Description of Work: I was incredibly disappointed in Tiger, after Cobb's Heating and Air referred all of their customers here when Mr. Cobb retired. Upon my introductory phone call, Tiger assured me of the superior treatment I would receive as a former Cobb customer. That could not have been further from the truth. | |I called Tiger when my heater started to go out, because I remembered them calling me when they took over for Cobb. The technician who came out was hours late, and didn't make it until well after dark. I kept getting updates from company headquarters that the jobs before mine were taking longer than expected, but when the technician arrived, his response was he didn't know why they hadn't sent someone else out. The delay made it impossible to get the repair done that night since he didn't have parts and all stores were closed by the time he arrived. | |From there, it got worse, as the technician couldn't even diagnose the problem...for sure. He kept saying that it was probably the control board but he wasn't too familiar with it...but "that HAS to be it. Nothing else makes sense." That's not very comforting. Plus, when I had two other companies come out after this to get their diagnosis, both technicians said after a few minutes of looking at the heater that it was for sure the control board. | |Anyway, like I said, the fact that the technician arrived so late in the day meant that the stores were closed so he couldn't do the repair. Just another night without heat. No big deal, right? I was told by the technician that I would get a call in the morning with the exact price since he could just give me an estimate. He said they would go buy the part from a company off of 410 and then come do the repair. I asked that I be specifically given the price of the part and the price of the labor when I received that call the following day. I also informed the technician that I would be at work all day and that the repair would need to happen around 4:30. He said they'd probably be able to accommodate that. Again, not very reassuring. As I paid, I was also informed that the $88 service call would NOT go towards the repair the following day. That's interesting because when my father had Tiger come out they credited the diagnosis fee towards his repair. | |The following morning, I never got a call. I called and spoke to an employee who said she'd pass on my message. I got a message hours later (I love phone tag, it's so easy for me to answer my phone as a teacher), from an employee who said "I know you've already spoken to someone and had all of your questions answered...blah, blah, blah." No one had answered my questions! I had no idea what he was talking about. When I finally got him on the line after work, still no repair set up, he refused to give me a breakdown of prices, just a total of around $500-$600. I explained that when having any service done, you get a breakdown. Examples I gave him were a car repair. There is a price for parts, labor, disposal, and tax. Another would be furniture - a price for the item, delivery, set up, tax. I wanted to know what the company was charging me for the part specifically, since the part itself costs under $50, and labor is as simple as unscrewing the part and disconnecting the wires, and then connecting the new part to the same wires. I was not willing to pay a highly marked up price for a part, nor was I willing to pay an extremely marked up cost for labor considering it's a half hour job. I wanted to know where the extra hundreds of dollars were coming from. The employee refused to give me the price he was paying for the part. That's interesting considering I can get a car dealership to give me the actual cost at price for a new car, which I brought up to him. But he still refused because, as he stated, he's never had to do this in the past, so why should he for me? Except again, when my father had his repair done, he was given a breakdown of all prices, parts and labor. Maybe not the cost that the company paid for the part, but the breakdown would have given me the information to know whether I was being overcharged for the part. Why will they give this information to my father, a man, but not me? | |Anyway, in the end, the bottom line is this - the company marks up their fees. Is it the labor or the parts? That I can't tell you because I was prevented from getting the information I requested - parts, service, tax. Also, I went and bought the part myself for under $30 and had another company install it for $50. That's less than $80 for a repair Tiger wanted to charge almost $600 for. And it's actually less than the fee they charged me to (kind of) diagnose the problem in the first place. I say kind of because of how unsure the technician seemed to be. | |I'm sure Tiger is going to counter that I was rude and unreasonable. By the time I was done, I was rude on the phone. But I feel justified. You can only ask the same question a limited number of times before it gets frustrating to not be given an answer. While the employee I spoke to may consider it unreasonable to give me the price of the product at cost, it is not even slightly unreasonable to request a breakdown of what I am being charged for - product, labor, tax. I can't think of another situation where this information is kept secret. If the standard for any kind of service or repair was a total with no breakdown, companies could be screwing us over all the time. That's why I breakdown is always provided. I'm also sure that I will be criticized because Tiger will say this price is fitting with industry standards. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't, but since when do we live in a society where we just take someone's word for it? Both companies that came out gave me prices hundreds of dollars under Tiger, and a third quoted me a price on the phone for replacing a control panel, which was also hundreds of dollars less than Tiger.