Five Star Air Conditioning And Heating

Five Star came out on 5/18/2012 for a service call ($75) through our home warranty company, Home Warranty of America (HWA). The downstairs unit was blowing ambient air and the outside unit was not on. The tech said the fan motor looked burned and a capacitor was bad. He asked about power surges and I mentioned there were storms in the area 1-2 week prior but we hadn't noticed any damage. The tech contact HWA. HWA blamed the problem on the theoretical electric surger and declined the claim. HWA informed us we could use any provider we liked since they wouldn't cover the claim. Five Star had been good up until then so we stayed with them. Five Star replaced the capacitor and fan motor for $385 on 5/19/2012, a Saturday. I was impressed that they did the work on a Saturday. They didn't get to me until about 6pm but there seemed to be no upcharge. The system also worked fine until yesterday, 6/30/2012, when it started blowing ambient air again. Five Star had a 1 year warranty so my wife called them. The tech (the same one that was here in May) said the office was closed and he was the on-call guy. He said he would have to verify they had done the work then call back. He didn't call back as he said so my wife called him. He asked for the invoice numbers and service dates for the previous work. She provided the info and he agreed to come out. When he got here he said the outside breaker was flipped. He turned it on, came inside, held his hand up to a vent and said it was getting cold. He left without a charge. I'm not sure if the air ever really did get cold for any period of time but by 10pm it was 81 degrees inside and blowing ambient air again. This morning I opened up the outside unit and found a blown hard-start capacitor that appeared almost new. The run capacitor appeared older and tested fine with my multi-meter. I also looked at the fan motor. It is does not look like a new unit on the outside. Maybe I'm just looking at the housing and they replaced the internal parts. It looks to me as though the unit is failing and Five Star added, not replaced, a capacitor to help kick-start it. The band-aid fell off yesterday and left me holding the bag. I could call Five Star back but I don't trust them. I think they signed-on w/ HWA for the business then scam the consumers by blaming the issue on something they know is not covered (electric surge) so they can charge their full price rather than accepting HWA"s third party payor discount rate. I've recontacted HWA and been referred to another provider, TC Heating and Air Conditioning. Unfortunately, I was initially referred to TC way back in May. TC declined my job b/c their schedule was full. Essentially, they also didn't want to take work through HWA when they could fill their schedule w/ cash paying customers. I don't blame them but they need to terminate their HWA contract.