Griffith Energy Services Inc

Writing about their service under the SMO Energy Brand. Horrible time getting a delivery called on a Thursday and kept getting put off in the middle of a cold snap. No one could give me a date and still a week later without oil. And I'm an automatic delivery customer of over a decade. I'll be switching companies ASAP.

Have been a customer for 20+ years. Service has gone down significantly. Technical service increasingly uneven - some technicians are great, some have no clue. Delivery services awful. Scheduled for automatic delivery but have run out of oil on multiple occasions and twice now told driver couldn't access property, despite a gate with a sign on it that says "open, please come in". No phone call, no notification, no apology.

First request I said had to be after 12 noon. Tech showed up at 9:50 when I was not home. Said he would be back but never returned. Another time service scheduled between 2 and 4. At 4 was told an hour. At 5 was told 6:30. Never heard from anyone that day. Requested to speak to a manager. Said he would call me. Still waiting. An by the way I have a gold (the best) service contract on the oil furnace.

On 2014, I have installed a heat pump with Griffith. On 2015, the unit no longer produce cool air in the near summer. So I called Griffith and a technician found that there was no more refrigerant. I told them that I just got the unit installed one year, but they still charged me for the refrigerant refill. On 2016, the unit was out of refrigerant again, but I found out it was a dirty Schrader valve at one of the service port was leaking (Isn't it supposed to be checked for leak when the refrigerant gets filled afterward as a standard procedure?). The valve was changed and it lasted until year 2020 then the compressor gave out. This time I did a ton of research before I called Griffith again and they finally replaced the compressor. After about a week, the unit does not produce cool air again. I found out that the unit Low Pressure Switch was activated and the brazing of the compressor was not done properly which caused the leak. I requested service with Griffith again. The technician brazed the compressor again. They also charges me for refill of the refrigerant that was leaked. (Do you believe that when it was their fault that it was leaked?) As I watched, I noticed that the Nitrogen Pressure Test was not done. When I requested a pressure test with Nitrogen, the technician only did a vacuum on the system and without the proper industry standard. Guess what? On 2021, the refrigerant had leaked again and it was leaked at the same place where it was brazed on the compressor connections. You can see the refrigerant oil all over it. (Can you count how many times the refrigerant gets filled and leaked so far?)

On 2014, I have installed a heat pump with Griffith. On 2015, the unit no longer produce cool air in the near summer. So I called Griffith and a technician found that there was no more refrigerant. I told them that I just got the unit installed one year, but they still charged me for the refrigerant refill. On 2016, the unit was out of refrigerant again, but I found out it was a dirty Schrader valve at one of the service port was leaking (Isn't it supposed to be checked for leak when the refrigerant gets filled afterward as a standard procedure?). The valve was changed and it lasted until year 2020 then the compressor gave out. This time I did a ton of research before I called Griffith again and they finally replaced the compressor. After about a week, the unit does not produce cool air again. I found out that the unit Low Pressure Switch was activated and the brazing of the compressor was not done properly which caused the leak. I requested service with Griffith again. The technician brazed the compressor again. They also charges me for refill of the refrigerant that was leaked. (Do you believe that when it was their fault that it was leaked?) As I watched, I noticed that the Nitrogen Pressure Test was not done. When I requested a pressure test with Nitrogen, the technician only did a vacuum on the system and without the proper industry standard. Guess what? On 2021, the refrigerant had leaked again and it was leaked at the same place where it was brazed on the compressor connections. You can see the refrigerant oil all over it. (Can you count how many times the refrigerant gets filled and leaked so far?)

In this instance the technician was prompt and performed the annual servicing as I would expect. He took time before leaving to explain that he had to perform extra cleaning on the air conditioner coils as they were quite dirty. For the two previous years I have suspected that the tech did not perform the servicing of the air conditioner as was required.

Only good thing I can say was the price was good ( I assume because the company is huge ) and the original salesman was good. Other than that, the service was terrible. The workers left trash all over the work area and the street. There was sawdust and wire stripping pieces in my dining room and a generally unprofessional look to the wiring in the install. I never got a call asking if things were working or any info from them about a warranty. They were supposed to call me back about the AC and even after calling them I never got a call back. Would not recommend.

