Advantage Heating and Cooling

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We needed a technician to come out on a Friday night when we discovered our A/C was no longer producing cold air. He arrived on time and an hour later identified the problem. Unfortunately the unit was not repairable and he recommended complete replacement. While we agreed on the phone to pay an additional service charge for an evening service call, the technician charged us for the diagnostic service at the rate we expected but also required us to join the "Comfort Club", which is an agreement for ongoing service. We said we were not interested in that service but he said it was a requirement with the service call. That was not mentioned to us on the phone prior to his coming to the house. (Earlier in the summer they had also been out for a service call on a weekend and we were not required to join the Comfort Club at that time.) The cost of joining the Comfort Club was twice the diagnostic charge, so the bill was three times what we expected. 

Advantage called us the next Monday to schedule a time to come install a new unit. When I said we would not be purchasing one from them, they asked what they could have done better. I explained we were forced to join the comfort club and pay an extra $190 for a service we didn't want. The representative said she would see what she could do about that bill. A month later we received a refund for the comfort club membership.

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Advantage installed a new AC unit in our home when our old unit died a
slow death in the middle of 100+ degree days. It was a very busy time
for them but they got right out and gave us estimates on a new unit and
scheduled the install. We got bids from a few other companies and by far
I felt Advantage were the straightest shooters. They applied no
pressure and were honest with us about what our needs were based on the
size of our home rather than try and sell us more than we needed, unlike
another national company we got a bid from. There was a mistake made
in installing the new unit - the workers installed the unit one price
point down from the one we paid for, but we had no idea. Marci with
Advantage called later that day and alerted us to the error and got
workers out to switch the units. I appreciated their honesty because we
would have not realized the unit we got was not the one we paid for.
Their communication with us was fantastic, even though they were
absolutely swamped at the time. You can not ask for more than honesty,
good communication and fair pricing and that's what we got with
Advantage.

We needed a new AC unit. We called several companies for estimates and decided on Advantage Heating and AC, 406 N. 7th Street, Lawrence, KS. 66044. Randy the CEO came out quickly after we called and he visited with us for a while about our needs. The next day he emailed us an estimate. Even though his company was $1000 higher than other companies we settled on Advantage because they seemed to know what they were doing. We received a detailed estimate on all of the work to be performed and it stated that the work would be done to code. Randy was very nice and we felt that we would receive the best service and product by going with Advantage - even though it would be more expensive. Randy also had instructions for us to make modifications to the attic area so they could complete their work easier and to bring the attic area up to code. My husband had to enlarge the attic opening so they could fit the new unit through it, install 3/4and quot; plywood from the attic access all the way through the attic over to the ac unit so they could get the new unit into the old spot without having to crawl through insulation and he had to install lights in the attic. We were told since these things were to make it to and quot;codeand quot; they had to be done and either we could do it or they would do it and charge us more than the $6900 estimate. That was fine - I wanted to make sure everything was safe and up to code. We had to put down a sizeable deposit for our new unit. We were getting a whole new system - an inside unit in our attic and an outside air handler. The problems started the first day. They came to install the outside unit on the morning of May 25th, 2012 and when I came home I found they had run the new pipes up the outside of the house and drilled a hole in the eaves to run the pipes into the attic instead of using the existing hole in the house and removiing the old pipes and disposing of them- as it stated they would do in their estimate. I was not happy with ugly pipes running up the back of my house - it looked terrible! We immediately called Randy at Advantage. We were not able to speak with Randy but someone else took our call and they came out and removed the pipes and put the new pipes where they should have been and patched the hole in the eave. Now I have screw holes in the side of my house and a patched hole in my eave that needs paint that I do not have.... Next, when they replaced the attic unit we noticed that the lights in the basement started flickering. We immediately called and asked for Randy but were not able to get in touch with him. Someone else came out to check the problem. The problem persisted and around the same time I noticed some household items plugged in in the living room upstairs suddenly stopped working. Their electrician did not find any problems so I called an electrician to come out and check. He tightened up some wires and we hoped that was the end of it. However, a few days later they started flickering again. I immediately called Advantage and told them that this was a very serious problem because I had several members of my family arriving from out of town that day(which was a Saturday) sleeping in the finished basement. They said they could send someone out the next week. I told them I needed someone to take care of this immediately because I am pretty sure flickering lights are not safe and I did not feel comfortable having children sleeping in the basement with this going on. They declined to send an electrician. I called Lynn Electric to come out and find the problem. Within 30 minutes they found several problems. They checked the breaker box and discovered that the AC technician from Advantage had installed the wrong breaker for our unit (2 smaller breakers instead of 1 big one). He had broken a breaker in the process which was just left in the box broken. And he changed our AC unit from 110 to 220 without checking to see if anything else was on the circuit he was increasing - which was why my household items were and quot;friedand quot; from the outlet in the living room. This was not the end of our troubles though. We called a city inspector since we really did not feel very safe with the worked performed at this point and found out that they never applied for a permit - which was required - for them to do this job. They cut a roof truss to squeeze the unit in the attic - which was not what they were supposed to do. And they should have had an electrician come in from the beginning to make the changes to our breaker box since their technician was NOT qualified to be performing that type of work. Through this entire process my husband and I had called dozens of times asking for Randy, the CEO. We were not able to speak with Randy even one time after his initial estimate. We were always told he was out of the office or busy but he would call us back as soon as he could. Due to the ongoing problems and the severity of the problems we really felt Randy should know what was going on. We were not even sure if he had ever been informed of the situation and we thought it was really important that he find out. After weeks of phone calls and no response from Randy I looked up their website and found his email address and sent him a long email detailing the events from the beginnning. The response I received led me to believe that he was not getting the full story from Marci - who is generally the one that took our calls. When we called and explained to her what was going on she first asked how we got Randy's name and asked why we wanted to talk to him. Then with each new problem she either acted like she had no clue who we were or worse yet - she acted like we were somehow lying to her! It was VERY insulting.
Advantage Heating and AC had to end up pulling all of the licenses they should have pulled in the first place.
They had to hire a structual engineer to evaluate the damage done to our roof truss.
They had to hire a carpenter to repair the damage to the roof truss.
They had to have their electrician come out and complete the electrical work correctly since it involved running a dedicated line to our new unit and moving around breakers in our breaker box.
Then they had to replace my household items that were and quot;friedand quot; from the outlet that they accidentally converted to 220 instead of 110.
And they had to pay for my electrician that found the problems with the electrical.
Throughout all of this I was pregnant and having complications and the last thing we needed was this very, very stressful situation going on. I have never had a worse experience with a company performing work for me. They did end up repairing the damages but I will never forget how miserable they made us feel even though they are the ones that did not complete the job as specified from the beginning. We felt that we did everything we could as responsible customers - always calling as soon as a problem presented itself and always asking them to take care of it first. We really ended up wondering what we did to these people to deserve such a terrible time and to have this drag on and on when we just wanted it to be over.
And now we wonder what we will do if we ever have problems with this unit or anything else stemming from its installation. We will NOT be calling Advantage Heating and AC. Ever.
We first called Advantage Heating and AC on May 20th, 2012 and this was not resolved until September 25th, 2012.

