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Saturday afternoon, the hooch in town started heating up. It turned out the AC was fritzing out. I called the service contract holder, 1Hour Heating and AC. The 3rd worlder on the other end of the line said they could have someone out Tuesday. I said that was unacceptable. After all, they are "1Hour". Long story short, Allehendro or whatever her name was got flustered and starting reading off her script. KYHillChick got on and tried to calm her down. Nothing worked. The $itch hung up on KYHillChick.

We tried calling back. $itch #1 had not put in the reservation for Tuesday. $itch #2 tried to tell us we were expecting too much. Look, I pay $40/month/site for two addresses to get 24X7 1 hour response. Tuesday doesn't cut it. I told her I was making calls around town and that she should start making calls too. If I found someone who could come out sooner than Tuesday PM, the service contracts were null and void.

The first # I called was the closest HVAC contractor to the hooch. They picked up on the 3rd ring. The lady said someone would call me within 30 minutes. Within 90 minutes, the unit was fixed and the tech was holding me upside down and shaking me for the time-and-a-half fees. It still wasn't all that bad. I paid $340. 1Hour would have charged me $200 on top of the service contract.

I called 1Hour today and told them to cancel the contracts. The best they could do was offer a $25 gift certificate for the trouble. This breaks a 40-year relationship. My Dad went with them while I was still in college. I didn't have a service contract with anyone and when I got my house back from Satan in '96, I tried for a month to get service on the A/C system she boogered. Over the years, the monthly contract prices doubled, and the service has gone downhill. We called them before Thanksgiving 2 years ago, because the heat had gone out. A week after Thanksgiving they finally got the problem fixed after 3 visits, and 3 different techs.


PTHTHTHTHTHTH! to Willis/1Hour HVAC

Kudos to Reading Heating & Air for the fast response and excellent service.


BTW: It was a fried condenser in the outdoor unit.

people actually buy these 'service contracts' I see advertised?
I B Damned

Of course they buy these service contracts. It gives them peace of mind.

I always tell people that they wouldn't be selling the service contracts unless they were sure they would be making more money that way than if you just called someone when you needed service. Like everything else, it's a racket.

It used to be a great deal!

My Dad got hooked up with this company (actually its predecessor) 40 years ago. It was $20/month and service calls were free. We'd get a checkup visit every 6 months.

I was a time&materials kind of guy. Then, I got back into my house after throwing out Satan, and I tried to get someone to come out. It took a month (in August!!!) So when my Dad suggested I pay the $20 a month, it seemed like a good idea.

That was 1996. Times change. The business got sold twice. The latest bunch of yahoos still have good techs, but their scheduling sucks.

Now its $40/month per site, and they want to schedule everything several days out, and nobody shows when they say they will. I also found out the hard way that service calls are no longer free. It used to be the truck's wheels were rolling before you hung up the phone. Not anymore.

Actually there's more to it. I worked for a networking company that had service contracts. If you've got a customer willing to pay a service contract, you can often times head off trouble before it causes an outage. It's cheaper for both sides, because stuff can get scheduled during regular hours and there are no emergency shipping charges, etc. Selling a service contract usually means more repeat business, and more business all told. It is far from being a racket.

It also allows customers to make a choice. If they WANT the top shelf service, they can pay for it. Some people are happy with T&M and that's fine. Where this situation got problematic was that we paid for top-shelf service and we got squat. Frankly, the vendor fell on his face and did nothing to improve the situation.

Wouldn't 'most' fall under the same deal as extended car warranty?

It might do a little good for another person if you wrote to the Better Business folks and did a review on Yelp or one of the other online review places. Maybe others can be warned a bit of what to expect.

Sure does suck when a good company goes bad.

This.