Blankenship Refrigeration

I had a new A/C installed in my home in May 2013 by my home warranty company. The installation was done on a fairly cold day which prevented proper fine-tuning of the charge. Cooling was unsatisfactory, with only a 10 degree drop across the evaporator coil. I contacted the warranty company to have it fixed, and they dispatched Blankenship Refrigeration. Before starting the work, Kevin, the tech from Blankenship, confessed that he had only worked on one other R-410A system before. In retrospect, this should have been my signal to send him away. He connected his R-22 manifold gauges to my condenser without purging the hoses -- potentially introducing R-22 and air/other contaminants to my system. Unsure of what to make of the readings (R-410A runs at higher pressures than R-22), he became fixated on the idea that the evaporator coil was frozen over. He ripped open my carefully sealed evaporator and instantly proclaimed that it was completely iced up. I took a look and saw that it was in fact dry as a bone, without so much as a hint of ice. When I challenged the diagnosis, he informed me that the ice was "internal" and couldn't be seen with the naked eye. (Lookup "frozen evaporator" on Google Images and you'll see this is not the case.) I complied with his request to run the fan all day. The tech returned later in the evening to check the system. This attempt at de-icing my completely dry evaporator of course made no difference to the pressures. He consulted his manager by phone about what to do next, and they decided to add "a pound" of refrigerant. I suggested that he measure the superheat first but he apparently didn't know how to do that. Again, he hooked up his equipment without purging any of his gauge hoses. He dumped liquid refrigerant into the suction line at such a fast rate that the compressor flooded and began howling/banging. He wrote on his work order, "Checked unit, found to be low, added a little refrigerant to good level. Blowing good cool air" and left. In reality, the A/C compressor had completely shut down due to overpressure and would not even turn on, but I wasn't about to let this company do any more work on my system. I shut off the A/C and asked the warranty company to send another contractor. That contractor immediately figured out that it was grossly overcharged, and determined that Blankenship had overcharged my system (which was already slightly overcharged to begin with) by about 5 pounds of refrigerant, or about double its intended capacity. I was told I was very fortunate that my system wasn't ruined by all this.