If you have no problem PAYING MORE than you should and dealing with ALL THE HASSLES, this is the company you should choose.
Their technician did a decent job but my overall experience was terrible. Their employees care nothing about you; instead, they are trained to push you into making a decision under pressure in their favor, and there were NO communication between their office and their technicians, making you pay more and get less.
Note: The story is too long so I put the full story in the attached photos. I'm going to fix this when I have time.
Here's the story. We called on a Thursday morning to request a diagnosis and potential repair of HVAC due to its fan noise. Confirmed on the phone that they do FREE estimates (like many companies do, unless they are playing with words). Waited for a full day, and the technician, Andy, didn't arrive until 5pm. Andy quickly diagnosed the obvious fan problem and said the inducer motor would be dying soon (even that night) and needed immediate replacement. Cost estimate was $891 but a 50% advance deposit was required before ordering the part. A quick google search told me that $900 would be a very high cost both for the part and the labor. So we requested if there was a breakdown of part and labor and were told it was just a flat fee - i.e., no breakdown, but he could include cleaning/maintenance in this package (he wouldn't have said that if we hadn't asked). We further asked if it there were any other cost-efficient ways (e.g. like a repair) and were told there was nothing else they could do. He also urged us to make the decision ASAP!
Since $900 was not a small amount of money, and Andy said he had other work to do and had to leave, we asked if we could call him later that night if we decided to order the replacement. Andy said their office was closed after 5pm (not our fault because he came late!) so we wouldn't be able to call later that night to make the order. Besides we would owe ~$89 for his trip if we couldn't decide immediately whether to order the part, with the problem unsolved. Why is it called a FREE estimate if they charge you for the trip? Is it fun to play with words? What's worse, when we asked if we could pay the $89 first and have that deducted from their next trip if we decided to order the replacement through them later THAT NIGHT, in which case they would lose nothing but we would have at least one option, he said no. Andy even "reminded" (threatened) us that there would be a winter storm on Friday (the next day), and if we didn't make the decision immediately, he couldn't guarantee that it would be replaced on Friday and we might end up with no heat throughout the weekend. Under a lot of pressure, with their 5 star review on yelp (about which I now suspect that they pay people to get negative reviews removed), with their promise to get the fan replaced the next day even with severe weather, and with maintenance included, we paid more than a 50% deposit. Along with a $126 replacement cost of a humidifier tube (also expensive), the total was $1017, so we paid $509, and the balance was $508. After we paid it, Andy oiled the fan and left, saying it would hopefully work until the next morning.
Out of curiosity I googled again to see what should be done if the fan started to make noise (which I would have done before calling them if I hadn't been so busy that day). The FIRST result from google told me to oil the fan (like what Andy did AFTER charging us). Google also told us that the noise level we heard from the fan was OK after oiling, and it might keep working for a while - definitely not that its death was imminent! So the lesson we learnt, besides googling before making a service call, was NEVER to trust that they would do a FREE estimate, and never to trust that they wouldn't overcharge you or insist you need something expensive. If they had told us their estimate wasn't free, we would probably try to fix it ourselves first. And if it had been indeed a free estimate like many companies offered, we might have wanted to wait until the fan was indeed dying before replacing it, and we probably would have called them again. Or even if we had had a chance to think twice about it, we would have definitely paid the $89 for their trip and labor in order to avoid the immediate replacement. I believe Andy knew this, which was exactly why he pressured us SO HARD to pay a deposit. And because they knew they were overcharging so they were afraid of us calling around (which we wouldn't do unless they pissed us off).
The next day, I asked for a vacation day from work and waited at home for their repair. Then we received a call from Darcy, someone from their office, asking if we wanted to order the parts (with a different quote). Of course! It should have been done yesterday! Then she continued by saying that since they were ordering the part on Friday, it wouldn't be ready for repair until Monday... (See photos for full review) read more