Cox Heating & Air Conditioning & Mr. Zachary Moskowitz Cox Air, Double Charged For Annual Service ($178.00) & Upon Dispute They Turned Me Over To A Collection Agency Clearwater, Florida
I am extremely disappointed in Cox Heating and Air Conditioning and will no longer use their services for our families two (2) Pinellas County residences. I will also not recommend their service to any family, friends or business acquaintances. As with any business, the customer should always be given the benefit when there is a doubt. As such, it is apparently clear that Cox's business does not follow this practice. Over the years, my family has been loyal customers of Cox Heating and Air as we have recently purchased two (2) new HVAC systems from their company.
Furthermore, when their company runs annual or semi annual promotion service specials, we have called on them to maintenance our units. Unfortunately, in this instance, their service repairman could not access an area where he needed to work due to his size and informed me that he needed to send someone else back out just to finish the job. After the serviceman left, I never did hear back from Cox as to the reschedule date so after two (2) weeks I followed up with Cox to find out the status.
Cox promptly sent another service tech back out to complete the job, which took roughly 10 minutes time, however a few weeks later Cox Heating and Air sent me another bill for $89.00. This was after the second serviceman stated "it was already paid for" before leaving my house. I attempted to contact their bookkeeper about the invoice and informed her that I was confused as we had already paid for both service invoices on our two serviced residences and she advised that she would look into it and get back with me. She never did and instead I was turned over to a Collection company.
Before paying the collection agency, I attempted to contact the owner of Cox Heating and Air to see if he would help me resolve the dispute. He stated the book keeper was no longer working there and that he would look into it and call me back. A week later I received a call from the owner demanding payment.
This dispute is not worth my time nor is it worth taking a credit hit over so I tendered a payment in the amount of $89.00 directly to Cox's owner with a Certified letter basically stating the issues outlined above. To date, I have not received a response from Cox and I note that my check was cashed the same day it was received. My only guess is that the economy must really be impacting their business.
Cox's reputation has gone down hill very fast in my opinion as a simple service call or what I refer too as an oil change on our new units has been nothing but a burden. I sure hope the $89.00 was worth it!
For those of you out there searching for Florida Air Conditioning Service/Installation Company maybe this will serve as a warning.
1 Updates & Rebuttals
ZM
Clearwater,Florida,
United States of America
Rebuttal to Cox Heating & Air Conditioning & Mr. Zachary Moskowitz Cox Air, Double Charged For Annual Service ($178.00) & Upon Dispute They Turned Me Over To A Collection Agency Clearwater, Florida
#2REBUTTAL Owner of company
Tue, March 13, 2012
Cox Heating and Air Conditioning, Inc has been in business for 54 years with an impeccable reputation. Cox is not perfect in any respect and we do make mistakes and we also take care of our mistakes in a professional manor.
It is unfortunate that Mr.Tutwilers story is one sided and I hope to clear up any false representation of Cox's performance or the way we do business. The homeowner called and scheduled with the service department for a cooling inspection to be performed at his home. Cox performed the service as agreed upon and while the service technician was there Mr.Tutwiler brought up a non service related item that would not be covered under our service agreement to our technician about his air flow in the home. Being the company that goes above and beyond our service technician attempted to accommodate the home owners request but could not.
The service technician then informed the home owner that he would give this information to the installation manager and he would be in touch to go over some solutions for the problem. The installation manager made contact with Mr.Tutwiler and explained to him that this would be an additional charge and quoted him an exact price to perform the air balancing at his home. This was agreed upon and we performed the work and everything seemed to be fine.
I received a phone call from Mr.Tutwiler and he explained his concerns to me and I kindly asked him if I could call him back after I researched the issues.
It took me a day to gather all of the necessary information and I called Mr.Tutwiler the very next day and left him a message on his voice mail. Mr. Tutwiler then returned my phone call approximately 3 days later. I explained to
him all of the details and he at no point had any rebuttal nor questions. I did not demand the money from Mr.Tutwiler, in fact he stated that he would be sending me a check for the additional work that was performed above and beyond the cooling inspection and asked if I could contact the collection agency to have him removed. I kindly obliged and we moved on.
I understand in this economy that the consumer is concerned about every dollar. However, we as a company can not perform additional work at no charge to the consumer, especially when it is explained. It is unfortunate that we will lose Mr.Tutwilers business however it is not fair for him to miss represent the reputation, dependability and work ethic of Cox Heating and Air Conditioning, Inc.