McGRADY-PERDUE HEATING and Cooling

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I cannot say enough about how nice they were. Extremely responsive and reasonably priced. Did a fantastic job. Everything you want in a company. They were prompt and they explained everything they were doing. Very very nice people.

This company seems technically competent, but you would be wise to read this description of my customer experience. Following the first October chill, I discovered that one of my natural gas furnaces (American Standard) had failed (one year out of five-year warranty). I called McGrady-Perdue. Their technician showed up promptly (home is three miles away from office) and after a twenty-minute evaluation told me the ?control board? had failed. Later that day, I was stunned to learn that the repair would be $940. Understandably I expressed concern about cost. The following week the technician (nice guy who seemed to know his stuff) returned and installed the new board. He was on-site for a little more than 30 minutes. He said they reduced the cost to $840. Meanwhile, I had found the part on-line for $341. Obviously I felt like I was being treated poorly so I visited the company to appeal for fairness. I was told they had paid ?more than $600 for the part? and would need to speak with owners. I told them my previous provider had gone out of business, that I was looking to establish a long-term business relationship with a new firm, and that I could not do so knowing said company had treated me so unfairly. I visited three additional times over next few weeks to inquire about paying them. During those conversations, they repeatedly changed the price they told me they had paid for the part until finally I overheard staff tell supervisor they had paid just over $400 for the part. Finally, after multiple visits and appeals for fairness, a manager called me and said they needed their $840 for the service. An HVAC company I consulted with in Virginia Beach about the episode stated McGrady-Perdue had clearly ?gone for the home run? on the job. Frankly I was amazed they were so willing to discard a potentially more profitable long-term business relationship just to gouge a new customer in the short run. Am sure it is not a very sound long-term business strategy. To me, that kind of says what it says. Caveat emptor

As usual, the work was done professionally as well as in a friendly manner. They always provide a list of what they did and what to watch in the future. As mentioned elsewhere, M-P will no longer work directly with the home warranty companies. However, a couple of years ago they replaced a heating/AC system with a heat pump for us on an outside authorization from the home warranty company. I was happy that M-P would do this because I feel confident that they do a good job and also matched the systems correctly in this hard to fit location.

unknown

technican (I think Will) came out and replaced my gas fireplace starter. it took a few trips to eventually get it resolved. originally, I called and scheduled a time, ended up having to call back after no one had shown up an hour after my scheduled appointment time, Brandon ended up coming out and problem could not be fixed on the spot. I left access to my home with the understanding, it would be repaired the next day. Followed up 3 days later and still had not been repaired, so office staff sent Will out.. Took him about an hour to fix the problem. The office staff are friendly. This seems to be a very busy business and I think the timing/time of year may have affected the response time and scheduling issues. Overall, I am satisfied and would use them again, however encourage them to work on improving response time and punctuality. Price was as quoted.

My experience with McGrady-Perdue was not positive but there are faults on both sides of this story. I scheduled an appointment with McGrady-Perdue Heating and Cooling to have my AC system serviced. The receptionist was helpful and friendly. I took the day of off work the day of my appointment because the technician was scheduled to arrive somewhere between noon and 3pm. I received a call from the technician around 2pm to tell me he would not be able to make it because a job was taking longer than expected. That is fine. I understand that most service jobs take longer than expected because a technician never knows the condition of a machine before he opens it up. I said that was fine and we rescheduled to the following week. My husband took off work the day of our rescheduled appointment. The technician was supposed to arrive between noon and 3pm. The technician had not arrived by 3pm nor had I received a call. I received a call around 4:30pm letting me know that he would not be able to make it. I was annoyed but I said I would like to reschedule again. We rescheduled to the following Wednesday. I could not take off work for another whole day so I planned to leave early instead. I asked if the appointment could be scheduled later in the day. We scheduled the appointment between 3pm and 5pm. The day of my appointment arrived and something came up at work so I was not able to leave a 2:30pm like I had planned. The technician arrived at my house around 3:30pm. He called me to let me know that he would begin servicing the exterior air handler even though I was not home yet. I told him I would leave as soon as possible. Unbeknownst to me as soon as possible was not for another 2 hours. The technician finished servicing the air handler around 4:30pm and called to let me know that he would wait for me to arrive to service the ducts and thermostat inside the house. When I arrived home at 5:30, the technician was gone. I do not blame him for that, he is paid to work between 8 am and 5pm, but given that I was patient with him, I was hoping he would be a little more patient with me. The receptionist tried to call me to schedule a time to finish the job but we kept ?playing phone tag.? I was not planning to have another technician come out anyway. My intent was to have the office send me a bill for the work performed. I finally got a bill in the mail. The total came close to $400. I am not an expert on HVAC services, but this seemed a little high to me. I was expecting $100-$200 for the labor and I was thinking it would be on the lower end because the technician did not service the whole system. I was expecting $50-$100 for the belts he replaced. However, I am not an expert so this may be an accurate, fair price. I?m not going to say I would not recommend this company to a friend, but I personally will not be using them again.

All went well, could have been corrected on intial instilation of new air exchanger and heat pump

They came when they promised and worked on the project until it was installed. Will come back to hook up the gas once the gas line is put in.

He found that the reversing valve was not working. Which means that the heat pump was not reversing from cooling to heating. Without that operation, the heating was being performed by the electric heating elements instead of by the heat pump. The net result is that the cost of operation would be much higher. However, he recommended that we do nothing because the valve is very, very expensive and because the window unit is not heavily used.

McGrady-Perdue Heating and Cooling are horrible. I stopped using them. They went upstairs to inspect my HVAC unit, they crossed wires and blew the thermostat off the wall into the other wall, melted the thermostat unit and took out the upstairs unit completely. They tried to fix it and then they wanted to put a new unit in and we had used them in the past to do work and we had multiple issues fixing the units in our house. We purchased the house, the prior owner had used them before and none of their work was ever right the first time and they wanted us to give them $10,000 to fix the unit they just fried. That unit itself was about 15 years old, so it was good to go, it probably needed to be replaced anyways, but they didn't even give us a discount and the way they wanted to install the unit didn't fix the airflow issues so I went with a different company and I've been very happy. They have never been able to fix our units, they are the cheapest company in the area with the worst service and the worst quality. I had to call multiple times to get the owner to call me back about what happened with the technician and he finally came by the house and tried to defend his guy until I showed him all the marks and then the guy marked the burn marks off the wall and everything, so basically I had to get into a shouting match with the owner too, to get it fixed. They did show up on time.

Superb. I've found a company which has factory-trained technicians who can service my Trane HVAC system. The technicians were very thorough, professional and delightful folks. I'll use McGrady-Perdue forever. They have excellent people and their prices are very reasonable. Sure, I'd like the service call to have cost less, but you get what you pay for. This was money well spent.

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