Repair of combination water and space heating system
Mckinnon was called in to repair an on-demand heating system that would not maintain the flame for more than a few seconds and would spontaneously turn on when there was no call for heat. Four visits (two different technicians- one completely incompetent), 6 weeks, $650 dollars, several parts ordered, at least 10 phone calls to Mckinnon and still all the same problems remained and then they send a guy to sell us a $10,000 new unit because the next part needed is no longer manufactured. They say that they have billed us for the work done, but how are we to know if any of this was necessary. Nothing they did ever fixed anything. They say that we have to trust them that everything they did was necessary. How are we supposed to trust them when nothing they did made the boiler work? We were living in the cold and without hot water for weeks. When I talked to the company president Michael he admitted "we dropped the ball on this" but they stand by their work. What does that mean? He offered no refund whatsoever and he suggested we take him to small claims court so we can waste even more time dealing them. I wish I saw these reviews ahead of time since others appear to have the same problems repeatedly. I checked the Better Business Bureau rating for this company and it is an F. They have 3 complaints against them and have not responded to them. I suggest people report their problems on this forum and contact the city contractor licensing board at licenf@toronto.ca STAY AWAY FROM MCKINNON.
Our complaint is not that the boiler needed replacing. The problem with Mckinnon was that they kept charging us for yet another thing they claimed would "fix" the problem, but nothing they did fixed anything. We had four visits from them and had to call them repeatedly to get a response, and they continued to charge us more and more. They only offered to refund the charges for the useless work that they did if we gave them another $10,000 for a whole new system. We went elsewhere and got the job done for a third of that price. If they were so unfamiliar with the heating system, they shouldn't have taken the job and charged us for their unsuccessful "trial and error".
- Approximate cost of services:
- $650.00
- Company Response
This is a unique situation as despite our best attempts to rectify the problem with this Baxi Luna Model 24Fi wall-hung combination boiler, Serial # A93003884 we were told by the North American distrubutor, Marathon Group, that the control board this unit requires is no longer made nor available. In this situation, we could only recommend the replacement of the boiler. As fact, we did not install this specific boiler, we were only contacted to service it. As a service provider, we are often limited by the technical support and parts availability of our respective suppliers. As it is easy in a forum such as this to "bash the contractor", we are very proud of the fact that we have thousands of clients who are very satisfied with the level of service we provide. It is unfortunate but inevitible that on occasion, a client will feel that we did not deliver on our promise to deliver service excellence.