Response from Freedom Heating & Cooling
Thank you so much for your review. In this particular case we never truly "required" you to provide a latter. It was a gesture we tried to offer in order for you to avoid the $89.00 latter charge. The latter you were able to provide us was unsuited for the height we needed it for, it was approximately 2 feet short. Now keep in mind, technicians have to trek tools up a latter with them which can weigh up to about 70 lbs, now this unit is on a roof 3 stories high off of a balcony. Imagine yourself adding a 70lb weight to your shoulder, climbing a latter, then having to hop 2 feet to jump on a roof, while behind you is a 3 story drop to serious injury or death. You see, we offer our customers a break if they can provide their own latter to access units in order to avoid an $89.00 latter fee. This means that the latter has to be safe enough to use, OSHA requires all ladders to be 2 feet beyond the reach of the destination where the person is climbing (there's a reason for that) and the reason being is that there are to many ways for someone to fall if the latter comes short of it's destination. Now in these cases it is important that one should put themselves in our technicians shoes, if you were the technician and had to lug tools up of a latter that came short of it's destination and had to climb up and down this insufficient latter and risk falling 3 stories to your death for the price of $39.00, what decision would you make? In business, there is a question that everyone has to ask themselves, and that is (is the risk worth the reward?) In this case it just wasn't, we do apologize for not being able to help you with this unit, but truly, you were never required to put a latter there. We offered this option to save you the $89.00 service charge, and the ladder that was provided was not sufficient or safe enough to be able to reach the building. These risks are real, we spend countless amounts of time to find good techs, and to also train new techs to be just as good, we would never let it be allowed to put them in a difficult and dangerous situation at any price, because the potential loss would be devastating, not only to us as a business but to the families of our employees. Although the grading on this review would seem unfavorable to most, but to us it is actually a great learning experience, and from this we learned that making difficult decisions is never easy, and this experience also taught us how much we value our employees and their safety and for that we thank you so much, have a wonderful summer.