We used Malek for many years, beginning when we purchased our new home in 2019. Malek had installed…read morethe original heating and cooling system, and initially we were pleased with their responsiveness. Unfortunately, our experience deteriorated badly over time, and what we eventually discovered has caused us to lose confidence in this company completely.
One recurring problem involved the cooling coils freezing in the attic unit. When this happened, the fan continued to operate, water escaped from the system, leaked through the attic floor and damaged our living-room ceiling. We had the ceiling repaired, only to have the problem happen again--and then again. Eventually, Malek told us that because the incidents occurred sufficiently far apart, they did not consider the repeated failures to be related to their previous repairs. The resulting damage, we were told, was essentially our problem.
Despite that experience, we continued using Malek.
We later had a persistent problem cooling one particularly hot room in our house. On Malek's recommendation, we added another HVAC zone. This required installation of a new zone-control board to operate the four zones in our home. The system never worked particularly well afterward. Malek returned repeatedly to troubleshoot it, and on some occasions we paid for additional modifications.
Eventually, Malek told us that the problem was with the zone board and thermostats and quoted us $3,842.80 to replace the components. I questioned the price because the retail prices I found for the components appeared to be substantially lower than the amounts reflected in their proposal. I asked Malek to explain the pricing. I did not receive an explanation.
At that point, we decided to use another HVAC company.
The most troubling discovery came later, when our air-conditioning system finally stopped working altogether during the Texas summer. A technician investigating the failure found that the zone-control board had been improperly wired into the system. According to the technician, the board should have been powered through the appropriate transformer rather than in the manner it had been connected. A transformer was installed in an attempt to correct the problem, but further investigation revealed that components on the zone board had already burned out.
In other words, we were now being told that the zone board Malek had previously installed had apparently been damaged because of the way it had been wired.
What troubles me most is that Malek had previously diagnosed this same zone board as defective and quoted us $3,842.80 to replace the zone board and associated components, yet never told us that its failure might have resulted from the way the system had originally been installed or wired.
I cannot know what Malek's technicians knew internally, and I will not speculate about their motives. I can only describe what happened to us: Malek installed the zoning system, repeatedly worked on problems associated with it, ultimately quoted us nearly $4,000 to replace components, and another technician subsequently identified improper wiring associated with the failed zone board.
After years as a customer, that was enough for us.
If you are considering Malek, I strongly recommend that you obtain a second opinion--particularly before approving an expensive repair. Ask for a detailed explanation of what failed, why it failed, who installed the component, and an itemized breakdown of equipment and labor costs.
Based on our experience, we would not trust Malek to work on our HVAC system again, and we cannot recommend them to others.
