KCW ENVIRONMENTAL CONDITIONING INC

"Please refer to a negative review posted about K.C.W. on September 27, 2011. This customer had two time and material service calls that were chargeable by the hour. The rate of $187.00 an hour the customer posted is incorrect. Our normal residential rate is $126.00 - $8.00 = $118.00 per hour. In this particular case, the customer was charged $126.00 per hour minus two special labor discounts given by the service supervisor handling the call. One special discount was $12.00 an hour and the other special discount was $6.00 an hour. Both discounts amounted to $302.00 deducted from their bill. I would also like to add that the customer neglected to state that the cost of the first service call was deducted from his bill in its entirety; therefore the customer’s claim of $187.00 an hour is erroneous and makes no sense. All of this was as a courtesy to help keep cost down for the customer,not because we did anything wrong. The customer states that the majority of the time was spent on a drip pan that they claim KCW installed. This too is incorrect as it was an existing drip pan that KCW did not install. The first service call made on 8/08/11 was due to a complaint that the attic a/c was leaking water. Our technician opened the unit and found no standing water in the coil pan. He also found no standing water in condensate drain line and water was flowing ok. He found no water dripping into the drain pan under the unit. The technician did not find any leaks at that time. He changed the filter with one from the customer’s stock on site along with checking the unit operation. He also recommended keeping an eye on the unit and checking after a heavy rain not yet understanding why they had a problem before we came and now they don’t. The second service call made on 8/22/11 (14 days later) was for another complaint that the attic a/c was leaking water. The service technician found condensation dripping into the safety pan and thought the condensate trap may have been a little off level. He made the adjustment and checked the operation in where as he found that after 10 minutes of run time, the water level rose at the main condensate pan. He found that the problem was with the 4” sewer vent pipe that the condensate pipe ran into. The technician went on the roof to check the air vent and found the pipe was plugged with a bee hive and water was building up over time against the hive eventually rising above the condensate connection level. He had to remove the bee hive and clean the vent pipe with a vacuum cleaner and garden hose. He then re-soldered the connection at the vent stack and checked the operation. All was okay. In other words; the beehive was blocking the normal flow of condensate so if there was a lot of condensate produced in a short time during the hot weather, it would build up on top of the beehive until the level would get above the pan and then start dripping (but not always) as the water would eventually pass through the hive slowly. 1. Obviously this was a very unique and unusual problem 2. Intermittent problems are often very difficult to find and/or diagnosis. The customer has also stated that our technician proceeded to take 30 minutes to go out to his van and change his shirt along with getting a drink of water. This operation took seven hours and was done inside an extremely hot attic and on a very steep hot roof on a very hot day. The technician was full of insulation that stuck to his body because he was covered in sweat. The need to change his shirt and drink some water was not out of order."