Deml

We had requested a regular service call for our furnace/boiler. 1 minute after his arrival on site, the service person for Direct Energy shut our entire heating/boiler system down (middle of January on the coldest night of the winter) and said we had "dangerously high Carbon Monoxide readings" at/inside the boiler and in our basement family room down the hall. According to his readings the CO levels were initially 1,000 ppm and then 6oo ppm. We had 2 working (one brand new) Carbon Monoxide detectors in the hall just outside the furnace room and they did not go off. The fellow said "you bought these at Home Depot and they do not work...ever"
A reading over 100 is dangerous and certainly levels of 600-1000 would be lethal. In several hours our entire family would die. He did not suggest we vacate the premises nor did he open windows or vent the area in any way. He spoke very little English so his explanations were of little help. When Direct Energy's consultant came later that evening he suggested we needed a new boiler (priced at $9,000.00) our boiler is old and does need to be updated. We were not disputing this...the issue was levels of CO that were recorded only by his hand held apparatus and the fact that they shut our heating off late at night on a bitterly cold winter night. The next problem was they could only promise installation 5 days later; we were not prepared to wait such a ridiculous amount of time. The best part of the story is we called the Toronto Fire Department in early the next morning just to make sure our house was safe to stay in...all four of us were still alive and breathing at this point and they arrived in about 3 minutes. Their equipment measured absolutely no Carbon Monoxide at all anywhere in the house and all tests came with a reading of "0".
If there had been levels at 600-1000 the night before there would be a high reading the next morning as the area had not been vented.
The fire department left a report saying it was safe to stay in our home (we knew this already but wanted peace of mind) and were shocked they were not called by Direct Energy to report lethal levels recorded. We have since phoned customer service and did not receive a call back and have also sent a 2 page letter via email. It is now 4 days and have not heard from anyone at Direct Energy.
Clearly this is a horrifying combination of fraud and incompetence.
We called another company and had a new boiler installed for $4,000. We are still waiting to hear from someone at Direct Energy
even though there cannot be a reasonable explanation for any of this disasterous service.