Marla and John Barina claimed to have no money to their name in the middle of the summer (Over 100 degrees in mid July) when their Air conditioning unit quit on them. My company made an emergency No Cool Call after hours to their home and discovered that they were in need of a new unit. They seemed distraught as they did not have any money to spend on a brand new system all at once. My company offered to let them use a refurbished unit temporarily as long as they paid for the miscellaneous parts and labor to install the borrowed unit. The rest of the agreement was that they were to purchase a complete new unit in the fall after they had time to save the money. We were even going to credit them the entire amount that they had already paid for labor when they purchased the new unit in the fall. She agreed, signed the contract and thanked us for helping them out. We installed it that night in the middle of the night, completing the job at 2 AM.in Mid September when the heat wave was over, Marla Barina called my company to say that the condensate line was draining outside but it was still cooling fine. We told her that it was normal for the line to drain and as long as the unit was cooling fine we could not come out there without charging the minimum service fee of $40.00. She said that she would not pay a dime and that we were wrong and that she knew several inspectors that would get us in trouble if we didn't do what she wanted. (She never specified exactly what she wanted). Her husband is a chronic alcoholic that kept calling the company making threats to me and my employees. I have photo and video footage of him drunk and passed out in the back of his truck with beer cans. The final call / threat was a demand for all of the money they paid for labor or they were going to call the inspector. A week later the inspector called my company with the complaint. We refused to give a refund as it was for services rendered and not goods sold. PLUS she got free use of an air conditioner during the hottest months of the year! We decided to fire Mr. And Mrs. Barina as customers since they were in breech of the contract that was signed months earlier. We repossessed the borrowed unit under the supervision of the HVAC inspector that they called. The inspector told me that they had already contracted with a different company to install another unit instead of honoring their contract with mine. I believe it is customers like this that make us unwilling to help anybody out in a pinch. It saddens me that helping someone out who seemed to be in a bad financial position has resulted in this frivolous situation.
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