B & R Service Inc

unknown

Woke up Sunday morning with no heat. After going into my crawlspace and looking at the furnace and not being able to determine where the problem was, I went online and requested help from B and R Service. I received a callback from a technician who after I asked the cost of service on the weekend, told me if they came out that day (Sunday) the service call would be $167.00, but if I could wait until the next day (Monday) the service call would be $99.00. Since I have gas logs, I opted to wait until Monday. I was called by their office manager Monday and was told a technician was nearby my area and would come to my house to look at the furnace. I met the technician at my house where he immediately diagnosed the issue as a burned out igniter. He showed me the part he was replacing and was at my home a total of 30 minutes from the time he got there to the time he left. I remember thinking that I was glad that the fix wasn't more involved. As I was backing out of my garage, the technician came to my car window and presented me with an invoice for $331.00!! Needless to say, I was shocked at the high cost. When I said as much to the service tech, he even agreed it was more than he thought it would be too, but he was going by their and quot;programand quot; to a**** the cost. When I got back to my office I e-mailed their home office to ask them to re-check the cost of the part because it seemed exceedingly high. In the meantime, I went on the internet and found the exact igniter part from several sources and was interested to learn I could purchase one for $18.00 - $24.00, Once I received a confirmation e-mail from B and R that their pricing was correct and my bill was $331.00, I immediately called them to ask why the bill was so high. After not getting a satisfactory answer from the office mgr. and her getting frustrated with me not just accepting that the fee was due in large part to the and quot;expertiseand quot; of their service people (they are charging the kind of rates I expect from a specialist physician), I was told the service manager would call me about it. I received a call from him this morning. I explained that I understood that I would be charged a $99.00 diagnostic/trip fee + the part ($20.00) + the time the tech spent here (1/2 hour). Even if they charge $75.00 or $80.00 an hour.....I would've only been charged about half of the $331.00 I was charged. He stated that they use and quot;flat feeand quot; pricing and that some calls they go on, they make money and others they don't and that I should've been told how much it was going to cost ( I wasn't). It still baffles me why I would have to pay a higher price than my particular service/part required. Nevertheless, he was unfortunately unwilling to negotiate a lower price, so this is part of my recourse. Being from a small area, word of mouth can be devastating as well.

Always very professional, showed up when they were supposed to and did an excellent job. Reasonably priced as well. It has been a few years since we have used them, so things might have changed in that length of time, but that is who we used for 25 years and our experience with them was always very satisfactory.

It went well...considering the winter weather in the mtns.

They did such an excellent job for me that I ended up buying their service contract. This contract has them come out to do a check-up to ensure that everything is running as needed and to clean the electrical filter. I give B and R great kudos for the work they do.