ComplaintsforEconomy Hearth & Home Inc

• Initial Complaint

  10/09/2023

  Complaint Type:

  Service or Repair Issues

  Status:

  Answered

  More info

  Date of transaction August, 2022. Reviews on website & voicemail as to their status with the Better Business Bureau are greatly misleading. Investigation number with Carrier is *******. ******* said to please call for input. Purchased a 5 stage heat pump last year. Problems from the start. Company would not return phone calls. Had to physically go to the office to say the system was not working. Installed wrong (head of instillation). Still didn't work, ran off the electric. 2nd time (Oct 2022), the lock out for freezing temp ABOVE 36 degrees not BELOW. 3rd & 4th (February 2023), did not return phone calls, had to go to the office. System struggling in Stage 5. Reported the company to Carrier. Economy did not return *******'s phone calls. The ** came to the house, reported to Carrier. Still no diagnosis of problem. Locked it out of stage 5 because of vibration & constant defrosting.One good technician at Economy, who called me to meet in May. Leaving the company in June. Aware of my issues. He detected, at installation, the factory settings of 7ft were NEVER to 35ft! Explained the vibration & the struggles for the system. Not installed properly last August! 5 major installation MISTAKES. The ** Sales Manager or owner has never return a call or apologize for the companies many mistakes. Unprofessional. Would think would care about the customer, especially when the issues were from mistakes by his installation team. ******* has taken them off their list. It is a learning curve when you think a company is trained by the company whose equipment they install.We are waiting on a diagnosis on my $18,000 unit to see if it is damaged from the installation mistakes. Again, pulling teeth. I'm holding my breath with the company not following up.The 1 yr installation check-up, determined that stage 1 was not working. The technician was good & came back to fix. New service manager says they are now keeping records on installations & visits. Nothing, prior to this.

  Business response

  10/13/2023

  To whom it may concern
  
  
  Economy Hearth and Home started ******************** system change out on October 12, 2022. The plan was to Change out the HeatPump and AirHandler, but not the Line set. The line set was going to be reused from the old system but wrapped in insulation and a ** wrap. 
  
  
  So, we started the change out on October 12,2022 and finished it October 13,2022. Heating and cooling working. It wasnt tuned in. It was still not performing at 100% But unfortunately ****** had to go back home to **** on October 14, 2022. Unfortunately when it was installed the installer didnt program the system correctly and the backup heat wasnt engaging when it was supposed to. So when she was coming back up to Washington, she was on her phone telling her system to heat the house, the system didnt have the heat strips engaging to help heat the house in a timely fashion.
  
  
  November 17, 2022 ****** called because here fan wont shut off and ******* talked her though how to change her settings back to what we had them at. Which is auto. So when calling for heat or cooling, the fan will come on. But if there isnt a call for heat or cooling, the fan is off.
  
  
  So when ****** came back to Washington for a couple days in November and December, we went out to her house and we went out and tried to adjust the programming and it was getting better, but not great. We then brought in Carrier reps and Carrier technical support people to help with this system, it wasnt running at 100% efficiency. But in the winter months she would call the office for the service manager and she was told that he is out fixing NO HEAT calls and he will be in at the end of the day, but she would just call back every hour. But once I got back in to the office I would give her a call back. 
  
  
  ****** told us that **** had a lot of snow in ******* so she wasnt able to make it to Washington. So then on ******* 30, 2023 ****** emails that she is trying to come back Feb. 14th & 15th. She is also trying to come up on March 27, 28, and 29 In Feb when we went out we found that the linseed length inputted into to the program was like twenty shorter that the real length of it. So after that it was running great. So we insulated her linseed and wrapped with the ** protector and raised it out of the dirt and strapped it to the house. Even when system was running properly and at 100%, She still thought something is still wrong. She wanted someone else to tell her that it is OK. 
  
  
  August 29, 2023 I went out to here house to run tests on her system which are all documented into the thermostat. So we ran about 8 different tests through the thermostat and it gives you a test result after each test which I took pictures of and sent them to ****** at Airefco. He said that all of the tests look great and that the system is working properly and doesnt look like there was any damage that occurred while it the system wasnt programmed correctly. So, after a month of hounding ****** is when he sent a email stating that everything looked great. 
  
  
  Then on the beginning of October ****** calls and says her unit is broke! The fan is blowing continuously. So I walked her though how to change the programming of the fan function. Sure enough, she switched it to be a continuous fan on low. She said her fan turned off. Then a few days later she calls, my system is broken! The fan is staying on after it heats for up to five hours sometimes. So I called Carrier and they told me about a personal comfort setting that she must have programmed. So I called her back, I walked her through to this comfort setting and she said that it was on low. I told her to switch it back to auto. She did and the system was fixed. It just seems like she likes to do a lot of programming on her thermostat and phone while not knowing what she is doing and then calling it broken when she is the one that programmed it to do it. So, I now think back at eight or so times we have gone back, were any of those issues caused by her programming her system to work differently from her thermostat or phone? We will never know.
  

  I do know that it didn't go smooth. There was a faulty part, which isn't good. We did make a programming mistake. We did have to ask for help from Carrier. And they were confused why it wasn't working properly as well. But I honestly think the process would have been easier and smother if we were working with a customer that lived locally and that didn't like to change settings constantly on the thermostat and on her phone. I also think that it isn't fare to say we don't call you back, because ****** likes to call half a dozen times in a day before I get back to the office from my service calls. But I tried to call her back at least once a day on the same day she called. I hope that ****** knows that I/We tried our best to make the "Not the Best" situation into a job or product "done rite".
  
  Thanks for your your time.
  
  
  *************************
  Economy Hearth and Home
  *************
  
  

  
  

  Customer response

  10/16/2023

   
  Complaint: 20714556
  
  I am rejecting this response because: The letter is not accurate and misleads the installation errors. Plus the lack of response to the customer and NO response to Carrier. Unprofessional. See Carrier case number *******. My clarifications/comments are in red in the letter.
  
  Sincerely,
  
  *************************

*Some consumers may elect to not publish the details of their complaints, some complaints may not meet BBB's standards for publication, or BBB may display a portion of complaints when a high volume is received for a particular business. ↩