Andy Lindstrom
2 years ago
RIP OFF HVAC Service, do not use them, they try to upsell you and price gouge hoping you will pay a premium for their service. They also won't send you an invoice with a parts and labor breakdown which is pretty standard in the industry, which points to them trying to pad their fees. They also will try to take advantage of you if you are female, as they assume if you are a woman you are not mechanically inclined and try to take advantage of that.Hello all. I am by no way an HVAC technician, however I have been a machinist, welder, and mechanic most of my life, so I have a little bit of all experience.Our furnace stopped producing heat, and I decided I didn't need to deal with it so my wife gave All Hours a call, and they sent a tech out to give an estimate. My wife was the only one home with our new baby, and I was at work, so I told her to to just get the bid. Our furnace is older anyways so I decided to see what it would cost to replace our new unit.The technician that came out quoted us $1,200 to replace the draft inducer in the burner, saying that the furnace was 11 years old and it was not recommended anyways to repair it and agreed with me to replace it. He also said it was nearly impossible to find parts for this furnace cause it was an off brand. Caveat; I have never worked on furnaces so I believed him and asked him to quote replacing our furnace for a 96% 60,000 BTU furnace which was the correct calculation for the house. The technician started arguing with me saying that they we needed to get the furnace through them as they had all the parts. OK fair enough, waited to get their estimate.On the LOW END, they wanted to charge $6,000 to replace our furnace with a new one, and $24,000 to a full furnace swap and install a heat pump.On further research, a Goodman 96% efficient 60K BTU propane furnace is $1,200 with free shipping to our door. Even when I inquired about paying for the labor I was told it would still be over $6,000 and they kept dodging my questions about how many hours it would take and what their hourly labor rate was. Every contractor I have worked with across multiple industries ALWAYS gives me their labor rate and a job estimate for billable hours. This is when I started to expect they were not being truthful and trying to pad their pockets with extra money.My dad drove up the same day to help me look at our furnace, and noticed the draft inducer was unplugged when we popped the access panel and plugged it back in, the motor got hot instantly. Four bolts and a screw later we had the draft inducer out and noticed the bearings had failed and seized up.Ten minutes on Google and $113 with free shipping later, my new draft inducer arrived, I installed it in ten minutes, and the burners kicked on again, and my furnace is working fine. Looking into the average HVAC rate, a contractor should charge between $150-$250 per hour, and replacing an entire furnace with the gas already run is at maximum a 4 hour job with a tech who knows what they are doing.I can't believe this *company* was trying to charge me $1,200 for ten minutes worth of work to replace a glorified 120 V motor. What happened to honesty in the business?People, do your own research and do not get ripped off by unscrupulous contractors such as these. They are hoping you are not smart enough to ask the right questions such as (how long the job takes/billable hours/parts). There seems to me a lot of these outfits in Reno so please do your own research to not get ripped off by shoddy companies. Just read the other reviews on here..... the average cost for a brand new hvac with central install from a reputable contractor is around $3,500-$4,000 including parts.-Andy