Excellent I have use them in the past. They are on time, friendly and knowledgeable.

I highly recommend them. The service man was prompt. I have a very old unit and I thought I was going to have to buy a new one but he was able to fix this one. The overall experience was excellent. The price seemed reasonable. I would use this company again.

Their prices were very reasonable, and they billed me which was nice. Their work was excellent and they showed up when they said they would.

They were good and we got a good deal from them. They didn't really come right out and say; that's why we got the price that we did. They saw the marine sticker on our car since my husband was in Vietnam. So, the technician changed the price for us. They don't advertise that and I don't know if they do that to everybody. We told him that we didn't have a lot of money. I have breathing problems and we needed a dependable air conditioner and heating system. So, we asked the technician what kind of deal he would give us if we bought both the systems from him. However, we got a real good deal. We spent about $3000 for the new systems. We don't have a big house and it's only 900 square feet. We got a real nice and big unit. It raised the cost of the gas and the cost of the electricity. However, we save $20 to $30 a month on every bill. We keep the thermostat set the same way as we did before. We also ended up getting a free program. I feel better with the way that we are now with our age. The two items that we got are big ticket items and we don't have to find another system while we exist. That's what we are trying to do now. We are trying to get things fixed up. The price what they told us and what they charged was a little bit different. That was because when they removed the old furnace, the people that put in the furnace before hadn't done the right thing. So, I think there was a difference of about $100 in the price. However, we didn't feel like they were price gouging us. We didn't feel like they took advantage of us because of our old age. They were upfront with us. They came in and cleaned up everything. They scrubbed the floor in the front and vacuumed it as well. They took away all the trash. When I had my own house, there were other companies who would take their trash and put it with your trash. However, Advantage Heating and Air Conditioning took away everything and cleaned up after themselves. They were very good about wearing their little booties so that they didn't bring in junk. If they said that they were going to be there at a particular time, they were there. They were very considerate of the fact that it was a very warm day and they kept the amount of time that we were down without the system to minimum. It was in the morning time and so, it wasn't so hard for me to breathe. Their punctuality was good. We are both not working and so, we asked them if they wanted to start early in the day. It was during a really hot time. We asked them if they wanted to start at 6:30 in the morning when there was daylight. So, the technician said that he didn't care. They were very respectful. We would use their services in the future too. We tell people about them.