I purchased a new TRANE high-efficiency furnace, gas water heater and humidifier from Home Depot Canada in Sept. 2012. It was installed by A+ Air Systems of Etobicoke. It has worked fine and I've been diligent about replacing the air filter every month, as I run the fan component even when the heat is not on. In 2013, A+ Air Systems sent a technician to do the annual maintenance, and everything was fine. On Oct. 1, 2014 they sent a technician to do the annual maintenance. The furnace was working perfectly. Hameed, the technician, went down to the basement and in a few minutes he asked me to turn the heat on for him. I did. Immediately, there was a very loud sharp intermittent banging noise, like something metal hitting a fan. Hameed called and asked if I could hear that noise. Sure I could. It was really loud. He said the motor was broken and needed to be replaced. I went downstairs and he had shut off the power to the furnace. He pointed to an small piece of old-looking wood on the floor in front of him and said he thought it must have fallen out of the motor and broken the blades. I asked how it was possible for a piece of wood to get into the motor. He said, "Through the intake pipe". I took him outside and showed him the intake pipe, high above my head at the front of my building, to demonstrate that would be impossible. He left, saying he would call me when he got a new motor, and that all parts were guaranteed for 10 years and I would only have to pay labour.
On October 6 Hameed called me back, said he had the new motor and could come immediately to install it. He came over, went down to the basement, and in under 10 minutes, gave me an invoice for $168.39. He said it cost so much because he had to drive to Oakville to get the motor and that I was lucky I did not have to pay for the motor which was about $400. I did not need to turn on the furnace till October 16. Immediately when I turned on the heat, the same loud banging noise started. I shut it off immediately and called Steven Abraham, the manager at A+ Air Systems. He sent Hameed over right away. This time I followed Hameed down to the basement. I wanted to see what he was doing. He unscrewed the motor and left it hanging by the wires, said he needed to phone his office and would have to go outside because could not get a cellular signal in my basement. There is no problem with the cellular signal in my basement. He came back into the basement, still talking on his phone (I guess he had forgotten he couldn't get a cellular signal) and said that the company would have to send an engineer to find out what was wrong. He took his tools and left. The engineer, Aziz, came very quickly. I went downstairs with him. He looked at the motor hanging there by its wires outside the furnace, asked who left it like that and I told him it was Hameed. He disconnected the motor. He had a brand new motor in a box, which he installed. I picked up the "new" motor Hameed had installed and it was clear it was not a new motor. I inserted my finger into the port. I could feel the edges of broken-off fan blades and two of them fell out on the floor. I showed Aziz the intake for my furnace and asked if it was possible for a piece of wood to go into it. He said absolutely not. He packed up the old motor, put everything back in place and left. I called Steven at A+ and asked him to check the QR bar code on the motor Aziz took away because I believed Hameed had deliberately damaged my original motor, ordered a new one, reinstalled the old one inadvertently leaving broken fan blade edges inside the motor. Steven did check and emailed me back to say he had checked, it was human error, that Hameed had removed and then reinstalled the same motor by mistake because there was "not enough light" in my basement and he hoped I would understand it was just an accident. This was no accident. There is lots of light in my basement. See the photo of the furnace area, which was taken without a flash. I asked Steve to return my $168.39 to me and over a week later I have had no reply from the company whatsoever, despite several emails. It is very disappointing. Clearly, Hameed deliberately damaged my original motor's fan blades, ordered a new motor for his own purposes, and reinstalled my existing motor, not bothering to remove all the broken-off edges of the fan from the housing. If you deal with this company, do not let them send Hameed. Aziz is an honest and professional man. I learned a lot from him. I will be following up with Home Depot Canada. The "approximate cost" indicated above is the $111.84 for the annual maintenance and the $168.39 "labour" that Hameed charged me. I feel quite disgusted to have been treated this way by A+ Air Systems.
