ALLEN'S AIR & REPAIR

He showed up an hour late without any tools (who comes to a service call without tools???). So had to go get tools, which took another hour. Spent about five minutes looking at the heat pump unit which had a burned out control board. He admitted he was not familiar with this brand of unit, but said he could locate the part. For several days he did not contact us, and did not return our phone calls; he ostensibly made no attempt to find the part. Later we receive a bill for a service call plus a labor charge. This person is NOT recommended.

My A/C froze up on Sunday 8/22/2011. I called three (3) A/C repair companies in my area at 6:30 A.M. on 8/23/2011. Allen's KY Mechanical returned my call at 8:10 A.M. and said they would put me in their schedule system and call me back with estimated time. I told them I needed to get to work for meeting and asked if they could come that morning. The dispatcher said yes, they would send someone that same morning and would call me back shortly with ETA. About 20 minutes later, the dispatcher called and said their service technician was on his way and should arrive shortly. At 9:00 am, Allen's courteous and professional service men arrived. I told him what the problems was, he checked the entire system and determined that freon was low. He added freon, a very minor problem, but checked outside system unit to be sure coils and other parts were working properly before it left. Working great now and I was able to get to work on time for my meeting.

I have a home warranty; the warranty company chose the contractor, made the initial contact, and took care of the cost for this after-hours, emergency work. In the morning, when I found out which plumbing company was chosen, I called it around 9:30 am to get an ETA. Was told that my house would be on the way to another stop in the same area. I called back at noon for another ETA; was told that the "other stop" was more complex; please be patient. I called back at 3:30 pm; was told, "I thought he'd be there by now." Plumber did call me at 4:30 pm to say he was 90 minutes away. He said his dispatch was "confused" about where he was working that day and that he was nowhere near me (despite dispatch having had cell phone contact with him all day). Plumber arrived at 6 p.m. Plumber tried to use my outside access pipe to clear the blockage; he said it was improperly installed and that he could not use it. To be fair, I agreed with him. He then recommended that we remove a toilet and access the plumbing that way--however, he said this move was forbidden by the home warranty company. He said he had no choice but would have to leave--sorry. I said, "Let's call the warranty company and discuss this." Warranty company finally agreed to allow removal of toilet to access the plumbing. Plumber snaked the line, but was unsuccessful in clearing it. Plumber re-installed the toilet, then suggested we use the basement access point which, when opened, would unfortunately cause raw sewage to drain into basement (or, in my case, large garbage can) until the pipes were emptied. This we did; he and I caught most of the sewage as it flowed out, and the plumber snaked the line from that point. He said the problem was fixed, closed up the pipes, packed up, and left. He had been there a couple of hours by this point and had spent much time on the phone with the home warranty company. I cleaned up the sewage that had splashed into the basement, and went upstairs to take a shower. It was after 8 pm. The problem had not been fixed; it was no better than before. Sewage was backing up into my bathtub. I called the plumber's cell; no answer, no response to the message I left. I called his dispatch; night dispatcher claimed that the warranty company was refusing to pay for the just-completed service. I called the warranty company; warranty company said that the service would be paid for and that they would call the plumbing company to say so. I called the plumbing dispatcher back; he said had no one to send out the next day to complete the work. Advised me to get someone else. I had to go to a hotel for the night. I did call a local man; the second plumber came the next day. He cleaned the pipe from the "unusable" outside access point with a manual snake, and all was well.

They notched our joists and the inspector declared the home uninhabitable. Many mistakes were made during the job. The one that caused us the most trouble was the water supply line they installed in an unheated space which caused the pipe to burst and the house to flood. There was a point in time during the job where they disappeared without any contact for two weeks.