I had an interesting attempt at doing business with Sahara AC & Heating. I got so far as giving a…read moredeposit and setting a temporary installation date for a humidification system. Having owned a system before, I knew what I wanted, I did my due diligence, and I was prepared with knowledge and experience. The technician, Lucio, informed me that what I wanted was being phased out and that it could become difficult to get parts. Although I found nothing about this online, I was grateful for the information and took the expert's suggestion to consider another model. All was going well - no problem, otherwise I wouldn't have given a deposit, and Sahara wouldn't have accepted my deposit and set a temporary installation date. Sahara sent me the agreement, I signed it and asked that they sign it and send me a copy. They didn't; instead, they signed the deposit verification line, for which I had already received a receipt, so no signature required. This made me curious and I began to wonder if I'm doing business with a reputable company. I asked myself why a company would not sign their own agreement. Still, I asked again for a signed agreement, thinking it can't be possible that Sahara wouldn't sign their own agreement. I asked three times for a signed agreement and even explained that a valid agreement requires the signatures of all parties; it also helps to make the agreement enforceable. Made me wonder if they don't want an enforceable agreement or if they want an agreement that could be difficult to enforce. In any case, the bottom line is, why not sign your own agreement?
Minutes after emailing my third request for a signed agreement, I received an alert from my bank that Sahara credited my account the amount of my deposit. There was no phone call, no conversation, nothing from Sahara, so I reached out to them asking what the credit was for. Sahara owner, Blake Ballard, phoned to tell me he didn't want to do business with me, citing something along the lines of 'things not being right from the start'. I have no idea what he was referring to. If things weren't right from the start, which was only two days ago, how did we get to the point of a deposit, a temporary installation date and multiple email exchanges regarding Sahara not signing their agreement - all in two days? Was the work outside the scope of their experience or expertise? Do they prefer not to have informed customers? Why not sign the agreement? From my perspective, the only thing that wasn't 'right' was Sahara not signing the agreement, as is evidenced in the emails included in this post. It's all very strange and unprofessional, IMO. I think I may have dodged a bullet here, so I'm grateful that they didn't sign the agreement.
An aside: Blake Ballard's son, Matt Ballard, owns Sunrise Service Cooling, Heating, & Plumbing, who I also invited out for an estimate (I was unaware of the relationship). Matt told me that his father owns Sahara Air. Blake informed me that Matt had told him that he also gave me an estimate. Weird? Given some of the comments made, one might get the impression that there was bad blood between father and son, but perhaps not, since they discussed me with each other. So weird.
Caveat emptor! Get a signed agreement.
Response to owner's response: That's an interesting angle. They didn't mention that on the phone minutes after the third time they ignored my request for a signature on the agreement. Only after I publicly exposed that they didn't sign their agreement did they come up with that angle, but they get kudos for the CYA effort.