VR Heating & Cooling

I called VR Heating & Cooling at about 1:00am in the morning on 9/23/2012 (Sunday).  Vince, the owner, answered the phone and talked to me.  I told him that I was out of town on business, but I described the problem that my wife was having with the Air Conditioning units (two of them) at our house.  He told me that both systems sounded like they were "frozen up"; he said that he would come out and work on them immediately; but that all that he would be able to do was to start thawing the units and that until they were thawed, not much other work could be done.  He said that he is 24hrs and he'd be happy to come out begin that work, but that it was a very simple & non-dangerous task that he assured me he could explain to my wife.  This sounded like a great option because it would allow the system to thaw & if she could start this process it would mean that we wouldn't be charged for the 'emergency-hours' call-out rate...which would  SAVE US MONEY!
 
I'm not very "tool" oriented and neither is my wife, so I was a little nervous about her doing this.  Both of us had not lived in the South terribly long and so we had not yet come to understand how easy/common it is for someone to freeze their AC system.  Vince assured me this wouldn't be a problem...he said we could three-way call my wife & if she was uncomfortable or unable to do this, he'd go take care of it.  I got her on the line, Vince explained what was happening to the system and what we were going to do to start fixing it. Honestly, I was expecting him to jump at the chance to charge an evening hours fee--or at least charge me for a lenghty consult in the middle of the night, but he didn't.  My wife was able to start thawing the  two systems with the flip of about 4 switches (as I mentioned, we're snowbirds, never really experienced this before).  He told us he'd come out with a technician on Monday (that upcoming morning) and we were going to be the third service call of the day.
 I got back home that Monday morning and the VR Heating & Cooling Technician called about 20 minutes prior to showing up to let us know they were on the way.  They arrived around 12:45pm, introduced themselves and immediately went together to examine and work on the systems.  One we knew was very very old; the other, however, had been installed by the previous home owner.  Now, the reason I joined Angie's List was because of an exceptionally bad experience with an HVAC company so while Vince & his tech were outside working on the units, I was feverishly googling everything about AC units.
He came back in and told me that there was bad news & good news:

The older of the two units was low on freon because of a leak.

The newer system had a bad capacitor in the blower motor.  The capacitor apparently fried and the system froze because my wife turned the thermostat that controls that unit down to 50 degrees when the older system stopped working well.  Lesson learned.

He told me that we could just go ahead and put the freon in the old system and change the capicator in the newer system, however, the old system had a leak where it was just going to continually slowly leak freon and, essentially, although adding freon would get the AC running again, the system would (at some point in the future) need to be recharged again.
Vince told me that there are a couple of options:

1.) He could go ahead and do the work he mentioned

2.) If we were interested in going ahead and changing the old system he would sell & install a brand new one for us for 3,800 and waive the charges for the parts & labor for the unit that needed a new capicator.

I told him that we needed to look at finances and think things over.  He said that what he would do is go ahead and replace the capacitor so we had some AC while we thought.  We went ahead and paid them the fee for that day, VR's technician installed the new capicator, and Vince said that if we did decide to call back and buy the new unit, he would deduct the $58.00 call out charge & the $180.00 for the capicator from the cost of the new unit.
We spent the rest of the day calling around other companies in Tuscaloosa.  Basically, we flipped open the phone book and picked 5 companies that had the largest ads.  For the size of our house and the brand & size of the unit that we wanted, they were giving us estimates from 6,000-7,000.
Obviously, we called Vince back on Tuesday morning.  We told him that we were interested in replacing the unit.  He told us he would bring us the paperwork to sign for buying the new unit that afternoon.  I told him I wouldn't be back from work until 5pm that evening, he said he'd be happy to come out then so I could sign.  When he came, he told us that he and the work crew would be out the following morning to start work.  He said that the longest it would take to have an installation done was 2 1/2 days but that we could have the new unit putting cold air out before the job was done.  We were very very happy to hear this--if you know about summer in the south the promise of cold air is very welcome.
Wednesday morning Vince called and told my wife that he was on the way and that the technicians were picking up materials from a supply house.  They arrived at 9:30am and went to work.  By Thursday lunch time, the new unit was cooling the house...and they finished up ahead of schedule...they completely wrapped up work on the job about 15 or 20 minutes after I got home from work that day.  It was pretty convienient to pay too.  We don't really write many physical checks anymore so I was a bit worried I was going to have to go to 10 different atm's to pull out cash to pay them.  I was suprised to see that VR Heating & Cooling was set up to take credit cards at our house.  I liked this, because I refuse to give out my CC number over the phone anymore.  Vince was able to bring the little machine with the invoices that way I could keep an eye one it when I signed off on the invoice.
Overall this was a great experience.  I never felt like I was getting the "hard sell", I was impressed by how upfront they were about the different options we had to fix the units, and the technicians cleaned up after themselves!

