Business Review: American Residential Services (ARS)

Due to the hot climate in Florida, I recently called American Residential Services out to my home to have a look at my air conditioning unit. I called many local air conditioning companies before calling ARS. I chose ARS to service my AC because they only charge a $59.99 service charge to come out. Other companies in my area were charging $80 or more. That includes the diagnostic and troubleshooting service. Once they determine what is wrong with your AC unit they will tell you what parts you will need, how much it will cost and how long it will take.

Well, after requesting service from ARS, their national dispatch center said that someone would be out with in 2 hours and sure enough, they were there in an hour and a half. Never did I expect such a horrible outcome.

My reason for calling ARS was that the fan ran continuously. We would have to turn the unit off at the breaker or else once the house was cooled it would then blow in warm air from outside.

When the ARS began troubleshooting he said that who ever installed the thermostat had installed it as a heat pump when it should not have been. He flipped a few switches and said that he was going to have to unplug some wires because the thermostat had burnt up the heating strips since they had been continuously running from the error of the thermostat settings. Since I know nothing about air conditioners, I took his word for it. He said that I would need new heating strips but that would be several hundred dollars and he would have to have the company order them in order to find out exactly how much that would be.

The technician had just packed up his tools and put my unit back together when, I asked him if that was going to solve the continuous fan problems. He said that it would and that the only reason the fan had been blowing was because it was over heating since the heat strips were running continuously.

Has he begun to write out by ticket I checked the system. Needless to say, the fan was still running continuously. I informed him that it was not fixed and he took another look. That's when he discovered that there was nothing wrong with the heat strips and reconnected them. Turns out it was a faulty relay switch.

Once he had reconnected the heat strips that he had disconnected after misdiagnosing the unit, he wrote me a purchase ticket to include the $59.99 charge, and $89.00 electrical wiring fee and $264 for the part.

I asked him why there was an $89.00 electrical wiring fee since the diagnostic and troubleshooting was in the service fee. He said that the fee was for him checking the wires and for having to disconnect them from the heating strips and then reconnect them. I politely told him that I was not going to pay a fee for something he misdiagnosed. He promptly took the fee off and told me that I would only need to pay the service charge and then the $264 if I wanted him to install the new fan relay that day. He told me that he had the part in the van so I wrote out a check for the full amount well over $300.

Once he had the check in his hand and the signed purchase order, he told me that he had just remembered that he was all out of fan relays but that he would get one ordered and that he would be back in 2-5 days to delivery it. Well if you have ever lived in Florida then you know 2-5 days with out AC is torture.

One week went buy and I still had not heard anything from American Residential Services. I called their dispatch center and they said that the part had been ordered and that they were waiting on it to come in. Two weeks later I placed another phone call. This time I was starting to get a little worried since they had my payment and I had no part. After waiting 5 weeks, and multiple phone calls the ARS dispatch center referred me to a local ARS office that was only 100 miles from my home. I spoke with the supervisor and they said that they would check on the part and call me back. After waiting two days to hear back from the supervisor I requested a refund for the amount of the part. I was told that it would be 1-2 weeks as it would have to go through corporate and get approved.

In the mean time I called another AC repair company, this time he was local. Once he installed the new relay switch, and started the AC unit it immediately burnt up my thermostat. He installed a new, and it too was burnt up. After doing some troubleshooting he realized that when the ARS technician had reconnected the heating strips they had incorrectly connected many of the wires. As a result, the heating strips did burn up.

Over 2 months have gone buy and I have yet to get a refund for the part that I paid for but never received. In addition it cost me over $500 to have the parts replaced that they damaged.

If you ever need any residential services stay far away from American Residential Services. Find a local company. They are more likely to be able to assist you promptly and insure that you will be able to make direct contact with the business if something were to go wrong.