Let me begin by saying I purchased both my furnace and air conditioning system from Central Heating, and I was pleased with the price and the installation. However, we woke up Sunday morning with no heat and immediately called Central Heating. A service tech called back and the first thing he advised me was that there was a $185 charge for coming out on the weekend. As I said at the time, "we have no heat and it's going to be 17 degrees tonight, get out here and fix it." After several hours, the tech arrived, poked around a lot, and told me we needed a new gas valve in the furnace, but he did not have one in his truck. "You can run down to the shop (two miles) and get one?" I stupidly asked. The tech said he couldn't do that as he doesn't have a key to get in the shop to get parts. He said he would be back first thing Monday, assuming he didn't have another call first. Monday morning, still without heat, I called Central at 10:30 AM, and was told the tech was on another job. The tech then called and said he would be at least another hour.
The technician finally arrived and fixed the problem. However, we were charged an additional $88 AFTER the $185 we paid on the previous day. So we paid $185 to have a technician come out on the weekend and tell us that yes, we had no heat, and no, he did not have access to the part needed to fix it. The only consolation was that the part was under warranty. When I paid the extra charge for a weekend service call, it was under the assumption that Central would fix the problem. Instead, I paid $185 to spend the night under a pile of blankets.
This wasn't the first time I've had this issue. In December 2016, I was working on my rental house, where the furnace had also been installed by Central. The heat went out, I called Central, and was told it would be FOUR DAYS before anyone could get to me. So I called someone else and had it working within a few hours.
I get the impression that Central is primarily concerned with commercial accounts and that residential customers are an afterthought. read more