Heating Plus Heating & Air Conditioning

Around this time last year, my husband and I visited this site to find a company to install A/C and possibly a water heater. At the time, Heating Plus was the highest rated company on the site and seemed like the right choice. They were great all the way to getting the job booked- then things went radically downhill. The installation was a three day long disaster, to the extent that the owner's wife/secretary offered us a water heater at cost with free installation by her husband personally, to show us that our experience was 'not how they usually do business'. However, when we later tried contacting them about it they did not return our calls. One can only assume from this that a few hours of their time was worth more to them than their reputation.

Here are just a couple of examples of the shocking carelessness demonstrated by Heating Plus during our A/C installation.

- worker unwittingly disconnects our gas water heater chimney exhaust pipe (in the wall), resulting in our home being filled with noxious fumes overnight. This was only discovered the next morning when I noticed a chemical smell on the first floor.

- thermostat was initially miswired, causing both the A/C and heat to turn on simultaneously. My husband had to reconfigure the wiring on the thermostat and fish wiring himself to finish the job!

We were left with 1000$+ worth of damages as a result of their incredibly sloppy amateur workmanship. We sent a registered letter to their office address on Finch to advise them of this (since they were not returning our phone calls) and it was returned as undeliverable. We sent the same letter with Purolator (who made numerous attempts to deliver it) and they deemed the space unoccupied and returned it to us as well.

Heating Plus' website boasts a satisfaction Guarantee: “At HEATING PLUS we work hard to make sure our customers are completely satisfied.” Well, attention Heating Plus: WE ARE NOT SATISIFIED. As you know, we were incredibly patient and fair with you during this installation. Make this right.

In conclusion, here is an excerpt of the original letter we attempted to send to Heating Plus, describing only one of the problems encountered as a result of our dealings with this company.

Mr. Walters:

On a recent visit to our home by an electrician, we were informed that our electrical panel is no longer up to code as a direct result of the installation of an air conditioning system by your company.

The panel was modified (with tin snips) so as to add more breakers than it was designed for. Because of the extra breakers, the “city side” of the panel can no longer be physically shut and contains breaker wiring. All of these modifications violate the electrical code.

Because it is an older panel, parts to render it safe and up to code are no longer available. Our only option is to replace the current panel.

We were never informed that these code-violating modifications were being made and would never have agreed. We hold your company fully responsible for all costs we will incur related to the replacement of our panel.

We are contacting you directly to advise you of the above, should you wish to settle the matter between us. Should we not hear from you, be advised that we have every intention to pursue this matter in court.
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**JUNE 3, 2009**: Heating Plus has posted a response claiming that this is not a real review and that it was in fact posted by a disgruntled ex-employee. This is false. Looking at their similar rebuttals to other negative reviews, one can only conclude that they either need to keep better records or they have a lot of disgruntled ex-employees! At any rate, our installation was booked for June 18, 2008 at 10:30AM (although the workers arrived at noon). The technician's name was Angel. I can say all of this with great certainty because a) I keep great records and b) it was our wedding anniversary and you were supposed to be done by dinner time. Instead, your workers were in our home until 11:30pm that night and still did not finish. If this is not enough information for you to retrieve your “file”, we can post a copy of our contract as well as pictures of the work and damages caused, at your request. We also have saved a voice mail message from Lucy (owner's wife/secretary) that we can upload as well.

No A/C installation should take three days indeed! I imagine this was one of the reasons that we were (falsely) offered compensation in the form of a water heater installation.

You ask why we waited a year to post a review. We never intended to post a review at all. That had been our first (and last) experience with this site until now. We were relieved to be done with you and the whole situation! But, when an electrician who was at our home on an unrelated matter advised us of what had been done to our panel and what would need to be done to repair it, we began trying to contact you. We spent a few months trying to reach you by telephone. We then spent a few more trying to reach you by mail and courier. After that I was at the tail end of a trying pregnancy, which took priority. So here we are. We only posted this here now because it seemed to be an effective (and perhaps the only!) way to reach you. Looks like we were right.

We await your response with regards to how you intend to address the damages caused to our electrical panel.