Crest Efficient Solutions

The company responded immediately. They team was on time, professional, and courteous. The situation was quickly assessed, and remedied. We have a service contract, and the company felt to be appropriately in line with their policy of customer satisfaction, and considering the situation there would be no charge for this service call and work. I appreciate the consistency I can depend on with Crest. EVERY time they come, they reinforce their commitment to excellence.

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I had 5 companies out to give estimates on a full system replacement for my 20+ year old AC system. My research consistently pointed to the quality of the installers as key when doing a job like this and not necessarily the brand of components, but as Crest is a Trane reseller they also used systems that were highly rated. Ricky came out to do an estimate and took the time to analyze one long-term issue we'd had since owning the house, a room that was consistently hot during the summer due westward facing windows and being located over a garage. I'd asked all 5 vendors about this, and Ricky was the only one to seriously suggest installing a minisplit (separate ductless unit) to supplement the air in that room. Other vendors, when pushed, said that would be the best solution in the end but were reluctant to quote it or gave a very high price (4K+). Ricky, on the other hand, made that option part of his original quote. I know a lot of homeowners would see an "extra" unit as unnecessary, but in our case it made sense due to the temp imbalances, and ultimately we chose this solution and went with Crest. Crest had been recommended by my manager at work after having a full system replacement. They'd also done work for my manager's son's friend. My experience with Ricky and the Crest crew was excellent. They communicated well, which is unusual for service companies in our experience, and were timely and punctual. The crew was friendly and respectful. They patched and sealed a new duct two weeks after the initial install when they came back to install the mini-split, as promised. At this point the new unit(s) have been working well and I'm happy we went with a vendor that we can trust and use for service in the future. I've recommended another friend to them and will continue to do so.

When I called the service number for Crest around 8:45 pm they said the next opportunity for service was the next morning. I asked them to set me up for the first service slot which was 8 am to 10 am. When I explained the situation to the lady on the phone, she said it sounded like a capacitor. She said they have had several calls on that kind of thing. I felt encouraged that it might be something that would be easy to diagnose and perhaps easy to fix. The next morning around 7:10 am Chris called me and asked some questions about the situation. I explained again about the partial power outage. He also asked how old the unit was, when it was last serviced, etc. I asked him if he wanted the model number in case it was the capacitor but he declined. He said he would be out around 9 am. He did arrive around 9. I greeted him and showed him the unit. He immediately started making comments about some things not directly related to the problem such as a nearby pole that could act as a lightning rod (we already told him multiple times that we had rain yesterday but no storm, including lightning). He then proceeded to try to schmooze my wife and me. I knew he was trying to set us up for a sales pitch. He acted more like a salesman than a technician. He was already hinting that we needed a new compressor before even opening the unit to troubleshoot it, and it wasn't but a few years old. I really started to get irritated. I asked my wife to go inside and told him we just wanted to get the thing fixed quickly. He then seemed to focus more for a short while, but made a comment like "OK, this is going to cost $300". He hadn't done any troubleshooting at that point. He replaced the capacitor, then when I turned the thermostat on, the unit would still not run. That is when I went to the garage to check the circuit breaker again and realized that I had not fully reset both breakers in the pair the night before (one wiggled a little while the other was firmly in place). I correctly reset it this time and the unit came on. I then suggested to him that the capacitor wasn't really the problem at all. He "tested" it and said it was up to spec, but wasn't 100%. I know that was a bunch of BS but by this time I really wanted him off my property, so I told him to leave the new one on. Then, to my amazement, he started trying to sell me on a new compressor again. He went down a list of things that were wrong with it (he never did any real analysis) and said with great certainty that "it will go out THIS WEEK". That was over 2 weeks ago and it has been running fine. He then said we needed to decide where WE were going to proceed from here. I told him that I wasn't planning to replace the unit and didn't think it needed replacing. He seemed put off when I told him that I didn't trust his rash judgment on an emergency service call and would get at least another opinion from another service person before even considering replacing it. I told him I wanted to know how much I owed him hinting he really needed to leave. He wrote me a bill for $300 even. He listed work and parts, but did not itemize prices for them. He just put $300 in the total line. How could it come out to $300 even when you add up the service call, the parts, and tax? I should have told him to put the old part back on and charge me for the service call, but I honestly did not trust him to touch the unit anymore. I thought we were rid of him, but he sat in our driveway for at least 15 minutes, presumably talking on the phone, even though it was quite clear that I wanted him gone. What a jerk. Before submitting this review, I decided to contact them to complain and to give them a chance to make amends. A man named Chris (not the same person who came out) identified himself as the owner. I explained the situation to him. I was very encouraged by the fact that he listened patiently to my complaint, then he explained that his technicians are also trained as sales people and that the person who came out was over zealous. He said that he would: - Send out a supervisor or come out himself- Test the capacitor to assess whether it was viable or not and put it back in and refund my money if it was OK.- Give us a year of regular maintenance service calls free. We scheduled a time for him to come out. (I had to call and re-schedule once when I realized I had a scheduling conflict). On the day he was supposed to come out he called at 9:04 to "make sure I was there before he drove all the way out". I missed his call but called him back at 9:30 when I listened to the message. I got his voice mail and left a message that I was going to be there for 20-30 minutes. A few minutes later his office called to say that he was running late and could be there in about 30 minutes. That would have made it after 10 and I had to get to work. I originally expected him to arrive between 9 and 10. I just told her I would call next week to reschedule. After thinking about it, I decided that I couldn't trust anything they told me so it didn't make sense to have them out for even routine service. The following Monday I called his office to say that I just wanted to know if they ever tested the capacitor. I never got a call back. My overall impression is that this company's priority is sales, not service. I will NEVER consider this company again and would recommend that my friends and family avoid them at all cost.

They did a great job and would I highly recommend them.

They were very responsive and came in the same day to give us an estimate, and then completed the installation the next day. They were the only company we could find that was available so quickly. We will definitely recommend this company to others.