Valley Heating & Cooling

It was Friday morning, one of the hottest days of the summer, and we woke up to an 80 degree house! I called other companies but none could come out before late afternoon. I contacted Valley Heating and Cooling and they told me one of their technicians would call me and let me know when they'd arrive. Ten minutes later a tech called, they arrived less than ten minutes after that - twenty minutes after I called. They quickly determined that the compressor capacitor had failed and replaced it in minutes. I couldn't have asked for better service. Parts were less than $40 and the service call was $109.

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Said they had no Idea and wanted to replace the dryer.  I called another company because those guys seemed like morons.  The next company came out and replaced the capacitor.  The capaictor is simple and easy for anyone to diagnose and replace.  These people are horrible.

My description of the problem:  Furnace not lighting.  Need heat.  February and below freezing temperature outside.
1.  The technician's diagnosis was wrong . . . said that I needed a Power ventor.  The problem was a malfunctioning Pressure Switch that cost $85.86.
2.  My wife received a phone call from the manager saying the Power ventor replacement charge would be $500+
3.  The company charged me $20 for a zone 1 Travel Charge.  From their office to my home - 6/10 six-tenths of one mile.

• Here is the good news.  I got a second opinion from Dave's Heating and Cooling Inc. in Chambersburg, PA.  He spent over an hour troubleshooting with me over the phone.  I purchased the Power ventor from APR Supply Co., in Chambersburg for $309.55 and installed it myself . . . easy installation, but the furnace still would not light.
• Valley Heating and Cooling would have me spend over $500 for a part that I did not need.  I spent $309.55 for nothing.
  
  I called Dave and he came from Chambersburg to Shippensburg - during a snow storm - and DID NOT EVEN CHARGE ME A PENNY.  Dave did a by-pass on the Pressure Switch and the furnace lit.  We had heat until I purchased a new switch.
• Did I mention that the Pressure Switch cost $85.86 ?
  
  I later spoke to the secretary at Valley Heating and Cooling requesting a refund of $110 for wrong diagnosis.  None given !

Still no heat as of today!

The system never worked well and quit completely a few weeks after every attempt (more than a dozen service calls) to fix it.
Customer service is terrible. The only person you are allowed to talk to is the secretary, or voice mail.  Calls are seldom returned.
Eventually I gave up and got another company (Climate Control from Fayetteville} to have a look.  They fixed the system with one service call.  The system has worked great since.

We have an oil furnace which began continuously shutting
down in December, the company that we get our oil from doesn't do furnace
servicing, so on advice from a neighbor, we called Valley Heating & Cooling
to come out and clean and service our furnace. 
Their technicians came out on December 19, 2012, cleaned the furnace,
replaced the filter and nozzles and noticed that the fuel pump wasn?t putting
out much oil, so they told us that they needed to replace it.  We had them go ahead and replace it, and they
said that everything was working just fine after that.  On the morning of the 21st, the furnace
stopped working again, so we called them back. 
Their technicians came back out and told us that now our blower motor
was dead, and we needed a new one.  While
they were out looking for a new motor for us, another set of Valley technicians
came to our house to start to disassemble everything so that they could put the
new motor right in when the other techs returned with it.  The second set of techs informed us that the
motor wasn?t the issue at all, that the new fuel pump that had been installed
the day before had seized up and was bad. 
They told us that they would have to order a new part, and couldn?t get
it until the 28th, 7 days later. 
7 days without heat didn?t seem reasonable to us with a 1 and ½ year old
in the house, and leaving space heaters running 24 hours a day to keep the pipes
from freezing would keep us from being able to leave the house to visit any
family for Christmas.  We found another
company that had the part on hand and said that they would be able to come out
and install it on the 24th for us, so we jumped at it.  We then tried to return the faulty fuel pump
to Valley for a refund, since their own technicians are the ones who diagnosed
it, and the receptionist told me that she would have to talk to the service
manager and the technician and would call me after that.  I called them back the next day, and they said
that since their technician had put the fuel pump back on the furnace after
diagnosing it as faulty, that having another company come out and remove the
bad pump voided any warranty that they provided and that they would not refund
us the money.  She informed me that the
service manager had told her to tell me that we had ?bought ourselves a bad
part? since we ?weren?t patient enough to wait for Valley to come out to
replace the part themselves on the 28th.?  I have never before dealt with a company unwilling
to make right for selling me a bad part. 
The neighbor who had recommended them was appalled and will no longer
use them for his yearly maintenance and cleaning, and several coworkers who had
been using them no longer will after seeing the mess that we had to go through.