Universal Mechanical Service Co Inc

Technician (John) arrived absolutely promptly at the appointed time of 8am. He efficiently conducted inspection and cleaning of the furnace and AC. He had the flexibility to add on the inspection and then repair of our non-working gas fireplace insert.

I do not trust this company any more and will not use them again. In my opinion, you should only use UMS if you want to overpay for maintenance and then pay double what other providers would charge you for any replacement parts that your furnace needs. I had been using them for annual maintenance for 3 years. Their maintenance prices were always a bit higher than their competitors, but I thought my residential furnace and AC unit were being well taken care of. Recently, I paid for annual maintenance to be performed ($250) and they said everything looked ok. Then a couple of months later a major part of my furnace showed early signs of failure. I called UMS back (they charged me again, $175 for the diagnostic) and told me that the part was failing and needed to be replaced. They then quoted me a price of almost $1100 for the replacement part!! To add insult to injury, they also told me that the part was not easy to obtain as there was only one left on the east-side of WA (which they had already put a "will call" hold on). Basically, trying to scare me into thinking that they were the only company who could get the part quickly. Thankfully, I called their bluff and sent them away without agreeing to the price they quoted. I then called around 3 other highly-rated companies in the area and I quickly learned that the part was not only easy to obtain, most of the companies had close to 30 of the parts on hand! But most importantly, the price of replacement part was $465 and not the $1100 that UMS quoted me. I used one of the other companies to replace the part and I saved myself from unnecessarily paying tons of money to UMS. When the tech from the other company looked at our furnace he said "It looks like you are overdue for maintenance on this". He was shocked when I told him that UMS had performed a $250 maintenance on the furnace and a $175 diagnostic on the furnance in the last couple of months. He said it did not look like maintenance had been properly performed. Too many red flags - my advice is to avoid UMS.

Very friendly and helpful staff from the answering service, on call technician, scheduler and the technician who responded. I was very pleased.

It was a good experience. He was early. I would use them again in the future.

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I was satisfied with their service.

Peter was all around really good, and had been with company about 20 years!

They were responsive and were clear on the diagnostic fee they will charge to ***** the problem. They came out and told us that the circuit board is burnt and told us that this will need to be replaced. The estimate for this work was astonishing. They wanted to charge $1200 to replace a circuit board. Since this cost was so high, we asked how much it would cost to replace the furnace since our furnace is pretty old. Without giving us any options or explaining anything, we got an email from them saying that it would cost $7100. This is when I have decided to replace the circuit board myself to have heat temporary while we shop around for a new furnace replacement. I took out the circuit board and noticed that there was no burn mark at all. Also, I have noticed that model number I am supposed to get was wrong from the assessment. Still trusting the diagnostic they have provided, I got a new circuit board and installed it myself. (This was extremely simple) The cost of the board was around $100 from amazon and I just to reconnect the wires in the same spot. The furnace still had problem afterwards and it was clear that circuit board was not the problem, especially when I didn't see the burnt mark on the old circuit board.. At this time 4 days went by without heat, so we decided to shop around for furnace and replace it. As we spoke to several other companies, it was very clear that the quote UMS provided was top of the line furnace, which we did not really need based on our gas bill. For what we need, it would cost around half of what they wanted us to get (We got variable two stage furnace with 80 percent efficiency. Based on our gas bill, it did not make sense to get anything higher in terms of efficiency when we calculated how may years it will take to recoup that difference). I have spoke to the manager and asked for a refund as their diagnostic was just plain wrong. This is when the manager said that they are not going to provide the refund as there is no proof that I have installed it correctly. He did offer to come out and take a look at it, but there was no point to it as I was replacing the whole furnace through other company. Overall feeling we have is that this company tries to take an advantage of customer because they knew we were in a desperation situation. This explains extraordinary high cost of replacing a circuit board as well as quoting an expensive furnace with the promise of short install date without providing any other options nor looking into what our true needs are.

I have used this company 2 times before and was impressed enough with their service to call them again to do a furnace check-up prior to the heating season. I do not have an air conditioner. I called for an appointment and was told the service would cost $249. This seemed to be about twice what I had paid before, but since it had been 4 years since my last check-up, I figured prices might have changed, and they did seem to do a good job, so I agreed. I was given a window of between 8:30-9:30 AM when the technician was to arrive. When he was still not here a 9:45, I called to check if there had been a mistake. Was told he was late leaving the office. He arrived around 10 AM. He seemed a pleasant enough young man. I showed him the print-out that a previous mechanic from Universal had given me about my furnace. Blake told me he knew nothing of this and had no equipment to do it. He then proceeded to look at my furnace for about 20 minutes, total. He declared everything was fine, and clean, including the electronic filters. I noted to him that the furnace had not been checked for almost 4 years and that I had last cleaned the filters 4 months ago. He continued to state that everything was ok. I asked about the functioning and was told the flame was blue so the furnace was working. (Of course I knew this already!) Blake then proceeded up to his vehicle for another 20 minutes after which he arrived at my door with the bill that at most would have taken him 3 minutes to write up. I paid them the $272.90, including tax. After reflecting on this whole process a bit, I decided to call the Service Manager at Universal to inquire as to the usual procedures for a service call. I left a voice message, but got no answer.

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I gave Universal Mechanical an "A" on all the above.  Enough said.

Even though the furnace was a make they do not carry, he diagnosed the problem right away as a burnt out draft inducer motor. He called a couple parts suppliers and found the part less than 15 minutes from my home. He apologized for it being so expensive a part but within an hour he had it all together and running and even gave tips on how I could adjust the settings to be more efficient.
PS: I can't believe the other companies couldn't adjust schedules for someone without heat for a minimum of one week or the day before Thanksgiving!

vendor arrived on time. Did a good job adding the shut-off valve to the gas line.

very professional, did a great job.

I purchased an Angie's List coupon for an AC tune up for $60. I certainly don't feel I got a bargain or a lot for my $60. I got what I paid for: a basic tune up nothing more or less. The technician was pretty quick and I was hoping to get a professional opinion on the condition of our AC unit, should it be replaced, why it didn't cool our upstairs. But, he just did the tune up and then left. A panel was left open on the unit after he left and it definitely felt like a quick job and didn't leave me with a good "customer satisfaction" feeling. But, nothing went wrong with the AC unit and the work done seemed to be fine.

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He cleaned the furnace, vents, dryer vent and under the refrigerator.

All went well

Well