JOSPEH T BERRENA MECH INC

This information is written as honestly and accurately as I can remember.  All opinions are mine.  The story is true, the names of
the innocent have been replaced.
On Monday, February 4th, 2013, I called Joseph T Berrena Mechanicals, Inc. to work on a very specialized machine.  It is a MultiMatic Mercury 45 Dry Cleaning Unit with a Keal-Rite Chiller attached.  We own and operate a laundry and dry cleaning business in Huntingdon, PA.  The problem we were having was that the machine would not complete a cycle due to low R-22 Freon levels.  Berrena sent a technician to work on the system, he arrived promptly.  I asked if he had any experience with dry cleaning machinery.  He said that he had been working on a machine in State College, but had never seen our type of machine.
I explained the problem we were having and told the tech that we only wanted a shot of Freon, a pound or two would correct the
issue.  I went further to explain that everyone that works on the machine tries to adjust to what they believe to be the correct settings.  I told him directly, do not play with the adjustments, just add Freon.  I walked away to take care of another
issue.  While I was gone, the owner, my father, spoke to the tech telling him the same thing, ?All we need is a shot of
Freon, but no adjustments.?
Upon my return, I noted the tech was making adjustments and tapping/banging on several valves on the unit.  I told him to stop and asked him why he was hitting the machine.  He stated the valves must be stuck or something, to make it fail the way it was failing.  I told him to just put in the Freon and it would work.  It had been working for three years; it did not need to be adjusted.  I asked him point blank, if your car ran out of gas would you replace the engine?  He jokingly stated, ?No, I would replace the
spark plugs and then the transmission.?
The tech proceeded to get the Freon.  He then added Freon to the unit.  I told him several times that we only needed one to two pounds.  He added five pounds.  So, now the unit failed for another reason.  It was overcharged.  I walked away for a couple minutes and when I got back to the room, you could not see anything.  The tech had released Freon. He had released enough Freon to cause you not to be able to see the one side of the machine.  I asked him why he had done a release and he said it wasn?t a big deal.  I asked him if he was going to give us a refund and asked how much Freon cost.  He laughed and said about $35.00 per pound.  At this point, he decided that the machine was over charged and decided to remove some Freon.  He only removed one pound, billed us for four pounds, charged us for 1.5 hours of labor at $69.00 per hour and a $20.00 truck charge, plus tax.
On his Service Order, under Service Performed section, he wrote, ?got unit working properly!? and left.  I had to call the company back within the half hour to report that it was still failing.
The next day, February 5th, the same tech returned with another Guru tech, Guru is what Tech1 called him.  I told him the machine was still failing and was overcharged with Freon.  I complained that Tech1 removed one pound of Freon, but did not give us credit for the pound. We lost another $35.00 for the removed pound plus the Freon he bleed off the previous day.  The first thing, the very first thing, the Guru Tech did was to start adjusting the chilled water flow through unit.  I asked him why he
was adjusting the flow valve, something all of the techs did first thing when they look at this unit; he stated that the heat transfer unit had to be clogged.  I told him that we used a closed loop cooling system and the probability of a clog was very, very low.
I reminded the Guru tech that we use an expensive coolant mixture to keep the unit cool during the drying cycle and that it was at the correct levels.  I had to leave for a minute and returned.  When I walked around the corner of the machine, the Guru tech was adding water to our ?Closed Loop? cooling system.  I told him to stop and asked him why he was adding water to the system?s mixture of coolant.  He shrugged his shoulders and turned away.  Oh, he is very proud of his daughter.  She is a rocket scientist and he loves to talk about her while he was watching Tech1 and charging $69.00 an hour for his time.
So, while Tech1 and Guru Tech were surveying the unit.  They kept banging on valves saying that it must be this that or the other that was causing the problem.  Needless to say, they did not fix the problem, we still were overcharged with Freon, and the unit was still failing.   However, the pen being mightier than the sword, we were billed for 4.5 hours of labor, a truck charge, and no
refund for the extracted Freon.
After the techs left, I had to test the glycol to verify the concentration.  The concentration was no longer correct.  I had to add more glycol to the extra water Guru Tech had added to correct the concentration.  I would have no idea why he added the water,
but the glycol is not cheap and this just added more cost to this costly endeavor.
We received a bill in the mail the very next day, so I was on the phone with the account manager complaining about the charges.  After speaking with her, she had no authority to change anything, I placed another service call.  The unit still was not operating
properly.  She told me that Paul the office manager would call me that day and speak with me about the bill.  Paul never called.
We limped along with a failing dry cleaning unit until February 11th when a third tech came to work on the system.  This Tech3 had been at our business in the past.  He had put two pounds of Freon in the unit about three years prior to this service call.  I went through the whole story with him, telling him all of the problems the other two techs had had.  I showed him the valves they were hitting and the areas they felt were problematic.
Now don?t get me wrong.  Tech1 was very personable and seemed to very knowledgeable.  He was just not familiar with our unit.  He tried very hard to fix our problems.  He just didn?t have the knowledge for the MultiMatic, hence we should not have been charged for his training.  At least not all eight hours that Berrena charged us.  After all, he didn?t fix the problem.
 So, Tech3 went to work.  The first half an hour he was there he had to adjust and recalibrate the system back to where it was before Tech1 and Guru Tech worked on it.  Tech3 decided the heat transfer had to be blocked.  So, he decided to take it apart to check it.  He was about to loosen a pipe fitting with pliers.  I asked him to use pipe wrenches to avoid scoring the pipes.  I got him
two wrenches, which he adjusted and started to loosen the fittings.  While attempting to loosen the fittings he slipped and hit a small copper tube used to show the pressure of the Freon.  Needless to say, a stream of Freon leaked out filling the room, once again, with Freon.  He quickly shut the valves and turned off the leak.  He got equipment to repair the broken tube and he repaired it.  After the repair, Tech3 took the heat transfer unit apart and found there was no blockage and it was fairly clean for its age. 
He put the transfer back together and looked for other problems.  He found a Filter Dryer to be clogged and the unit was overcharged.  He replaced the filter and removed Freon from the unit.  I asked if we would get a credit for the removed Freon.  He said, ?I didn?t think to weight it, so I have no way of knowing how much I removed.?  We got no credit.  We did get billed for 1.5