Western Heating Services 2003

We had a very negative experience with Terry and his company. They installed a ductless AC system in our house at the end of July 2016. The system seemed to work well initially for the first few weeks, but then we obviously stopped using it after just several weeks as colder temperatures came as we have radiators in our house.

Our whole ordeal began in May of 2017 when we went to use our unit and found that it wasn’t cooling at all. We contacted Terry who came by and looked at the unit. He filled up the unit with coolant, said we had a small leak by the hoses on the unit, and charged us a bunch of money. The unit seemed to work for about two weeks, and then it stopped working again. We kept contacting Terry to tell him about the issue, but getting him to come back was always a disaster. He would frequently ignore our messages or not reply to us for days. Other times he would make appointments and then never show up! As you can imagine this was extremely frustrating when we specifically made sure that someone would be home for when he arrived. Equally frustrating was not have working air conditioning during very hot summer days.

That entire summer of 2017 our air conditioning never worked properly. Terry came out probably around four times to look at the system to “fix” it. He would fill the unit with coolant and it would work for maybe two weeks, then stop cooling again. He charged us a few hundred dollars several times for the labor as well as the cost of the coolant. The first visit alone he charged us $500! When the issue kept happening he told us the system must have, and I quote, “a micro leak”. He blamed our dog for hitting the lines and causing the leak and told us to put up a fence around the unit so he can’t get close to it (for the record, our dog is about 18 lbs and doesn’t even go near the units, and installing the fence as per his advice definitely never solved the problem). He charged us money to do a leak test with some type of UV dye, but again didn’t find the leak or solve the problem.

In September of this year we asked Terry again to come out and fix the problem. Again, it was impossible to get him to actually show up. Finally we were fed up and contacted a different company to come and look at the problem. This was a huge headache as most companies didn’t want to deal with another companies install and told us to contact the original company.

We had someone from a different company (which I won’t name as it’s not relevant) come out to look at our system. I explained to them the entire situation with what was done when Terry came. I explained to them that he would check the connections at the main unit for leaks. They were shocked to hear that during all the “leak tests” that Terry did, he never actually bothered to check the outdoor connections to all the individual units. We had him take down all the covers and test each individual connection, and he found a very LARGE leak at one of the outdoor connections to our upper level units. This was certainly not damaged as it had a cover over top of it this entire which Terry and his company installed, and this was completely intact. This new company examined the fitting connecting the hoses and stated that it appears to have been done improperly from the start.

I texted Terry a message explaining this entire situation and telling him that I felt it was very unfair that he charged me all this money for repairs for an issue with his improper installation. Not to mention the hundreds of dollars in repairs I had to pay to another company, as well as dealing with a broken air conditioning unit for an entire year, I showed him photos and a video of the leak where it is clearly visible. He read my message (as confirmed by his iPhone read receipt). What response did I get? Absolutely nothing. I was totally ignored.

In summary, I would avoid this company at all costs. They botched the installation of my unit, were impossible to get to come out, charged me hundreds of dollars to “fix” it, never ended up fixing it, and now are ignoring me.