TOTAL ENERGY CONCEPTS INC

From the very start John presented as a very knowledgeable, friendly, and experienced HVAC technician. They sold me on the "Ferrari of heating and cooling". The price they quoted was higher than the other quotes that we received, but not excessively. We chose them because of their experience and longevity in the field. As we started excavating our house, we tried coordinating our efforts with TEC to try and save on our overall excavating bill. They told us that they normally do their own excavating but we could do our own if we chose to. My contractor had never done a geothermal system before and was relying on their instructions(poor communication). Long story short, we ended up with a 5 foot deep 80'x50' pit instead of a trenched line to lay the loops. Functional it works just the same, but fiscally it was an extra $2500. Good bye savings. We chalked it up to custom building pains. That was the first of many communication issues. Over the course of installation, I had to referee several disagreements between my contractor and TEC. At that time I was critical of my contractor, as it was his responsibility to manage the subs and work out the problems. It got to the point where I just put myself in the middle for the remainder of the project. At this point, I found them argumentative but fairly timely in their work (that has not been the case long term). Given my inexperience with geothermal, I gave them the benefit of the doubt. After completion and living in the house we ran into a few problems with the system. One was a defective board that was warrantied by ClimateMaster. The others were installation and calibration errors that needed to be corrected. I wasn't thrilled with the problems as they always seemed to manifest themselves when we needed the system the most. At one point we had to use our wood stove for heat for about a week. Each time we called for service, we could never get in contact with TEC. I had three phone numbers for TEC and would call each and get no response. I would leave messages that were never returned. Emails would go unanswered. They would text me, and then never respond to my returned texts. It was almost as if they were willfully ignoring my attempts to contact them. In the cases they did respond it was usually argumentative and as if I were a general pain in their a**. They had their money and we were a nuisance. I expressed my displeasure with them thinking it might generate some increase in their responsiveness, but that did not happen. I have never dealt with a more unresponsive and argumentative service provider. The last example of how poor this company is to work with has been a 8 month saga that would seem to be simple to resolve. In the spring of this year (2016) I noticed that we had water leaking in our crawl space. I found that it was a small leak coming from a brass ball valve that is plumbed off our geo-heat pump. I put a bucket under the leak and spent weeks trying to contact TEC to get this addressed. Over the course of several months I was continuously strung along. They told me several times that someone would be out to get it fixed. If I ever received reasons for why they didn't show up, it was crap excuses. Most of the time they wouldn't even respond. So frustrating. I persisted trying to get them to service their installed system because this was their work they needed to stand behind. This was the "Ferrari" system they sold me on. It certainly hasn't been "Ferrari" service. Far from it. It is December and I still have a small leak. We love the geothermal heat pump. It is ultra efficient, ultra comfortable and makes the biggest difference when conditions are at their worst. We had some system shake down issues that, with most service providers would have been an annoyance at best. With TEC it has become much more than that. I have wasted enormous amounts of time dealing with this terrible service provider. Especially when I consider the premium nature of the product and the amount of money it cost, it mystifies me how they can be so bad at communication and service. I would never recommend this company to anyone in the future.

Although their bid seemed high, our interest in high quality and the laudatory comments from past customers made them an obvious choice for us. We are not disappointed. The company consistently demonstrated a concern for quality in the installation process. They were also very accommodating to our concerns and preferences and willing to make modifications to meet these concerns. Their attention to detail at times went beyond our expectations. Our system is new, seems to meet our expectations, but its real test will be its efficiency and durability over the years. However, based on their record with previous geothermal heat system customers, we expect little trouble. They are very nice people to deal with. Geothermal heat systems are reputed to provide heat at one-fifth the cost of conventional electric heat systems. We are excited by the prospect.