If you have regular 20th century thermostat, by all means, use Griffith Energy. If you own a Nest thermostat, AVOID Griffith Energy. I don’t fault the technicians so much as I fault Griffith itself for not training these guys. As for why I’m giving them 1 star…. I have two Nest thermostats in my house, upstairs and downstairs, both are using the Trane XR-13. Upstairs, cold air stopped blowing, so I called Griffith. Their tech, Matt determined that the issue was a blown capacitor on the condensing unit which is fairly common. He also noticed that the relays weren’t making the best contact and I said “you’re the expert”. After working for must’ve been an hour, he had power to the fan but my Nest thermostat indicated that there was no power to the Rh terminal. He then said “show me your attic” and proceeded to look at the air handler. He said that he somehow popped the breaker to it and it needed to be reset which he did but my Nest, when looking at the wiring diagram indicated that there still was no power to the Rh terminal. While I was pointing that out to Matt, he said “I’m seeing it up here so I don’t see what the problem is”. He then checked the voltage at the red wire at the Nest base and sure enough it read 27 volts before entering the Nest base. So to further troubleshoot the issue, I brought the Nest unit downstairs and sure enough it worked fine. Upon being plugged in downstairs the unit’s error message indicating no power to Rh went away. Nest thermostat is ruled out as a problem. it worked fine put onto a base where the Rh line was working. Matt, apparently in over his head, called his cohort, a smarmy tech named Michael who then came out and quickly diagnosed the issue as a bad Nest base. He pointed out “We hate Nests, they do this all the time”. I already knew what kind of tech he was, uneducated on modern technology and condescending on top of that. I’ve been a software engineer, a LINUX one, for 20+ years and, I have embedded linux experience to boot. I retrieved my old Trane dumb thermostat and Michael quickly did a **** poor job of just screwing the two small screws right into the drywall. Really frustrated by this time, and just to get rid of these two techs, I just paid the bill. $119.00 “Response fee” and $248.00 for a capacitor replacement which is a ghastly markup but hey, they have to make money, so that’s understandable too. No mention of replacement for the relay. I took the “defective” nest base unit downstairs, plugged in the wires downstairs he was right, the base unit was blown. Recap. Upstairs unit was blowing cold air and the Nest thermostat was working fine. Capacitor was replaced which should have solved the problem, again the thermostat was NEVER the issue. Tech decides to monkey with the relay and blows a breaker in the air handler and, WOW! coincidence of coincidences, your Nest base unit is bad now. I called Nest support and they said this thing happens all the time when HVAC guys who know nothing about how a Nest works, and they do their monkey business of hot wiring circuits will oftentimes blow out base units because, contrary to how they appear, base unit are NOT just simple terminal blocks. They have have soldered fuses wired in to protect the actual Nest itself from just the very shenanigans that Matt was performing. Now I want to call another HVAC company just to verify that everything is working ok. So while my upstairs air conditioning was fixed, it came at the cost of me having to replace my Nest base unit, so Griffith gets one star for fixing my problem. My advice is to completely ** AVOID ** Griffith if you have a Nest because they are completely incapable of understanding the technology at this point. Griffith needs to do a better job of training their techs on the latest technology ( and Matt gave it his best shot with his limited knowledge ) and in the case of customer service, educating smarmy techs like Michael.

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They have kept my furnace in working condition for 8 years. Every technician that they send it always knowledgeable and courteous.

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Caps were not put back on after last visit in 3/15 - Griffith refused to take any ownership of the gaffe - water got into our system and caused us to have to make a service call once we realized our Furnace/Boiler would not ignite. If they had even agreed to split the cost of the Service call 50/50, I would still be with them. (Roughly $100) A very callous response to a longtime customer - moving on now...

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I used Griffith Energy Services for at least ten years to deliver oil and service my two oil furnances. The company was always courteous,efficient, and responsive. The prices were reasonable. I had two heat pumps installed recently, so I no longer need Griffith's services, but I do not hesitate to recommend the company to others.

I like them very much. I have a Gold Service with them but for any other service with them I pay extra. They have a service part and an oil part. Although it took a week for them to fix my issue because they were getting the right board to put in they provided me customer service. They have night people who come out to work in the evenings, so their shift does not start until afternoon and they break up till 9 o'clock so that it would benefit people that are working so that they can come in and look at the furnace or whatever in the evenings if you can't during the day. This is something that a lot of times providers cannot do. They were able to eventually fix the problem and my heating system is working now. In the midst of all that cold weather I was running a palette stove and trying to get my furnace fixed. They came through for me although it took a week and that was because they had to order the part. I was really happy with that and the service they provided me.

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It is going fine so far, I have no complaints.

I have a service contract with them. They are professional. They are available twenty-four hours a day.

I called them regarding the issue and they were out in about two hours. They had to pick up a part and corrected the issue quickly. I highly recommend them.

So far, so good. We shopped around for heating oil delivery for our newly-purchased home. Griffith had the best over-all price, including a yearly service plan. When I called to sign up after shopping around, they sent out the delivery truck the next day to fill up our empty tank. After the weekend, they sent out the serviceman to do a yearly tune-up of the furnace. I have been very pleased with the service so far!!

I called to have someone come out to troubleshoot why my heat pump did not seem to be starting when it should. The service was scheduled ahead of time and I had no problems with the timeliness of the visit or the technician. Unfortunately I don't remember the gentleman's name but he was very professional. He did not seem to want me watching but I normally like to watch while someone does work for me like this. The tech quickly determined that the heat pump did work and appeared to work correctly however, there was an element in the control circuitry of our Ruud Heat Pump that needed replaced. He explained that apparently our thermostat sends a signal to the hear pump first every time the home needs heat. When the heat pump gets the signal it has a control logic that is supposed to determine whether it can fulfill the demand. If it can't it is supposed to pass the signal to the oil furnace to start. It was the logic circuit that had failed. He then asked whether our thermostat had an emergency heat switch. I said it did. He then explained that if we turn on the emergency heat the oil furnace would fulfill every demand for heat (less economical). If, however, we left it off the signal would go to the heat pump. But if it could not start (i.e. outside temp. too low and lt;42 deg. F) then no signal would be sent to the furnace and while our system fan would run, we would get no heat unless we realized what was happening and manually turned on the emergency heat switch (potentially a big waste of electricity with the fan circulating unheated air). So at leatst we could still optionally use the heat pump. The tech did not have the required part and left the premises to order it. Later Griffith called back and said that the needed part was no longer made for that heat pump. They said that if we did not want to purchase a new heat pump that another option was to put in a new more expensive thermostat with an outside air sensor that only sent a start signal to heat pump when it could fulfill the demand. Otherwise the thermostat would start the oil furnace. He said that the upgrade would cost around $440.00 if we purchased their yearly service plan. I said that we did not have the money at the time (it was too near Christmas and we still had to pay the $119.00 just for the service call). He then wanted us to get some payment plan (but the interest charges were high credit card type rates) so we never had the work done. I may call them back or get someone from another company to look at it. For some reason I just don't trust the people at their office. The tech that came to the house and their oil service is fine though.

I used them in the past, but I'm switching over because I found a better deal on price. There was nothing that stood out about Griffith from anyone else, but I had no problems with them coming out or being on time.