My original heat pump (HP) couldn't be repaired anymore. My large family room is heated by one vent out the front of the furnace, so I wanted new vents run in there. I was pretty much using the electric coils to heat my house and no AC during the summer.
I had quotes from other HVAC companies for the replacement, they were at least $1500 cheaper than Sears, but Sears was the only company that would finance me. The contract said that the installer would install new heat coils, heat pump, and check under the house to make sure everything was in good working order with no leaks etc and would make or recommend any necessary repairs.
The contractor was very late showing up. He barely spoke English. I asked him to install the vent for the family room down the side of the unit.instead he covered the vent that currently heated the room and put the pipe in the walk way, using the previous air vent to pump air into the room's 4 new registers. The hole in the ceiling where the new pipe went up wasn't sealed around it, not even duct tape, insulation from the attic would fall out. However, the room still does not heat or cool. We have to leave the door open between the rest of the house and the family room, just like we did before I spent the extra money for the installation. We still have to use a space heater in there during the winter.
I had small children and we all needed to get up early in the morning for school and work, the contractor was working in the family room (which is also my nanny's living area) until almost 11pm at night. He said it was because we were so far away and he didn't want to make the trip again.
Sears said they would fix it by installing a new intake vent into the family room. This would cost somewhere between $500 and $1200 to make the family room's new vent system work correctly. They wouldn't just do it, they said the intake wasn't included in the quote, should have been and the rep that wrote the quote had been fired because of these problems.
I wrote the corporate offices, and got no reply, I called their service center so many times I knew all the managers by name, but corporate would not authorize them to fix the family room problem.
Also a few weeks after the install I had the Oregon Energy Trust come out to audit my house so that I could get the rebates and tax write offs. The auditer wouldn't grant the rebate because the vents under the house (the ones they agreed to look at) were leaking so badly the warm air was blasting out of the crawl space. I needed to crawl under my house or hire a contractor to seal the pipes and then I could get the rebates and Oregon tax credit.
Sears said that even though the language was in the contract to examine it didn't cover repair (the contract states repair or recommend). She (Janet, the Home Improvement rep) said that the installer said he went under the house and it needed a ton of repairs and that he claimed he told me this and that it was in his completion report and that I had signed off that I was happy with the installation.
So, my family room is freezing cold, I have a pipe in the middle of walk way, I still need to do costly repairs to make their installation work, I had to fill the gaps around the pipes that the "professionals" installed, I had to fix the pipes under my house, but it still needs more and I didn't get my rebates. OH and they never sent me my federal rebate forms either, so I got totally poked out of $1800 worth of rebates, because I paid the extra to buy a higher efficiency machine that would have qualified for the full rebate.
Buyer beware when using Sears. They are fine for small things, but they hire sub-par, non-English speaking contractors that do terrible, unacceptable work, and have no qualms with inconveniencing your entire family.
The sad thing is there is more to the story but I can't think of a less voluminous way to state it!
Chris
Sandy, Oregon
U.S.A.
0 comments