In early 2013, one of our HVAC units was not working well. We paid someone to 'diagnose' it, and…read morethey said, "This thing is over 20 years old. Here's a quote for a new one." The prospect of spending $5000 reminded us that we had a home warranty that came with the house. Warranty company sent Edwards out. They removed excessive refrigerant, as someone else had overfilled it. A few months later they also replaced a control board. After those two inexpensive repairs, the unit ran perfectly despite never having been serviced at all until the fall of 2017 (almost 5 full years after company #1 told us the unit wasn't worth fixing). When the unit stopped working again this fall we unfortunately could not remember "Edwards." We called 2 other companies in the fall. Both charged us heavily for diagnostics and ended up telling us that the problems were too significant to bother fixing the unit and instead of clear diagnostics gave us quotes for brand new systems. (These were both companies with great online reputations.) The two companies gave us two very different diagnoses, neither of which made sense to me from a common sense perspective, and I had the feeling they either didn't know what they were doing or were just trying to upsell us. We used a space heater all winter. I tripped the breaker who knows how many times by turning on a hair dryer while running a space heater in the bathroom. Last week I was going through some old stuff and found a receipt from 2013 when Edwards came out. I called. Less than 2 business days later, the unit is running perfectly after Adam Evans found 3 leaky valves and put refrigerant in it!
I can't thank you all enough for your honest business practices. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Thanks to Courtney for all the calls. Thank you Adam Evans! You are clearly very good at what you do.
For everyone - If you have an older unit that is not working, and you call someone and they are not able to give you a price for a repair, they did not successfully diagnose your problem. When Edwards comes, they say, "This is what's wrong and this is what it will cost to fix it." If Edwards recommends a new unit, I will trust it's time. Adam told us today that despite it's age, the unit has apparently not been run hard and should still have some life in it. That makes sense. It's a full size heat pump that services approximately 300 square feet. Yet another senseless upsell that someone fell for when they put the addition on our house! And that's another thing. Both of the companies we called in the fall told me "no, there's not a more economical way to heat this area." Made zero sense to me. A $40 space heater worked fine on the coldest nights this winter. Only downside was not being able to leave it on when we weren't home and coming home to that super cold room and bathroom. When Adam from Edwards was at our house today, before he knew what was wrong with the unit, he said if we needed to replace it, he would recommend a smaller system.
I am truly shocked by how poor HVAC service in this area other than Edwards has been for us. Amazed. And sadly, people will never know this if they just go along with the recommendations to replace a perfectly decent unit. We would not have thought to question the shady process used on us 3 times if not for the initial realization that we had a home warranty after we almost bought a new unit to replace a perfectly fine one. Please use Edwards. They are honest people, perhaps the only ones in our area from what we can tell, and if they wanted to, they could do just as well, or perhaps even better, by upselling everyone they can. We need them.
