Empire Heat And Cooling Refrigeration

THIS HAS BEEN THE WORST CONTRACTOR I'VE DEALT WITH IN MY ENTIRE LIFE. AVOID THEM LIKE THE PLAGUE. HE LIES, DOESN'T RETURN PHONE CALLS OR MESSAGES AND CURSES YOU OUT IF YOU TRY TO WORK WITH HIM ON RESOLVING PROBLEMS. My home warranty company, American Home Shield (AHS) assigned me this contractor. After practically begging him to show up for an appointment because it was hot outside and my A/C wasn't working he shows up all flustered up because he says he has been working until midnight every day of the week and he is tired. Looks at my A/C condenser and says everything here is connected wrong and there is no way this A/C condenser could possibly be working. I politely tell him that it works fine generally except sometimes it doesn't seem to turn on and I especially called him today because this is one of those times where it is not turning on. He disagrees with what I say and calls me a liar saying this A/C condenser unit doesn't work. Should have been my first clue. He opens the A/C and connects his pressure gauge. Tries to show me that the pressure is dropping but his instrument is showing that the pressure is stable. He gets flustered again because he was wrong. He starts disconnecting all the electrical wires from the A/C condenser. I ask him why he is disconnecting everything and he says that it is all wrong so I tell him again that the A/C condenser unit does work. He again gets flustered and tells me I'm lying and goes back to his car to get an electric tracer tool. It is such a mess in his car so of course he doesn't find his tracer tool. The mess should have been my next clue of what I am getting myself into. The third clue should have been that his car or his uniform doesn't have any logo of his company. He comes back from the car and says he can't find the tracer tool so he can't fix my A/C condenser unit today. I asked him why he disconnected all the wires since now I go from having intermittent air conditioning to having no air conditioning. He gets flustered again and says he has another job and he has to leave. He pulls out his pressure monitoring tool from my A/C letting a bunch of Freon out in the process and leaves. All the wires to my A/C condenser unit are left unconnected and the air condenser unit is not assembled back together and lying in pieces. He leaves. I now have no air conditioning and he doesn't care and just leaves leaving everything disassembled. I call him the next day asking if he can come back to fix the mess he made. He curses me out and hangs up on me saying he didn't realize I wanted my unit connected during this hot summer. Well, duh! Call him the next day checking up on when he will come back. He doesn't return my phone calls and his secretary says she doesn't understand A/C work so she can't really help me with anything. She apologizes. This continues for at least a few days. I feel I'm getting nowhere so I call the warranty company (AHS) and they say that based on the report that the technician from Empire submitted, a new a/c condenser has been ordered. Again, the company never informed me what equipment they will be installing nor asked what I want. I call Empire and the secretary can't seem to find out what equipment I'll be receiving or what they ordered. A few days go by and after numerous calls to AHS I find out that the Empire technician ordered the wrong size A/C condenser. I call the technician's office and the secretary has no clue. She tells me she can't talk to me and hangs up. I call her multiple times that day and the same story again. I call AHS and sort out the issue with the wrong size for the A/C condenser. AHS says they will correct the mistake and send the new A/C condenser. That happens on the same day and the A/C condenser is ready to be picked up by Empire. It has now been almost 2 weeks of me not having an air conditioner and it is the end of June so it is hot outside. I call Empire to schedule an install and find out that I would need to pay $1000 out of pocket. No one ever mentioned this in the 2 weeks I've been calling them. I ask them to tell me why am I paying $1000 out of pocket and the secretary says it is the upgrade cost. I asked her "what are we upgrading?" She said she didn't know and hung up on me. Called the home warranty company who said it was a charge to upgrade a pipe that Empire submitted which they do not cover. Called Empire again and scheduled an install date a few days ahead figuring I'd resolve the out-of-pocket charge by that time. Called Empire every day, multiple times a day asking to explain the out-of-pocket charge where the secretary said that she couldn't reach the technician and she didn't know what they were charging me $1000 for. Comes the day of the install. The out-of-pocket charge is still unresolved. I get a call from the tech from Empire that cursed me out the first time I talked to him a few weeks ago. He is nice this time and he explains that and a/c pipe needs to be upgraded to match the new A/C condenser unit. Ok, sounds reasonable and he is willing to cut the price by $200 if I pay cash. I agree. He is supposed to arrive at 12pm for the install that I've scheduled about 5 days ago and confirmed multiple times now with them. I take a day off from work to wait for the installer. It is now 12:30pm and no one arrived or called from Empire. I call the technician and he sounds flustered and says he is running late. At 1pm I call again because no one showed up. The technician says his van broke down and he can't bring the A/C condenser but he said he will keep me posted. I asked why he can't just rent a UHaul or Home Depot truck for $19/hour. No calls from Empire after that. I text his office around 2pm and ask to be updated on the status at which point I am told that the Empire technician had another job this morning that is far away from me which was simple where the customer was waiting for over 2 weeks for a part and the part arrived yesterday so he went to install it. Quickly figuring that probably no van broke down and that was just a lie I figured I'd call my home warranty company to check if he picked up the A/C condenser unit and they said that he had picked it up. But wait, how did he pick it up if his van is broken? So convinced that he lied to me I call him on it and he doesn't deny it but tells me that he works until midnight (12am) and he will definitely come around 10pm to install the A/C condenser unit. I wait for him wondering how anyone could possibly work on cutting and putting together pipes at 10-11pm at night where you can't see what you're doing. Needless to say after all that he never showed up that day. I call AHS and have them assign me someone else to do the repair because I am fed up with Empire. Now I have to start from the beginning again.