Heartland Quality guys came out for a furnace tune up on 9-26-16, a Monday. They found a small leak that they determined was caused by a loose screw near the fan. Supposedly, the screw in place was too small, so they replaced the screw on the collector box front cover with a larger one. This, however, appeared to make the leak more severe when the heat was turned back on.
I was told that it was likely that the gasket for the collector box was bad, or there may be a crack in the collector box (I looked up the name of the part -- service guys just pointed to the part). John said he'd check on the availability of the part, and get back to me with a cost and when they'd be able to come out and replace the part. On Thursday, I still had not heard from anyone, so I gave them a call. I spoke with Jim, who was apologetic, and said that John had gone on vacation, but would be back on Monday and he'd have him call me with follow-up information. He also mentioned that he was dealing with a broken water pipe at one of his rental houses, so was preoccupied and overlooked the fact that no one had followed-up on my job. I did not receive a call on Monday, so I called them on Tuesday. Jim was again apologetic, and went on to remind me of his woes of having to deal with a broken water pipe at one of his rental houses. I was starting to regret having renewed the annual maintenance plan with this company.
When John did finally call me back, he too apologized for not remembering to call, and then he told me that since Amana had been bought out by Goodman, the part was no longer made. My options were to have them come out and use high-temperature silicone and 'permanently seal' the collector box cover on and hope that stopped the leak. There was no guarantee that this would work, since the cover itself could be cracked. That option was going to run about $350. He then mentioned that since our furnace was 11 years old, we should really just think about replacing the whole unit. He assured me, that since we were valued customers, they'd be able to give us a really good deal. So, I went ahead and scheduled a time for them to come out to take measurements and give us a bid on replacing the furnace. The lowest bid, $4,789. Sounded reasonable, but I just really started doubting the whole, "they don't make this part anymore" line.
I called a friend who's had a couple of heating/cooling units installed in a couple of different homes and asked if they could recommend someone to give me a second quote. Fortunately, I have a friend who keeps good, honest, skilled company. The gentleman came out on his own time, and just wanted to do his own assessment of the situation. He could've easily said, yeah, you need a new unit and given me a quote. However, he said, why don't I see if I can get the part. He couldn't believe the part was no longer available either. He called me the next day, and said the part would be here in a couple of days, and he'd be out to replace the cover. All total, it took him about 3 hours including travel time, and he only wanted to charge me $215. I compensated him fairly for saving me nearly $5k.
Note that Heartland has been the only company servicing our furnace for the past 4 years, so it's very possible that their service team was responsible for the 'small screw'. When I started using them and bought into their annual maintenance plan, the owner did service calls and had a real sense of pride in providing quality work. I think they've grown too large and have lost sight of 'quality'. The good thing is that they did refund my money for renewing the annual maintenance plan after I called them to let them know that I was no longer in need of a new furnace, because a solid repair person was able to order a new part and get it installed. read more