In April 2010 I hired Shipton's Heating and Cooling to install a brand new HE furnace. I did my due dilegence and got 5 quotes for the job and carefully considered each one. It was between Shipton's and another company and I went with Shipton's because they were in the industry longer and were part of the BBB. Since they also do duct cleaning services I decided to get that done at the same time. When the 2 HVAC guys showed up it was then that I found out that they weren't the ones cleaning my ducts after the job. So I called the office and one of the owners said he would call me back. He didn't but instead the sent the duct guy to bring his equipment out to my place. He left it for one of the HVAC guys to use. I was not happy with the lack of communication and follow up on this. This left only 1 guy to do the entire furnace installation. When all was said and done my ducts were cleaned, I got a dirty filter installed,they hadn't installed the furnace on a cement pad off the ground(they used bent up pieces of sheet metal instead), they didn't properly close off any gaps in the ducts(when I had one of the owners come and take a look at the work I was told this was normal and that some air leakage is common), there were chunks of brick left behind from where they had to drill to install the gas pipe outside which they just covered up with pieces of insullation and they didn't fix my floor that they tore up. My brand new furnace was also scratched up and dented.
Now, having said that, I did call the owner to complain about the workmanship. He came over to review the work. Shipton's did send over a different guy as well as the guy who cleaned my ducts(I had no issue with him) to completely reinstall a brand new furnace on a cement pad, silicone the gaps, re-cement the floor where they other guy had torn it up and painted the floor where they had scratched it up.
This is why I give them a 5 and not lower; because they came back and fixed the issue. I was not satisfied with the intial work but they did do their best to rectify the situation.
- Approximate cost of services:
- $4,500.00
- What could this company do to improve their services?
- Teach their eimployees to respect their clients by cleaning up their messes and communicating ahead of time any potential issues. If you say you are going to call, do it!
- Any advice to offer fellow homeowners facing a similar project?
- I proved that no matter how much research you do and how respected and long standing a company is, you can still get duds that come and do the actual work. You can't control who the company hires. If you aren't satisfied with a job, call them out on it. Any respected company will do anything in their power to fix the issue to your satisfaction.