We needed someone to tell us what was wrong with our HVAC
Recently we were planning on purchasing a home we were renting and we of course had a home inspection and they noted some of the major system components in our home were reaching their "functional age life expectancy".
The inspector noted that our Fort Mill, SC home showed signs of deferred maintenance with the HVAC, electrical, furnace heat and air, and crawl space. They showed signs of wear and tear after years of minimal upkeep.We knew that the heat and air would need to be functional for years to come to protect our investment.
Who can give us an honest price to fix our furnace?
During our home buying process, the furnace in the house actually stopped functioning all together on a Friday afternoon and that weekend was extremely cold outside and we had no heat in the house. Our first thought was to call One Hour Heating and Cooling (turned out to be a mistake) because they can arrive in about an hour or so we thought. 6 hours later and after several phone calls trying to figure out who they were sending we finally found out that a technician was on the way and he went up to diagnose the system and shortly after he came down with a summary of proposed work ranging from $1500 up to $9,000. Mostly those quotes included overpriced years of air filters and service fees which was a major rip-off.Nowhere on that quote did they address the actual problems that needed to be fixed that same day to get the heat back on for our family of 5 including our 18 month old boy. Surely this is their ‘standard protocol’ when they send someone out because it’s clear they follow a ‘profits over people’ business model.
We knew we needed a second opinion
I knew this couldn't be right so I asked around and got a recommendation from a client of mine that happened to know Jeremy at Roby services. Luckily they are actually neighbors so we showed him the quote and Jeremy asked me to call the office Monday morning to send out an HVAC repairman near me out to see what is really going on with the furnace. He let us borrow a few of his space heaters which allowed us to actually sleep in our home on Saturday and Sunday nights. After running a few tests they determined it was simply just a bad capacitor and the blower motor on a furnace was shot and the cost to fix was just a few hundred dollars.
Don't make the same mistake I did by calling the companies that spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on advertising just so they can send out a salesman to take advantage of any homeowner they can. Call Roby Services in Charlotte, NC to get an honest diagnosis as to what's really going on with your home. These guys are passionate about what they do and they are professionals that will give you a fair quote to address what needs to be fixed and not try and scare you into thinking you need to build a whole new house just because you have a light switch not working and a clogged drain.
Check out my review of their business on YELP as well
