Comfort Heating & Air

Summary: Comfort Heating and Air tried to charge me 10x more than the fair rate for a repair, and to make matters worse, misdiagnosed the issue. ~~~ Last month I had an issue with my HVAC system and called Comfort Heating and Air (they installed the system about six years ago). They diagnosed the problem as X and Y and quoted $2,128 to repair it, then offered a “discount” to $1,800. I assumed the quote must have accidentally included the cost of parts that were still under warranty, so I called the office to confirm. They told me the parts were free under warranty and that the “discounted” $1,800 was labor only. In the same conversation, I asked how long the repair would take and— apparently without realizing the disconnect in their eagerness to schedule the repair—they said, “less than two hours.” I immediately pointed out that that works out to $900 per hour for labor, even with the discount! They displaced blame by saying that they don’t set pricing (“it just comes up in the computer”). I said that seems like a ridiculous price for labor, and I’m going to check around to make sure the price is reasonable before approving the work. In response, they informed me that my warranty would be void if anyone else worked on the system. After looking into it, I learned the warranty is with the manufacturer (not the installer), the parts they claimed I needed would only cost a few hundred dollars even if I bought them myself without using the warranty, and the parts replacement was easy enough that I could do it myself (even knowing little about HVAC systems). To check my options, I searched nextdoor for recommendations and decided to reach out to another HVAC company that had received positive reviews from my community. Although it was after hours (around 8pm), they replied to my email within six minutes. They promptly obtained the warranty parts and agreed to repair it for under $200. If that wasn’t enough, they ultimately determined that Comfort had misdiagnosed the problem; this other company had the system working in about an hour with no new parts and charged me $125. (I intentionally waited several weeks to post this so I could report that the system truly is working now without an issue.) I’ve also since learned that Comfort’s techs earn commission on what they upsell, whereas more reputable companies pay a straightforward hourly rate without incentives to sell extra work. The misdiagnosis might have been an honest mistake (that unnecessarily left my house in extreme cold for several days), but the quote for 10x more than the fair labor cost to do the repair was certainly not a mistake, as they confirmed themselves. If that’s the price that came up in their system, as they claimed, it was based on the information they input into the system: “we did the original install + free warranty parts + we diagnosed + told him the warranty is only good with us + it’s well below freezing + we dangled a few hundred dollars discount to prevent him from shopping around = mark it up over 1000% and you’ll likely get the sale). I didn’t fall for it, but I know others might—so I’m posting this so others can make informed choices. I have used Comfort to install four HVAC systems over the years, and all was fine, but the moment something went wrong, they tried to take advantage of me in a grossly unethical way. Therefore, I won’t use them again and hope others will learn from my experience and steer clear of them, too.

I’ve had a great experience with Comfort Heating and Air! I called them on a Sunday afternoon because my furnace wasn’t distributing heat. John came out, very polite, he scoped my unit and come to find out I needed a new one. He had another coworker come out and do a consult late Sunday evening. You can’t ask for better service. Ryan spent two hours explaining the pros and cons of the new units they feature. He explained every detail of their process for install and even managed to schedule a crew to come out first thing in the morning to replace our HVAC system. Very happy with this company and their team! Thank you for being available when we needed you the most.

This Team was Wonderful! Tim was SO great with working with us. We had been out of heat for almost a week. He worked with us and was very nice! When the team came out they did a GREAT job! Thank you SO MUCH! I would recommend Comfort Heating & Air to anyone! Thank you Tim, Dawson, "tiny" Robby, and Matthew! Ya'll did a SUPER job and wonderful to talk with!