A Tale of Incompetence, Dissimulation, and Buffoonery This series of unfortunate events began on or about September 20, 2020. It had been cold for September the night before with the temperature down in the mid-30s. There was a chill in the house, so I switched on the heat, and nothing happened. I went down into the basement and found the furnace (technically a “boiler” for my steam heat system) ice cold. We had been living in our house since 1997, and I knew that the furnace as quite old. I put a call into HARP which had been maintaining our heating and air-conditioning systems since we moved in and, I believe, for the previous owner as well. HARP had handled the routine servicing needs for us with no difficulties, and I had no reason to doubt that this would be a fairly simple matter for someone who lives in a very nice old house. Not yet, anyway. Setting up a service appointment had never been a problem before then, but I was surprised to be connected to someone at some remote call center (possibly in Kazakhstan) who knew nothing about my longstanding account and who rudely grilled me about the age, brand, and technical specifications of my furnace. I had no clue on this and merely responded that it was exactly the same as it had been for the previous 23 years or so that they had been servicing it. With great ill humor, this person said that they could fit me in in about 10 days. I remonstrated that it was getting cold and that this matter should be treated with more urgency by a company advertising 24/7 service. I did not record the exact response, but it seemed to indicate that I should consult with the clergy if I didn’t like it. The service was thus scheduled and was confirmed both by email and text. When the great day came, however, no one showed up. I called HARP to inquire and was informed that the call had been unilaterally cancelled because I had failed to confirm it on a late afternoon call late the previous day. I replied that I had two written confirmations and had no record of receiving any call from HARP. It turned out that a call from an unknown number which was in no way identified as being from HARP had been dispatched to my spam file. I expressed my dissatisfaction with this North Korean approach to customer service and was again more-or-less advised to take it up with the Chaplin. The service call was rescheduled for October 8, close to 3 weeks after the problem surfaced with the clock ticking and the temperature dropping. A technician did show up as scheduled that time, pronounced the furnace as dead, and charged me $185.05 for this penetrating diagnosis. An identical no show occurred November 5th. I had not yet learned to distrust anything that I was told by HARP, and another technician on the sales side was dispatched to advise me on a new furnace. N. came out to my house soon thereafter and was in my judgment the most competent and conscientious person I have dealt with from HARP. He made a thorough study of my heating system, measuring every room and observing each radiator. N. gave me a very attractive proposal which noted that it was “all inclusive” and covered “all accessories.” He also pointed out that some of the pipes leading to and from the furnace seemed likely to contain asbestos. He recommend a company called Zero Hazard to remove the asbestos, and I subsequently retained them for that task. I did receive a second proposal, but chose HARP because they had been maintaining my heating and cooling systems for many years and could be expected to be more familiar with the situation. We signed a contract for the purchase dated October 19, 2020 which noted that it was “all inclusive,” covered all necessary permits, and provided guarantees of “workmanship,” “no surprises,” and “100% satisfaction.” Payment was specified as “due upon completion.” The installation began on October 19, and the immediate problem was how to get the new furnace down the relatively tight staircase down to my basement. One of the workers expressed his amazement that the furnace was all in one piece said to weigh 800 pounds rather than in a modular, knocked-down format. This proved to be a problem, and the workers dropped the furnace on the stairway where it went crashing through the wall. Luckily, no one was hurt, but this probably did not improve the workings of the brand-new furnace. The team of about four worked hard all day, but could not finish the installation on the 19th. When I asked what time they would be arriving the following day to finish the job, they told me that I would need to call Customer Service and arrange another appointment. I expressed my surprise and dissatisfaction with this unfriendly policy and was told, “HARP has 13,000 customers and doesn’t care what you think.” As expected, Customer Service tried to delay continuation of the work until the end of the week, but finally reluctantly agreed to show up the next day after I spoke energetically to HARP directly rather than the call center. The same workers returned on October 20 and thought that they were done at the end of the day. We quickly discovered that the upstairs and downstairs zones were not properly coordinated with the downstairs getting very hot and the parts of the upstairs staying cold. We did not notice and problems with any of the radiators. T. was dispatched to deal with this and made changes to the pipes near the furnace which did not solve the problem, and T. tried again a few days later. The problem was not solved then (and was not finally addressed until much later after much unpleasantness and prevarication), and a new problem immediately arose with several of the radiators which no longer functioned. That problem has still not been corrected. The Friday after the delivery 10/23, we had a modest rainfall. We had never experienced any flooding or any water at all in the pit in which the furnace sits, but we had several inches of water flood into the furnace area. I assumed that the new furnace was leaking and a service worker came promptly to see what was going on. The furnace was not leaking, the water was actually flooding-in in the area beneath the furnace. There had never before been even the slightest amount of flooding in this area in the previous 23 years. Thus began an increasingly ridiculous excuses and fabrications for the damages clearly resulting from the loose dirt and gravel over which the furnace was installed: seep, coincidence, imaginary MDC check valves, equally imaginary back water valves, imaginary drains, and most recently from a pile of bricks or possibly my gutters. I exchanged many fruitless emails with J., several more ineffective service calls were made (11/5 a no show 11/6/, 11/12, 11/30, 12/16, and 12/22), and S., billed as the technical guru, stepped into the situation. S. seemed to have only limited knowledge of what had been transpiring, and it took a while to get him up to speed. With S. now quarterbacking for HARP, we had further fruitless service calls on 1/11 and 1/19. Not much happened after that until 4/22 when S. repeated his offer to install a new sump pump to replace the ancient artifact in place. Again, things went into deep suspended animation, until 6/2 when P., the Sales Manager, replaced S. at QB, which initially seemed like a huge improvement. On 6/8, P. and I had a generally polite and productive telephone conversation to review the entire situation. Based on this, P. sent a Directive to the HARP team. In this Directive, P. gave the following instructions: 1. Please contract out an insulation company to insulate all the boiler supply and return pipes within 10 feet of the boiler we installed….There will be no charge to Mr. Champion for this. 2. 2-3 (4 is the correct number) additional radiators are not working properly since our install. Please schedule the replacement of the traps on these radiators. In the event that we break a radiator…we will replace the radiator with a modern day radiator that will match the BTU output of the unit…this will be done at no charge to Mr. Champion. 3. Please schedule techs to go to the home and lift the boiler so