yesterday I paid another company $300 to replace the thermostat that he installed, a thermostat that lasted less than 5 years. I tried to file suit in small claims court, but found out there is no business office at the address he uses and even using a professional service, he was impossible to serve with papers. After reading other reviews about this company I am convinced that Mr. Philbrick has knowingly and willfully defrauded consumers.

I used a web-based service where contractors pay to be listed (don't try it! That was before I learned about Angie's List) and selected R and L because I mistakenly thought that the referral service had checked him out and that they were recommending him on the basis of competence, not just because he'd paid them to be listed. Rich Philbrick owns R and L, and is charming but if not just incompetent could be a con man or sociopath. He lies easily--for instance, he told me he had a crew that would work with him on the job, and even told me (when I asked) what softdrink each guy preferred. I stocked my refrigerator with those beverages, but only Rich and his "sort of son-in-law" did the work, and over a several month period (not the 2 days he'd promised). He sold me an oversized furnace, installed undersized ductwork, installed a smaller rooftop AC unti than the one compatible with the size of the furnace and specified on the quote and invoice. reused the existing 20 year undersized coolant line instead of installing a new larger line specified by the manufacturer, I didn't immediately realize the extent of the problems R and L left me with. The AC only worked immediately after the installation, while he was here testing it, but I knew that the chilled air thereafter was not cold enough. Rich said that it would get colder and that the job was essentially done. He pressured me to pay him the complete invoice amount & although I was uncomfortable about it., I did (Don't do that!) But I trusted him when he said he would return to "make it right" if I remained dissatisfied, and that he was counting on getting paid that day.. Thereafter, he rarely returnied my calls, texts, and email messages,. While I was waiting for R and L to return, I proceeded with a planned attic insulation job. Rich came over 1 time after that, complained about the insulation, theorized that the insulator had caused all the problems, and then completely stopped responding to calls, texts, & email. I then had a reputable contractor who I found on Angie's list inspect the work and give me an estimate. The problems he found would require a lot of work to repair. He documented them with photographs: a furnace much larger than needed for my cubic square footage, an AC unit not properly sized for that furnace, an amount of insulated flexible ductwork incapable of handling the volume of air put out by the furnace fan. failure to replace an existing quarter-inch coolant line with the 3/8 inch coolant line required by the equipment manufacturer, a ruined connection on the AC unit caused by alterations he made in an attempt to connect the inadequately-sized coolant line, a leak in that line between the AC unit and the place where it entered the building, and the need for an additional room air intake register so that the oversized furnace could take in and circulate enough room air for the size of its fan. I appealed to the referral website that put me in contact with Rich Philbrick, and they tried to pressure him to resolve the problems, but he denied most of them. He couldn't deny that he had defrauded me by having me pay for a smaller rooftop AC unit than he'd quoted and invoiced, but he claimed that the ductwork and the 20 year old undersized coolant line should have been adequate and must have been damaged by the insulator (another contractor I selected from Angie's List, and who I trust to be more competent than Rich), and that the AC unit connection could have been damaged by someone else. His only offer was to remove the undersized AC unit and to deliver the model I'd paid for, but installation wasn't necessarily part of the offer and I don't trust him enough to have him touch any more of my property. Eventually, all the referral site was able to do was to give me an apology and $500 for signing a non-disclosure form stating that I would not mention their company in connection with the situation. Bottom line: The new amount of insulation made navigating the attic much more difficult for the contractors who I had to hire to fix the HVAC problems, so those repairs cost much more than they would have if I'd known the extent of the problems R and L left me with earlier (I could have postponed the insulation job). I had to pay another contractor $3000 to do a rush job (by then it was late September and getting cold) to put in large runs of rigid insulated ductwork; he was able to use R ad L's flexible ductwork to connect the rigid ducts to the new registers to save me money, but also had to install an additional fire-dampered room air intake register for the oversized furnace. And after I saved up for the project, I paid a couple thousand dollars to a firm I found on Angie's list to replace the coolant line and AC unit connector, and to rectify several other AC problems they discovered. this past spring. So the Federal Energy Tax Credit savings all went to fixing Rich Philbrick's mistakes. The Denver Building Department was sympathetic, but they don't legally pursue fraud unless it involves a lot more money. They hadn't inspected the ductwork because Rich hadn't listed it on the permit. I looked into suing in small claims court or through a lawyer, but decided that I'd already had enough stress over the matter, and am not convinced that Rich is incapable of retaliation via vandalism or something worse, and that time wounds all heels.

The owner is Rich Philbrick. We had a contract with him for an annual service. We had prepaid for his three services, and that was from April 22, 2008 till February 4, 2009. He had only performed two services and had never come when I had called him again. He had taken one of the devices and it was ventilating over the ceiling. The lead was broken he had said he could fix it. He had taken the broken one which was fixable and had never returned that piece or fixed my ceiling vent cover. Nothing is there now, and it is open. He had never returned my calls either. He had done his job well and professionally, but had not followed up properly.