Dependable air LLC

My mother hired this company to repair her broken air conditioner. She called Dependable air for this job and the owner of the company Scott Rupert came out. Every time he comes to her house he spends a lot of time telling her that her 4 year old air conditioning unit is a piece of junk and he pressures her to buy one of his units for 6 thousand dollars! Again on this day, he did the same thing. When she told him she only wanted him to fix it, he told her without running any diagnostics that it was a Freon leak. He did not run a dye test or hook up any diagnostics to the unit. He also did not investigate if she had any warranty through the maker of the unit. He did tell her that the leak would need to be fixed, but that it would cost $500 to fix the leak in addition to the Freon if fixed that day. My mother is on a fixed income and didn’t have the money required, so she asked him to fill it up in the hopes that it would carry her through for a few months. He told her that Freon costs $110.00 per pound and that he had put in over 5 pounds to allow for some leakage . (The system only holds 3.6 pounds and it’s right on the Unit tag so this was a big LIE). He told her he filled it per specifications of the unit and this was also a LIE. He then told her he gave her a “special” price of $85.00 per pound. He also charmed her into a yearly service plan for an additional $100. That would cover the home visit fee each time he would have to come and also put her first on the list of clients. The total of that visit was $540.00 for no parts and only a Freon charging. She wanted to use her charge card as she couldn’t really afford to pay cash. When Scott heard that, he didn’t want to take her credit card and said that “well if you are charging it, I will have to charge an extra $100 for a total of $640. as I quoted you a cash price”. So she was forced to write him a check out of her bank to pay him. Whoever heard of a company not accepting a credit card? He also wrote on the bottom of the receipt “Doris is 100% happy with the price and Job” and made her sign it. He never told her he wrote that and she is LEGALLY BLIND and couldn’t read it. I believe they did this so that my mother would have no recourse to dispute the overcharge or make any future complaints. He has obviously ripped people off before. Fast forward two days and it’s the weekend and the air is broken again. She called him and he said there was no way he could come until Monday. She asked if the price would still be $500. to fix the leak. His reply was “oh no, that was only valid on the day I was there!” Now you are going to need a new capacitor and a new cooling coil and possibly more parts but prepare to pay thousands of dollars! I find it very funny that she didn’t need a capacitor and coil and other parts last week and it was $500. But now it’s thousands? Again, I feel he was trying to pressure an elderly client into buying an overpriced new unit. She was desperate for air so she told him to come on Monday to repair the leak. When I heard about this I got involved and told her that I thought she was being taken advantage of. I talked to a neighbor who happens to work at an air conditioning repair company and he gave me some interesting information. We also called his company and asked them to come out and run diagnostics and see what was going on. They came out Monday September 10th. First we found out that the new company charges $50.00 per pound for Freon (not 85 or 110). They also said her unit only holds 3.6 pounds of Freon so it was impossible to put 5 pounds in! They checked the unit for a warranty and it did in fact have a valid warranty with the maker. Dependable air never checked for a warranty or even mentioned the possibility of a warranty, I think so they could keep all the money themselves! The diagnostics and dye test showed there was in fact a freon leak and the capacitor needed to be replaced. They repaired everything , filled it with Freon, and replaced the bad part, and got her on the road for much less than Dependable air could have charged having said it would probably be thousands. Why did Dependable air only want to accept cash? Why did they ask a blind person to sign something without telling her what it said? Why did they come, not run tests to check the capacitor, let her pay $540 for Freon that they knew would run out very quickly? Not only that , why did they price gouge on the freon itself overcharging so much money? Why didn’t they check for a warranty? Why did they pay their customers $100. for a favorable review on Home advisor.com? Last year she had this company install HVAC pipes under her house and they charged her $3000.00! I had the same job done on my similar sized home for $800.00. This company has a habit of ripping people off! I think it is despicable to take advantage of an 85 year old shut in in her most vulnerable state. This is elder abuse and it is against the law! I would never recommend this company to my worst enemy! Scott, you should be ashamed at how you treated my mother. If you had any heart at all, you’d refund her $540.00. At the very least, you should refund the overcharges on the freon you actually used in the amount of $270. It was a total waste of her money. We will never use your company again! I will also make it my mission to make sure that everyone knows of your disgusting behavior.