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The gas company tagged a furnace at one of my rental houses saying the chamber was cracked. The people who usually do work for me of this type were unavailable for several days. It was cold and the tenants needed the heater fixed. I found the add for VR Heating and Cooling and called. I liked the fact that the owner, Vince, answered the phone and met me immediately (for a charge of $85 for his expertise in a service call to DIAGNOSE the problem). I told him I wanted to know two things: 1) exactly what the problem was, and 2) what my options were for fixing the heater. Then, in front of my tenant, Vince said he had "good news," that the gas company guy was "an idiot" and the chamber (also known as heat exchanger) was NOT cracked. He talked about how the flame would be dancing and be a different color if there were cracks, going on and on about it. Of course, I did not realize at the time that he did not LOOK at the heat exchanger to SEE! He spent a great deal of time talking about how the older Heil units had a smart valve that was a safety feature that often went bad. He said the unit was older (13 years) and he would recommend replacing it, giving a price of $3800 to replace. But then said he could save me some money and just replace the smart valve for $400 plus labor for $680 total. He assured me this would fix the furnace. I called the next morning to confirm that replacing the valve would repair the heater. I told him spending 10 times the money just did not add up if that was the only problem, so I was leaning towards the repair. I am a single school teacher with two rental properties, so I have to be careful with money. $4000 is a lot of money to me if a valid repair can be done with a $400 part and the unit might have a few more years on it. He assured me that was the only problem. I told him to go ahead and replace it. This is where the nightmares started. Some details are above instead of here, as I felt they were required to make sense of "services performed." As you can see from the section above, I guess I should feel lucky that my tenants were not killed by carbon monoxide, nor was my house burned down. Luckily the smart valve, the roll out switch, and the carbon monoxide testers WORKED to protect us by shutting the heater off. Unfortunately, Vince owner of VR Heating and Cooling has not admitted to any neglect, lack of ethics, or reckless endangerment of people's lives and property. After the second time the roll out switch shut the heater off, I actually took Justin's advice and called his friend who owned ANOTHER company. This friend said I should not dare have that heater turned back on as it would endanger people's lives. He said he could not believe that VR did not look at the heat exchanger to see if the chambers had cracks. The new person came the next day and showed me all the cracks and holes in the heat exchanger. I could have replaced the heat exchanger for $1,000 but I felt I could no longer risk having further problems with that HVAC unit for the tenants. If Vince (VR) had bothered to look at the heat exchanger in the first place--so he could have given me a correct diagnosis of the problem--I could have justified the sensible choice of making the correct repair. I was denied that chance when Vince gave me completely bad information on which I made my decision. I became seriously worried that my tenants would move out after all this chaos; therefore I went ahead and replaced the unit for $3600. Interestingly, Justin (remember this is the tech repairman who works for Vince/VR Heating and Cooling!) was actually THERE when the unit was replaced by the other company, and apologized profusely for Vince's unethical behavior. Justin made it clear after the second time the roll-out switch cut off the heat that he felt that Vince should replace the unit for the price originally offered, and not charge for the whole smart valve fiasco. Justin also apologized that he had not actually checked the heat exchanger himself at the beginning, before it became obvious that it was NOT the smart valve. In closure, VR is still charging me for a part that was not broken for a repair they performed that never fixed the heater and put my tenants and my property in danger. My advice: Beware! And call ANYBODY ELSE! In 15 years of owning property--my residence plus rental properties--I have NEVER had ANY problems with repair people until this. Vince has been volatile and aggressive in his communications with me. He has yelled, refused to be professional or come up with a fair and ethical solution, and he even hung up on me when I calmly insisted that trying to charge hard-working people for bogus repairs that did NOT fix the problem would end up costing him much more money than the $700 he is charging me. I have one tenant who has leased from me for 8 years; I pride myself on fast, courteous, efficient maintenance, repairs, and solutions to any problems. I am sure my tenants felt that this situation was a nightmare, as I did! Justin himself deserves an award of some type, and if he opens his own company I will highly recommend it! He has put his own job on the line to keep my tenants and property safe.  ***As an update, I won the court case.  Judge Guin agreed that I did not have to pay for repairs to the ruined heating system.  He came to this decision quickly, and made it clear to Vince during the hearing that the chamber was clearly damaged with many holes and cracks as shown in the photographs.  Although this was a stressful ordeal, I hope to save other people from any similar circumstances.  Tell everyone you know to stay away from VR HEATING AND COOLING!!!