Reliance The Furnace Company Edmonton

We had a new furnace installed last month and Reliance was off to a good start with an easy to use online booking system, a fast response on the estimate, and a price that was on par with other contractors. The rest of our experience, unfortunately, has not gone as smoothly. Two technicians arrived to install the new furnace. There was no discussion of what work would take place or where new venting would be run, rather the technicians just got to work and drilled a hole in my house where they thought the new venting should go. Previous communications with Reliance led me to believe that there would be a system check and a walk through before the technicians left. One of the techs kindly walked me through operation of the thermostat, but the other fellow (after borrowing my multimeter to attempt to troubleshoot the furnace, since he did not have one of his own on hand) simply stated that I would receive a call sometime later in the day for another technician to come by and fix the furnace since they could not get it up and running. I was thankful I arranged to have the whole day off of work as there was no call, rather the third technician stopped by unannounced. It turns out that the installation crew had cut through several wires when installing the new air filter ducting. The third fellow was very polite and was able to solve the problem within a few minutes and had our furnace up and running.

The actual furnace itself is great - much quieter, more efficient, and more even heat throughout our house compared to our old unit. While the inside of my house was left clean (minus a few unscrewed lightbulbs from the original crew where the new venting had been run), a significant amount of resin was spilled along my stone walkway, patio and stairs. There was a patch where one of the original crew members had obviously tried to wipe it up, but had only succeeded in rubbing it into the pores and the making the stone look worse. The patio and stonework is only just over a year old (and I spent more on the stonework than the furnace!), and I was quite upset that the original technicians had made such a mess on the stone when we had plenty of grass and a gravel driveway that they could have used instead. It took several weeks and quite a few calls/e-mails/text messages to arrange for a sub-contractor to come out and look at the stones and though it has been over a month since the furnace was installed, I am still waiting on Reliance to "source the patio stones" based on the information I provided and/or come up with a plan to remediate the spills.

Also, since we had the furnace installed during a relatively warm period, we did not notice for a few days that the new venting was leaking. Again, it took a couple of communications to arrange for a repair crew to come out to fix the leaking venting. We were told that the repair crew would be out before noon on a Saturday, and two gentlemen arrived at 11:58 on the Saturday morning, cut-out and replaced the leaking section within 5 minutes. If the repair had been successful, that would have been awesome, but flash forward 60 minutes and the leak was back (I suspect the support for the venting was tightened abruptly before the resin had set). We scheduled another repair, and were given a window of 2 pm - 5 pm on a Monday. Given that both my husband and I work, we had made arrangements to have someone home during that window, but to our dismay, no one showed up and no calls were placed to inform us about any change in the scheduled appointment. After an e-mail the next day to my contact, I received another call to schedule the repair and was told that there was a miscommunication the day prior. The next repair is supposed to be tomorrow evening, and I truly hope that it works out. It has been 5 weeks of us having to have a bucket in the middle of our basement floor to catch drips from our new furnace. At this point, it feels almost like a comedy of errors and I must admit that I have regretted my choice of installer after all the extra time the subsequent appointments/repairs have required, and I still have a leaking vent and marred stonework. I was charged in full for the work the day of the installation, despite the fact that no walk through was conducted and I did not sign off on anything for completion of the work. I tried waiting to fill out the e-mailed customer satisfaction survey (since the work has not yet been completed), but I found out too late that the link has expired. Reliance has some good things going for it (some good technicians, sometimes prompt responses, good furnaces), but my personal experiences have left me feeling somewhat sour. I truly hope that they will fix the leaking venting and the spills soon.

November 7, 2017: Updating the review - a Reliance technician stopped by last week to fix our leak and we are happy now to be able to put away our bucket under the venting. The technician even came early in the evening so that we didn't have to miss any more time away from work, which was great. We received assurances from the Edmonton General Manager that a follow up for our patio repair will be done this coming spring (2018), so hopefully I'll be able to check back later with good news!