My wife and I recently bought a home where the home inspector found the heat was not working so our realtor suggested we have the seller pay Blake's to fix it due to their good reputation and customer service. We agreed and Blake's completed the work (costing the seller over $2500). After moving in, we found the house to be frigid constantly and finally decided to call Blake's to re-inspect their work in case something wasn't fixed correctly. Two people came, spent less than 5 minutes in the attic, and told me the heating unit was working fine but I needed to install a dual-zone system if I wanted proper heat downstairs. Later, I get a bill for $95 dollars for this inspection. I complained saying no one told me about the charge and that this was just to re-inspect the work that had been done only weeks ago. Blake's customer service rudely suggested it was ridiculous to re-inspect work (hilarious considering what has since happened) that was just completed but took off the charge because I wasn't forewarned. Here's where it gets interesting:
We contacted another company (Coaches HVAC, would definitely recommend them over Blake's) to give us a competing quote for Blake's dual-zone bid and within 5 minutes the technician says that even though he wasn't here to diagnose any issues, he found major problems with the heating unit in that the burners were not igniting all the way and the system was short cycling (and showed me videos). Further investigation by this company revealed a crack in the heat exchanger and carbon monoxide levels at 20ppm coming out of the vent and so he shut down the heating unit entirely (and showed me pictures of this). A little confused and annoyed, I called Blake's about this issue and they stated that if they missed these issues they'd "take care of me" but threatened that if they did not find anything wrong, they'd charge me for the service. Well, guess what happened, they said nothing was wrong with the heater, actually turned it back on, and said they'd charge me for coming out. Confused by the discrepancy between these two companies' accounts and not knowing who to trust, I had PG&E (a neutral party suggested by Blake's) inspect the unit the same day the Blake's technician came out and they said that sure enough, the heater was broken and short cycling (and that I needed a licensed contractor to fix it). PG&E technician says they cannot tell if the heat exchanger is cracked as they don't inspect that.
Once again, much more pissed now, I called Blake's asking for an explanation of how the original technician repairing the unit, and then 2 subsequent technicians inspecting the unit were unable to find issues found by both Coaches' technician and the PG&E technician. I was informed that technicians have a specific list of things to check and that unless they were looking for it, there is no way to know about them (and that unless I specifically instructed them to look for a certain problem, they cannot say anything is/isn't working). According to Blake's, my heat exchanger isn't cracked and the heating unit is working fine. I am not an HVAC specialist, I have no idea what's working or not working. I can only trust the companies to tell me the truth. The simple fact is that PG&E's neutral technician echoed exactly what Coaches' technician said and contradicted what Blake's has repeatedly told me.
I've since decided to get this fixed through my home warranty and Coaches HVAC (costing me over $1600 out of pocket, in addition to Blake's service fees which have done absolutely nothing to fix my broken heater) so I no longer have to deal with Blake's. The only thing I have to say is thank god I wasn't the one who paid the original $2500 to have my heater "fixed."
TL;DR
Company A (Blake's) supposedly fixes my heater. Company A inspects heater saying it's working fine. Company B (Coaches) says heater is short-cycling and heat exchanger is cracked (not working). Company A re-inspects heater and says it's working fine. PG&E says heater is short-cycling and not working (what Company B said). Company A takes no responsibility for any of this. Stay away from Company A. read more