On october 16 the air conditioning unit ("AC") of a house I own broke and the tenant called Service America ("SAM" or "the company") for service which I have since 2004. A SAM technician performed an inspection on Wednesday October 16.2013 and refilled the AC with gas in order to fix it but told the tenant that the AC was extremely old (12 years), and that the parts were outdated and could not be replaced because they were not available in the market. Also, he informed the tenant that were somo leaks in the system but he did not try to find and repair said leaks, and merely advised the tenant to replace the AC.
After that, the tenant informed me on the recommendations provided by the technician and so on friday October 18th, I attempted to speak to the technician that attendend my tenant´s call by calling SAM but was unable to communicate with him and was told that the company would return my call but never did.
On saturday October 19th, the AC broke again and the tenant had to call SAM once more to request an urgent reapir visit, however no operator answered the request. Forced by the cicumstances, on sunday morning I had to call another AC repair company to go to the house and fix the AC. They changed the capacitor and they told me that they could provide me with the parts that neened to be replaced, thus, said parts were not out of stock as the SAM technician had informed us. I had to pay US$250 for that emergency service.
Having a furious tenant without AC for several days ia a great problem and thus I decided to replace the whole AC unit in order to avoid further problems. Therefore on Monday October 21 I called SAM to obtain a quote on the AC replacement.
SAM informed me that because the services agreement I had with them I had the right to a US$1,500 discount on any AC I opted to buy. However, once they transfered to the sales department (MAT was the sales person) I was told that a very similar AC to the one I currently own (same brand and capacity) would cost me U$5,080 but with the product replacement credit of U$1,500 plus some additional discounts (such as U$200 RHEEM discount and U$895 FPL credit the total cost for replacing the unit would be U$2,685 including the AC permit which cost U$200.
The price seemed high and so I proceeded to call other AC sellers to get quotes on the same product (5 tons 16 seer RHEEM AC system). For instant, Air around the clock offerred the same product for U$4,100.
Thus the quote provided by SAM is almost U$1000 higher that the one provided by Air around the clock. My conclusion from this is that although SAM offers me a credit of U$1,500 due to the service agreement with replacement coverage I have with them, the thuth is that they inflate the price so much that the credit they give me is not really of U$1,500.
The replacement credit is only a sales strategy to make me think that I am getting a better deal but in realuty they are just leveling their inflated price to what I would pay if I acquired the same type of AC from another retailer at the fair market value.
There is no option to file a complain in their web page, not even an e-mail address to contact them with complains. This option is not available on their customer service hotline either.
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