I’m not sure what buck is being passed. Even if there was supposed to be something that should have limited the damage to the unit (and keep in mind that no one has actually looked at the AC unit yet anyway), that’s still not going to change the terms of the warranty if it was for five years. The other stuff, such as Jeff’s health situation, his fianancial situation, and so on, are not part of the equation. My guess is that Jeff’s questioning of the failsafes put the installer off and they decided to push him off to the manufacturer, but expecting the manufacturer to provide those details over the phone was unrealistic. That’s not the job of their customer service.
Jpinard, you should consider sending this story to tips (at) consumerist.com . I have seen a lot of companies blink on stuff like this once these horror stories hit the Consumerist blog. Given your health situation, your story’s pretty compelling, especially given that better companies do courtesy warranty extensions all the time to keep good will.
We’re finally back with air conditioning. The installer was an Iraq vet (I asked him if he ever got shocked since he did all the switching with the power on which worried me), and he told me stories about how the massive unshielded generators in Iraq - when they’d get rain the desert floor would be “electrified”. At any rate he was awesome and extremely intelligent.
Sarkus, my problem with Bryant was their absolute unwillingness to offer a shred of information, basically lie. The installer said, “Well I’m not surprised, the distributors don’t have that information” I said, “No, I called their corporate offices in Colorado”. He was stunned at their stonewalling.
In the end I will stay with my installer group, but will avoid Bryant. There’s no need to be total assholes when someone is just asking for basic information and in need. It wouldn’t have cost them a cent to tell me, “We did not design any fail-safes on your unit - that $10 part would have cut into our next unit’s profit too much which was a $500 upsell”.
No company will ever give you information like this.
Good to hear it all is fixed though.
Hey, Jeff, glad to see you got the air back flowing, and hopefully it didn’t cost too much.
Just as anecdotal info: you know I live just down the road from you in Ann Arbor. When we bought our home here 8 years ago, we deliberately bought one that didn’t have AC built in at all. It has forced-water (not steam) baseboard heat (which everyone will tell you is awesome in Michigan, and it really does work great), but no AC. 1100 sq feet above ground, 1100 or so below ground. We put a window AC at each end of the house upstairs every summer, and I bet we don’t run the things more than a total of 6 weeks or so the entire year. I take them out and closet them each fall, put back in the windows each early summer. 10,000 BTUs each. My total utility bill this month, even with how hot it has been, is $124. It stays about 73F degrees most of the time, creeps up to maybe 76 if the temperature outside gets over 90.
And in Michigan, that’s all you need, really. I know your health problems probably make things tougher, but I’m just not convinced the $5k or more cost of a forced-air system are worth it given the usage pattern I’ve found in 20 years of living up here. I bought both window units from Craigslist for less than $75 each, and they’ve worked great for at least 5 years. When they die I’ll replace them the same way.
So if your unit dies again and its gonna be expensive to fix, you might want to consider a lower-tech solution!
She could have told me the unit had no fail-safes, the installer filled me in on the rest. I specifically asked her about it and it would not have hurt them one bit to just tell me it didn’t have any.
Just as anecdotal info: you know I live just down the road from you in Ann Arbor. When we bought our home here 8 years ago, we deliberately bought one that didn’t have AC built in at all. It has forced-water (not steam) baseboard heat (which everyone will tell you is awesome in Michigan, and it really does work great), but no AC. 1100 sq feet above ground, 1100 or so below ground. We put a window AC at each end of the house upstairs every summer, and I bet we don’t run the things more than a total of 6 weeks or so the entire year. I take them out and closet them each fall, put back in the windows each early summer. 10,000 BTUs each. My total utility bill this month, even with how hot it has been, is $124. It stays about 73F degrees most of the time, creeps up to maybe 76 if the temperature outside gets over 90.
WOW. $124! That is amazing. And we keep the temperature at 77F (I’d like lower, but the it would be running constantly). I think I should build our house-plan in Sims3 and maybe post it. I’ve had no success getting decent airflow through the house. Yesterday the temperature in here peaked at 92F with about 70% humidity. It was icky. I think one of our big problems is we have an open stairwell (guard rail protects you from falling to the basement) that leads to the downstairs. It’s right in the middle of the house adjecent to the air returns so all the wonderful cold air plummets down instead of staying up here or getting recycled.
She probably has no idea. I’d assume that their customer service people and their technical information people are totally different, and that the technical people don’t talk direct to consumers. That’s why they HAVE an installer/dealer network.
Jeff, if you can get the house design up here I can take a look at it, but I do not have Sims3… Houses are normally easy to evaluate, but some information on the indoor and outdoor unit make it a lot easier to tell what is going on, as well as square footage of the house. Duct size is another major factor too… Is the air system used for heat as well?
Edit: In the future for anyone here looking to use a ducted AC system I recommend only buying York, Carrier, Lennox or Trane. They have the best warranties and the best reputations (Carrier had a bad spot a while back when they relocated to Mexico, but that is a different story). If you are using heat pumps for cooling/heating it gets into another mess altogether.
That’s what we have. We bought this house a couple of years ago. It has a heat pump circa 1989, so we’re over 20 years in the life of the pump. It’s on the list of foreseeable expenses.
In a more perfect world, I’d like to have a geothermal unit. That would also be a world with greater personal wealth and a higher balance in the bank fund for emergency home repairs. In a slightly less perfect world, given that we own a bilevel whose stairs form a perfect cold air return for the lower level, which is about 10 degrees colder than the rest of the house in winter, I’d settle for zone control.
jp you’re telling the wrong website about this…you should send this into The Consumerist immediately.
I hate to say it but include your personal struggles…it’s going to make Bryant sound all the more heartless.
There is a non trivial chance that if Consumerist runs with your story that you’ll get reimbursed for the repair bill. Companies hate looking mean on the web.
I needed to know this 6 years and 3 weeks ago.
Damn, I hate my POS AC.
Consumer reports said:
“We found no statistically meaningful differences in percent of models ever repaired for the brands listed below”
Where the brands were Rheem, Trane, Amana, American Standard, Ruud, Carrier, Bryant, Lennox, Heil, and York, and the percentages ranged from 13% to 16% of units needing repair.
Customer service is another story of course and CR doesn’t speak to it (or at least I didn’t find it.)
When I’m not pretending to be an internet pseudo celebrity, I work in an office for a propane company. Part of the office is a call center. We deal with placing fuel orders, scheduling service work, that sort of stuff. As a member of leadership, I sometimes take escalated calls. Even though I’m intimately familiar with the company and their policies, practices, etc, under no circumstances would I offer technical information like the type you requested over the phone. I wouldn’t lie about it either, though. I’d be honest and say that I work in an office, not in the field, and while I’m familiar with the information they’re requesting they should really contact a certified HVAC technician for that sort of thing.
The situation you’re describing sounds fairly similar. You’re talking to people who work in an office for Bryant, not the technicians that go out in the field every day and work with the A/C units. While they MIGHT have access to the info you wanted, they’re probably not willing to give it out due to liability issues. You can’t really blame a company for covering their ass. All you need is for some just out of high school kid who’s taking your phone calls part time telling some guy a shred of info, then having him go out and electrocuting himself after thinking he knows what he’s doing now. Just the same as I’m not going to tell you how to service your hot water tank so you can end up blowing yourself to pieces.
I know that you’d probably prefer to reuse the ductwork that is already installed in your house, but you may want to look into thisproduct by Mitsubishi. Incredible zone control, and you can get them setup for up to 8 zones. It also depends on where you live in the country as to how well they work, which is why i said they can get messy.