Complaint Review: First Texas Homes

My wife and I built a home with First Texas that we closed on 3/2007. Right off the bat we had issues with the AC units and had to place various warranty requests. They replaced parts and filled the units up with freon. Fortunately the heating over the winter appeared to be working just fine. Beginning this summer 6/2008 the problems began again with the upstairs unit not cooling.

Again I filed a warranty request which led to 4 visits over the course of 1 month +. Everytime taking about a week for the service guys to come out. Not very nice when the upstairs rooms are baking hot and that is where the kids sleep. Finally in mid July during the 4th visit and an honest AC rep the problems appeared to be identified and resolved. It basically came down to three things - a leak in the furnace coils in the attic, a leak in the outside AC unit due to poor welding from a previous Warranty visit, and the units being misconfigured with the 5 ton unit being connected to the 4 ton furnace (causing the coils to freeze and not cool) and the 4 ton AC unit being connected to the 5 ton furnace.

Not only were the problems with the hot house annoying, but over the course of the last month+ that it took to get the problem corrected the outside unit ran constantly and as a result my utility bill went through the roof. I faxed the warranty service folks bills dating back 7 months and offered to show them bills all the way back to the time that I moved in - the bills basically showed an average KW/month usage between 1000-1200. My last months bill was 4000KW so you can imaging my surprise. Even after I called the electric company they were surprised. I checked the meter myself and they had not only read it right, but it showed that this coming months bill will be just as high if not higher.

I asked First Texas to help me cover some of this expense since had they correctly configured the units I never would have had any of these issues. After calling their reps several times and not receiving a response I received a letter on 7/23 from the VP / of the Warranty service indicating that they would not be responsible for electrical usage due to AC problems. This doesn't seem very fair considering that none of this was a result of any of my doing. I have since reported complaints with the BBB, complaints.com and now ripoffreport.com.

Hopefully First Texas will do the right thing, otherwise I will continue to pursue with a lawyer and small claims court if necessary. The primary reason for this post is to get reimbursed but the second is as a WARNING to other buyers. Buyer Beware - if a company has a home warranty process they should stand by their product and eat up the cost if they provided poor service or workmanship.

Michael
Frisco, Texas
U.S.A.