Reliance Home Comfort

I was enrolled in the Reliance Heating Protection and Maintenance Plan a few months ago, to take advantage of the annual furnace maintenance inspection and also with the hope to save time, money and frustration when the need arises. Unfortunately, my experience with this protection plan was an absolute nightmare and I did not gain any of the benefits I was hoping for. The lack of knowledge and experience of the Reliance staff on our hot water boiler furnace had actually caused more of my time off from work; a lot of frustration; a few sleepless nights without heat and the worst of it all, I ended up spending more money out of my own pocket to replace the old furnace, which was only about 7 years old.

I put this so call protection plan to the test when our furnace started to behave erratically and fail to start periodically. I called Reliance and was happy that an appointment was arranged quickly. Unfortunately, that was the end of my positive experience associated with this protection plan. Over the next three weeks after the initial call, two different Reliance staff had visited our home in 5 occasions to repair our furnace. In the first 3 occasions, the service person sent to repair the furnace did not have any experience nor the knowledge in maintaining a hot water boiler furnace. After playing with the various furnace parts during the first 2 visits, this person was not able to determine the cause of the furnace problem but decided to replace one of the parts, hoping that would fix the problem. The part took about two weeks to get delivered. The part was replaced during his 3rd visit but unfortunately the furnace continued to act erratically. So, another call to Reliance for the 4th time and the same service person returned and admitted he had no experience in repairing our furnace and suggested I called Reliance again to request someone else who might have the knowledge in repairing the hot water boiler furnace. So, I called Reliance one more time for another appointment. On this 5th visit, a different Reliance service person came and he seemed to know the operation of the hot water furnace system, but unfortunately, he did not have any knowledge on the unit that was installed in our house nor know how to repair it. Again, he looked and adjusted a few furnace parts and also took a quick look at the installation manual for our furnace but still could not determine the cause of the problem. However, this time he decided to tag our furnace because he noticed there was an extra add-on fan to the furnace exhaust that was not part of the original equipment. He then basically said there was nothing else he could do until the add-on fan was removed by a licensed contractor, which I had to find on my own and complete within next 30 days. I was also told that Reliance would not come back to repair the furnace until the add-on fan was removed. At that time, the furnace was still working but was cutting out periodically and I had to reset it manually, which caused me a few sleepless nights. Although I was still enrolled in this protection plan, but Reliance left me out in the cold with this furnace problem and the risk of the total furnace breakdown and no heat during those cold winter nights. Over the next few days, I tried calling many contractors. Unfortunately, all of the licensed heating contractors were busy because it was winter time and removing a fan was a small job that no contractors would want to do during that time. I was unable to find any contractor to do this job and decided to replace the furnace because I just could not take the risk of the furnace break down and without any heat in the middle of the cold winter.

It had been an extremely frustrating experience in dealing with Reliance’s service staff. They have been to our house to check and attempt to repair the furnace 5 times but decided to tag the furnace on the last visit for a small issue which I was not able to get any contractor to do during a busy period in the middle of the winter. Why was I not told during the 1st visit if there was a problem with the furnace? Was this an easy way for staff to get out of a situation that they could not fix?

My opinion, unless you have a popular furnace model and the people maintaining them have sufficient knowledge of the product, this protection plan is likely useless for you. Joining the protection plan had wasted a lot of my time, caused additional frustrations, money and a few nights without heat.