Joe in Toronto

Do not utilize this company for your appliance repair. I don't know how I missed all the bad reviews because I'm usually pretty good about this kinda thing, so I'll do everyone a solid and post a review everywhere I can to make sure no one else experiences this. They seem to charge you flat rates regardless of the issue you have and regardless if they actually diagnose and can fix the problem or not. They charge you $80 for showing up and claim that they'll charge you hourly after that point but regardless if the job takes 10 minutes (which I'm sure they'll attempt to stretch out) or 2 hours, you'll be charged $280+HST (includes the $80 show up fee). This is an astronomical amount of money for diagnosis compared to rival companies. Now keep in mind that they will claim that this cost is "supposed" to account for any labour to actually FIX the appliance, more on this later. After the labour only diagnosis fee they'll start throwing parts at the appliance at severely marked up prices. This is nothing new, all companies do this, but their margins are HUGE. For example, an $80 part any consumer can buy from a typical walk in appliance repair store will come out to $250-300 from this company. They claim to not charge labour for the installation (it's included in your $280+hst), I did not get this far with them, but have found other reviews indicating that ontop of the astronomical part mark-up some people were actually charged additional labour beyond the $280+hst diagnosis labour. It's not like you get same day delivery and repair and that you are paying for the convenience of them stocking tons of parts for all makes, NO. They order it and find it the same way any consumer would so you'd wait anywhere from a day to 2 weeks for a part if they don't have it in the truck. Next let me discuss my service technician. He seemed OK at first, was pretty quiet, seemed to take care in what he did, had normal mediocre tools (nothing crazy specialized or efficient and time saving), but my guy spent 75% of his time in my house on the phone on his bluetooth headset. He was on the phone with friends/family member, not with his company. He took multiple calls and was on one call for what seemed like 45 minutes, not saying much, but was just on the phone with someone on the other end saying something every so often. I won't judge I mean this might have been a special case with a child with a condition for example, but regardless this came off as EXTREMELY unprofessional in my eyes. This company claims professional service and seems to charge as such, and sends technicians that do things like this? Common. To make things worse I was with the guy 100% of the time and that still didn't deter him from taking the liberty of freely making and taking non work related phone call. At this point I was under the impression I was being charged hourly, not a flat $280+hst regardless of time spent (found that out much later), so this angered me off even more, because being on the phone while you do something guarantees you'll either take longer to do it or you'll make more mistakes, this is basic Human Performance. I bet the company justifies these prices based on their high level of service and ability to respond 24/7 etc. Although they have this statement in their "About Us" mission statement: "We provide quality in-home appliance repair services at reasonable prices." At reasonable prices, of course if up to interpretation, but I for one will say that their prices are not reasonable. They are outrageous, not competitive, and the only reason they are still in business, although I'm sure their market share is dropping, is that there are enough uninformed consumers out there that fall into their clever trap every day. Bottom Line: This company has huge margins and does not disclose this to its customers before they are "trapped" and the technician begins working on the appliance, after which, unknown to the customer, they will be charged $280+hst regardless of actual time spent. After biting that bullet you will be ripped off again with the massive mark up on parts. Again taking advantage of people's lack of knowledge of what parts should cost approximately. Many people might read my review as, "boo hoo a customer is complaining that a company is making too much money off of them". Appliance Repair Guys go WAY beyond making a healthy profit, they utilize dirty tactics of withholding critical pricing information and misleading customers to overcharge customers.