REDBIRD HEATING & COOLING

We got a referral to Redbrid from the real estate agent who sold us our house. Started out well. Redbird came out, gave us a reasonable price quote and installation was not painful. However, our happiness quickly deteriorated. Within two weeks of installation of new units one unit was not cooling. Redbird came back to fix a transformer and literally yelled at me over the phone. We paid $130 to have this fix done. In April 2007 the unit for upstairs was not cooling adequately and we had a different hvac company come out for spring maintenance. We were told that we really should have Redbird come back because the unit was under warranty and may need a new coil. I told the repair person what a bad time we had been having with Redbird; and unbeknownst to us the repair man had friends at Redbird and called and told them how unhappy we were. Redbird then called us and was angry that we hadn't called them for the repair and Redbird came out to add freon (to a new unit that had been used only for about two months the prior summer). Redbird kept telling us how hard it is to track down freon leaks. In May 2007 we came home from a weekend trip and the house was 62 degrees, even though thermostat was set at 74. The only way I could get the main floor a/c unit to turn off was to throw the breaker switch. Redbird came out and fixed a short and charged $85. In April 2008 the upstairs unit once again was not adequately cooling and it was not easy to get a response from Redbird until my husband called and complained. Then they were ready to be out here within the hour. Again they added freon to this unit. Every time Redbird was out here they could not figure out where the freon leak was. We kept reminding them that the units should be under warranty. We had an energy audit performed and had another hvac company come out to give us estimates on adding more insulation, replacing both furnaces, adding dampers to our hvac and zoning the system and installing a new energy efficient hot water heater. We were so tired of dealing with Redbird that we paid the other company $1100 to replace the defective coil on the ac unit installed by Redbird and do all the other work. We now have a heating/cooling system that works and is energy efficient. But, we paid more than we should have had to pay to get there and Redbird was a painful part of the journey. The ironic part is we had the other company install the new furnaces, water heater, zoning, etc. and spent a lot of money that might have gone to Redbird if we had been satisfied with them.

They gave us a fair price. They had a very high efficiency. They were very good about getting here on time. I have had no issues with the products. I would use them again.

After determining the problem, I felt that they were pushing the more expensive a/c replacement options, versus the less expensive option of just replacing the bad parts. I had to request an estimate for replacing the bad parts & when they called back, they said there were no parts in stock & did not give me a date when they thought they would be in, again, leaving me with the expensive options. Since they couldn't get the parts & didn't have an estimate as to when they would be in stock, I called another company & they were able to get the replacement parts from the manufacture warehouse the same day. Also, this other company charged me approximately $700 less to replace these parts than Redbird estimated. The company sent a statement for the full service call since the service call was unsatisfactory for the reasons above. I talked to Gary to reduce the amount of the service call. He indicated he would write the service call off since the company is going out of business anyway.