Budget Heating & Cooling

The technician arrived as promised, and was very friendly. He was, however, unfamiliar with Lennox systems and seemed to be resorting to "trial and error." He was unable to fix the problem during the initial call. He stated he believed the part needed was a temperature probe, and had to order the part as they didn't have a compatible part in stock. We went out and purchased electric space heaters to keep the house warm until he returned on Tuesday. The new part didn't fix the problem, so he ordered more parts. However, this time, he was able to bypass a safety feature to get the furnace to operate until the part came in. He assured us that he knew what the problem was this time, and that the bypass was safe. When he returned for the 3rd time, he was able to fix the problem. I was expecting a big bill, but was pleasantly surprised at the price tag after three service calls (including one on Saturday).

The gentleman who came to our home was friendly, knew his job, and was really kind to my outside dogs. People who treat animals well and are liked by them, are generally good hearted people. I thank him for his advice, too.

Budget Heating and Cooling was contracted by the larger, well-known Company we used, to install our heating and air conditioning system. The workers they sent were nice enough, but the quality of workmanship was lacking. They over-cut vents, leaving places that needed to be patched around the vents. They stepped or miss-stepped at one time and stuck a foot/leg through the sheet rock in one place over the basement stairs. They did not install all the returns that were contracted (only installed 1, saying that's all we'd need). At one point when they overcut one of the vents we did tell them not to worry about it as our son is a home remodeling genius and excellent doing sheet rock work. When they stepped through the sheet rock over the basement stairs, making a HUGE hole, one of the men commented something to the effect......Well, there's another job for your son. After they finished and had left. We were so relieved until my husband started inspecting some of the damaged sheet rock and crooked and over-cut vents. At one point (Sunday, February 3, 2008), after having smelled propane the day before and waking up with a cold house (we had run out of propane), we called our MFA Propane service guy in. We had our propane shut off because there were 5 leaks total (3 leaks in the crawl space and two leaks on the furnace fittings in the attic) . Our propane guy contacted Mr. Coleman, the owner/manager and told him the problem. Mr. Coleman was unable or unwilling to send anyone down to fix the leaks (being on a Sunday) and told our propane guy he could fix the problem. Mr. Coleman later stated to me via phone that there was no way that there could have been that many leaks! WHATEVER! After Budget installed the new system, we found our heating and electrical bills had more than doubled. Even the fact that we had built an addition on to the house and had been heating the addition with area heaters, since having a warmer than normal time, during that period, our bills should not have been that much higher. I wrote a letter to Mr. Coleman, stating these facts and that we had gone through a warmer than usual time and telling him that many of the days during this time period, having several 40 to over 50 degree days, our costs were unduly high. He had previously told me over the phone that it was winter, after all, and higher costs were to be expected. After complaining to the owner/manager several times and requesting many times that he personally come to our house and being ignored, we refused to have them back for any reason. The company that had contracted their services in the first place (after telling them we were no longer allowing Budget to service us) chose, themselves, to bring another company down from Lee's Summit and they also sent one of their representatives. We ended up with a settlement (for the returns not installed and damages to the sheetrock and poorly installed vents), additional returns installed, a new thermostat (or some such gadget) installed on the heat pump. The bills subsequently went down quite a bit and we've been satisfied with the new service provider, even though we haven't had to have them come back. They did come down, as a courtesy, to check to make sure things were running well. We did discover earlier this month (May 2011) that the thermostat inside the house was bad. We had not realized this, but had noticed that the furnace and a/c did kick on and off a lot, but attributed this to the fact that the older part of the house was not as insulated as the new part. After not being able to get the a/c to come on during a hotter than normal day, my son and brother looked at the thermostat and jiggled it around a bit a got it going. We ordered another thermostat, my brother installed it and found that there was no more kicking on and off so much and when turned on or off the system responds much quicker.

They failed to relight the polite light when the work was completed. I called and spoke with the owner, who was quite crude. He didn't apologized and offered to relight it himself rather sarcastically. The installer's assistant was the only pleasant person I dealt with. I had to tell the main installer several times to be more courteous of my home. I didn't appreciate his bad attitude.