Serene Comfort Heating, Cooling and Refrigeration

This company required me to prepay $140 to come out to diagnose my HVAC problem, which they collected over the phone with a credit card. The technician claimed that he fixed my AC and said that he would email the invoice. Later that day we noticed the AC was still not cooling to the temperature set. When I read the invoice this company charged me $190 to clean my AC compressor. Below is a picture of their work. As you can see it’s still filthy. There was a charge on the invoice for $2,334 worth of refrigerant. What’s odd about this is that there was no leak repair. If a system required $2,334 worth of refrigerant why wouldn’t they repair a leak or at least test for a leak? The other issue I had with this company is that they never charged my card for the upfront visit fee. They stored my credit information and charged my card for the entire service without my consent. Most reputable companies send an invoice for the work and the customer pays after the work is verified. I would not have paid the invoice at that time because the compressor was not cleaned and the AC still wasn’t working. I did not trust the work this company did so I hired another HVAC company to assess the system. The new company informed me that if the compressor isn’t cleaned properly you will get false refrigerant readings. The new company actually removed the panels to clean the compressor properly (they only charged me $75). They measured the refrigerant readings and informed me that the system was over filled with refrigerant (which they had to remove from the system). The only work this company did to get my AC unit working was clean the compressor, change the filter (which was in bad shape), and remove the excess refrigerant. The AC has been working for the last 6 weeks through 90-100 degree weather with no issues. I also asked company to perform a leak test because the other company claimed the the AC unit needed 6 pounds of refrigerant. After 6 weeks they determined that there was no leak in the system and the pressures of the system remained unchanged from 6 week prior. I have pictures and documentation from the company that actually repaired the AC in my home. I showed the company that performed the initial service pictures of the dirty compressor that they charged me $190 to clean and all the documentation from the company that fixed my AC unit (including the refrigerant readings). At this point I am still trying to recover funds from the first company for the cleaning and refrigerant charges.

Technician was on site for about five minutes and immediately shut down my boiler, stating it needed to be replaced due to a 700 ppm reading, with no further explanation or diagnostics. I’m a firefighter familiar with CO response and monitored the home for hours afterward—five CO detectors stayed at 0 ppm the entire time. Buyer beware. Ask questions and get clear explanations before agreeing to a replacement.