Bettencourt Air Ltd

I was referred to Bettencourt by a long-time neighbour for servicing of my old air conditioner. Chris is very, very thorough. His wife Joanne, backs up the service and kept me well informed at each stage of the project. They bent over backward to make sure that each stage was absolutley perfect. Contrary to a couple of scathing reports on them contained here, I found them absolutely terrific to deal with. I would recommend them without reservation.

He charges $150 for service call which is fine if work is quality. Looked good at the beginning. He seemed competent and deliberate trying to find out what it could be. Saw that the pressure switch seemed to act up early on and shut furnace down. Checked the switch and said it worked. At that point you would think an experienced repair guy (which he is) would look at the part that the pressure switch measures. But he did not. Instead he managed to come back three times (charging $150 each time of course plus, strangely, another $50 for having to pick up parts--you'd think the part company would ship them...), replaced pretty much the whole interior of the furnace, just to end up realizing that it indeed was the fan whose pressure the pressure switch measures (that the casket was completely rotten was actually pretty visible even to a lay eye making me think that he saw that right away but decided to milk this job for what it was worth). So bottom line, a job that in the hands of an experienced repair guy should have been around $300-500 but with this guy became a $1300 job.

charged $25,000 to install a new boiler and some piping and hot water tank. Since it was installed in October 2006 it has failed 3 times, on one occasion causing water pipes to burst and causing over $20,000 in damage.