Customer: "I had an absolutely horrible experience with Godby. My experience was so bad that I believe the company is either completely mismanaged or is willfully ripping off customers. Savvy consumers should BEWARE OF THIS COMPANY! On August 3rd, 2013 I contacted Godby Heating, Plumbing, Electrical to service my air conditioner because it was blowing only warm air. The technician, Rich, arrives and does a quick visual inspection. He tells me that I need to replace the thermostat. Godby’s quoted cost is several hundred dollars, so I just pay the $89 service fee and install the thermostat myself the following day. (It’s an easy install.)" Godby Response: This is true. We showed up on Saturday August 3rd in a response to a no cool. We started in the home and found a bad thermostat. The customer declined our price for a new thermostat and said he would install himself. We looked no further that day as we had diagnosed a bad thermostat and at that time there was no reason to look any further. Customer: "On August 4th, the air conditioner still does not work even with the new thermostat. Godby sends Rich back out to our house. He does a longer inspection on the unit focused only on the outside fan. After about an hour he comes back into our house and explains that he fixed the unit and my cost will be about $500. He explains that it needed more coolant and that the cost is high because he needed to refill 3 lbs of coolant and my unit uses an older form of coolant. (My unit does use the older R-22 coolant that costs more.) I specifically asked if there was a leak to worry about since these units are closed systems and 3 lbs is a huge amount to refill. He said that he tightened up the coolant valves, etc and it should now work. I was skeptical, but the unit was indeed blowing cold air so I paid the bill." Godby Response: This is partially true. We did go out on Sunday August 4th in a response to a no cool. Rich went out and found that the system was low on refrigerant. He topped off the system and tightened the service valves. He informed the customer that there was a leak in the system and that a leak search should be performed. We charge to do a leak test and because we have no idea of how long it will take to find the leak, we schedule leak checks during the work week when we are fully staffed. On weekends, we focus on emergency calls, trying to get everybody who calls without cooling some cooling to get them through the weekend. Rich estimated that the leak search would cost around $200 and told the customer that the leak could be anywhere in the system (coils or lineset). This customer lives on the 3rd floor, so a leak in the lineset could take a considerable time to find. The customer declined the leak search. Customer: "By August 5th the air conditioner was again blowing warm air. I called and spoke to the manager Kevin. He stated that Godby would have eventually come back to my house when the Godby quality control team noticed the amount of coolant added." Godby Response: This is partially true. We have a policy that whenever there is a pound or more of refrigerant that is missing from the system, we offer leak checks (These are closed systems and there should be no leaks). We do not do this for free, but we want to make sure that everyone knows that there is a leak and should be found. The Quality Control Team looks at service tickets from the previous week to make sure the service tech offered the leak check, and since it was only Monday, we hadn’t reviewed the paperwork from the weekend or the previous week. Customer: "He admitted that there must be a leak and the technician should have performed a leak check before installing coolant." Godby Response: I stated that the technician should have offered a leak search and should have paperwork showing where the customer declined to do this search, and also reiterated that we don’t do leak searches on the weekends because of time constraints (We want to get to as many customers as possible to relieve their no cool situations and because we don’t know how long the leak search will take, we schedule during the work week when we are fully staffed). Customer: "Kevin then blamed Carrier who manufactured my Trane unit for selling poorly designed and built systems." Godby Response: Since the customer has a Bryant system, I’m not quite sure why Carrier would be blamed for a system that they didn’t manufacture. Bryant, Carrier and Trane all manufacture their own systems. I did tell him that United Technology had a situation in the Midwest where they were having problems with their coils, and that Carrier and Bryant were part of United Technology. Customer: "He said the problem is most likely with the coil. Kevin sends another technician that arrives on August 6th and confirms the coil leak within five minutes using a "Freon sniffer" tool. The technician shook his head and stated that the first technician should have performed a full leak test before filling any coolant and apologizes for the mistake." Godby Response: The technician that we sent out on August 6th, for no charge, was there to look at the coils. He found the leak and told the customer that his coil would have to be replaced. This technician was new to Godby and didn’t know that we didn’t run leak searches on weekends. Also, many customers decline the leak search and ask us to fill their system so that they can get cooling. It is our policy that on weekdays, if we find a leak of more than 1 pound of refrigerant, that we offer a leak search, and based on whether the customer agrees to this service, that we perform it on the spot. Customer: 'The manager, Kevin, calls the next morning to tell me they will install a new coil for $1,852. I complain that Godby should apply the wasted coolant fill cost (~$500) to this new total since that was money wasted on my end." Godby Response: We explained to the customer that he had a leak and that we couldn’t guarantee how long the refrigerant would last as we didn’t know where the leak was occurring. This refrigerant provided cooling that day for the customer. Customer: "Goby should have performed a leak test before refilling with coolant and even then should have presented me with options before actually performing the work (not sticking me with a bill afterward)." Godby Response: Rich told the customer that he was going to fill the system with refrigerant before he actually did the work and told the customer how expensive R-22 is. He had no idea of how much refrigerant it would take because the customer’s residence is on the 3rd floor, in front of the building, while his condensing unit is on the ground floor in the back of the building. Without actually knowing where the leak resides, it’s impossible to give an exact estimate of cost. Customer: 'After complaining, Kevin agrees to offer the “club rate,” which reduces the cost to $1,400. As I pressed for a reasonable deal, given my previously incurred and unnecessary expenses, the manager became rude and unreasonable in his interactions with me. I declined further work with Godby and called a competitor that quoted and performed great work at a regular total cost of $1,290." Godby Response: Actually, we encouraged the customer to become part of ”Club Godby” which would give him on-going preventive maintenance and discounts on repairs which we would use on repair of the coil. We don’t have any record of preventive maintenance done by this customer and I tried to educate the customer on the benefits of preventive maintenance. This system is 8 years old and I told the customer that preventive maintenance would extend his systems life, reduce the likelihood of repairs (because you are maintaining the system) and saves on energy as the system would be operating more efficiently. The customer didn’t want to be part of this plan, and as a goodwill gesture, we offered the discount on the replacement coil ($452) from the original price. The customer wanted a bigger discount, and we just agreed to disagree on his logic that we should take an additional $500 off the bill from the discount already offered. If this customer’s definition of rude is we didn’t agree with his pricing plan, then he is correct. Customer: "To make matters worse, I received a 90-day past due notice from Godby for the $500 of unnecessary work performed on August 4th. I paid this total in August and have the credit card receipt and bank withdrawal to prove it. In fact, I have kept all my paperwork." Godby Response: This is true and we apologized for the incorrect statement. We had a change of our controller in our business around this time, and many customers got statements showing incorrect amounts. This has been cleaned up and I know that no one was pestering this customer with collection calls and no customers paid duplicate bills. Customer: "Godby is a poorly run company that does not care about customers. Every company makes mistakes, but how these mistakes are handled is what defines a company. Godby does not care about their customers and is either blatantly ripping off customers or is completely mismanaged. Save yourself money and a headache and use someone else. Godby represents poor quality work, poor customer service, high costs and double billing! BEWARE OF THIS COMPANY!" Godby Response: Godby is a Super Service Award Winner from Angies List for 2012 and 2013. We do care about our customers and our designation from Angie’s List reinforces that we do take care of our customers. Unfortunately, we can’t always agree on the price that the customer wants from us. We, like everybody, make mistakes, but we do rectify those mistakes for our customers. We want our customers to be treated the same way we would want to be treated. We offer a fair price for the work we do and we treat people with respect and integrity.