Complaint Review: Graham Heating and AC - Largo Florida

I am writing this as a Predatory Selling experience with Graham Heating and Air Conditioning (11701 Belcher Road, Largo, FL 33773). My Aunt who is 79 years old signed a Service contract with them a few weeks ago to have her AC system serviced twice a year. On 6/27/2014 a Service Tech came to her home to perform the Bi-Yearly maintenance.  Her system is a 14 year old Trane 2.5 Ton 12 Seer unit.

Here are the events that took place. The tech showed up approximately Noon on 6/27/2014, he began looking over the system and testing the Freon Load in the system. He began showing my aunt areas of concern, and told her the system was over 6lbs low on Freon. He stated the system holds 14lbs of Freon and she only had about 8lbs in the system. He proceeded to tell her that her Coil pack was leaking Freon and would need repair. After discussion with his Manager he said the repairs would cost close to $4000, he told my aunt that she could get a new system for $6764 (and this was taking into account a 20% discount for being a service customer, and he also said they wouldn’t charge tax). The system would have a 10 Year warranty on parts, a free 3 Year Service Contract and including the 3 Years she had already, she would have service for 6 years. At this point my aunt proceeded to call me, I spoke to the Tech and he explained all this to me. I live about 40 miles from my Aunt and couldn’t get down there at this immediate time to deal with this. I am not an AC guy so I listened to everything and at first it started to sound ok, but I was questioning (in my mind) why this was happening so fast. I told him ok, but I wanted to check with someone, so I called my son-in-law who works for an AC company local to me. My son-in-law told me if they were changing out everything (duct work, copper etc) this was a little high but not overly excessive. I called my Aunt back and the tech was still there, so I proceeded to question him on what exactly was being changed, the AC Unit (which would be a Carrier 2.5 Ton 13 Seer), the Air Handler and the Plenum Return unit, they would connect to the current duct work and copper. I told them ok, but still wanted to talk to my son-in-law. When I called my Aunt back that night she said she gave the Tech a deposit for $764 and before the tech left he told my Aunt he put 2lbs of Freon in, to keep the unit running, but he would be back on Monday to do the install. Now it was already later that evening but this sounded very suspicious to me at the speed they would get there and complete the install and the cost they were charging for the system.

I was able to talk to my son-in-law later and asked him to visit my aunt’s house with me and check out the unit, so Saturday morning we went over to my aunt’s and looked over the system. My son-in-law took the covers off both the Air Handler and the Compressor unit, he looked over the entire unit. He said if there was leaking by the coil we would be able to see some oil and build up. There was none. He did find that a cap on a Freon line was missing and the valve stem on that open line was loose, he tightened that down and added a cap to it. He proceeded to calculate the amount of Freon the system holds, based on the labels on the unit (which I wasn’t aware, but the Handler and Compressor both state how much Freon they hold) and he measured the approximate length of the pipe, he said the system wouldn’t hold more than 10 ½ lbs of Freon. This contradicted what the other Tech had told us. He proceeded to ask my Aunt what the tech told him about the unit and she explained how he pointed out the oxidation of the Copper inside the Handler, the rust on the steel around the coil pack. I am not an AC guy but I know you are going to have some minimal amounts of this due to the condensation and this wasn’t excessive at all. We saw no oil or proof of a leak. The system was full of Freon at the point my son-in-law tested it. I asked my son-in-law to quote us the same unit and switch out that Graham A/C was quoting, and his quote (with no family discounts) would be $3700. I did confirm with another company that the same unit change out from them would be about $3900.

After looking over the system though, checking everything, my son-in-law said there was nothing wrong with this system and it was fine. The current system is a Trane System manufactured late 1999 but it was a high end system for the time (my son told us) it is a 2.5 ton 12 Seer unit.

The Graham A/C technician use the age of the system, some minor rust/oxidation and the vulnerability of an elderly female to make her feel insecure about her current Air Conditioner, doing so would have cost my Aunt close to $7000. This is a Predatory act and they should be held accountable for it.

Resolution:

Upon dealing with this on Saturday, I proceeded to call Graham A/C and got an answering service. I left a message that we were cancelling the Service, the person took the message and said someone would get back to us. On Sunday we still hadn’t heard anything and called again, and left another message, they told us this time that no one would get the message until 8AM Monday Morning, yet the tech’s were scheduled to be there Monday Morning. So Monday I was on my way to my Aunts, when the Tech called me. I explained to him my findings, and he immediately got very defensive, I told him to cancel the order and we wanted the deposit check back. I stopped by the office and a different person brought me the check, they refused to talk to me about this situation but we did get our deposit back.