I do not recommend using J & J Heating & Air Conditioning for any service. Short version is that the company does bad work, does not stand by their work, and cannot correctly diagnose the problem.
This is the longer version. I contacted the company regarding a nonfunctioning air conditioner that turned on and blew air but not cold air.
They arrived the next day. The lead technician took a look at the unit and asked how old it was (4 years, installed as part of our purchase of the home). The tech stated that the installation of the air conditioning unit did not look like it was done by a professional due to poor workmanship. He measured the amount of refrigerant in the unit and told me that the unit was almost completely empty. He said that as far as he could tell from the outside there was nothing wrong with the unit itself and that there must be a crack somewhere in the line.
The tech also asked if we knew who had installed the unit. We did not. The tech told me that on a unit that was 4 years old there was no reason that the unit should be out of refrigerant and that whoever installed it had not done good work and was not a professional. The tech listed off two options moving forward and priced out each option, roughly between $1,000 and $1,200 either way, with multiple hours of work quoted and no guarantee on finding the crack in the line, as well as the possibility of additional costs due to more labor hours.
I was again asked if I knew who had installed the air conditioning unit. The tech told me that I should look into whoever installed the unit and have them fix their mistakes because the price to fix it was going to be costly for me and that that would probably be the best route to take. He then mentioned that J and J installed Goodman brand units and wondered if it was them. He assured me that they would not have done such poor work and that they would not have installed the unit the way it was if they had done it, and would have done a few other things differently. He assured me that if J and J had installed it, it would be a different matter regarding cost because it would be their fault. He also asked if we had had any AC repair work done or other repairs to the air system, which I answered no except for the cleaning of a dirty flame sensor in the furnace. He then continued and asked me to wait while he called to see if J and J had installed the air conditioning unit.
After checking with their office, the lead tech told me that according to the records J and J were the ones who did the installation of the unit, but the company would not be covering anything regarding the cost of repairs, as it was out of warranty. I would have to pay the roughly $1,000.00 to have it repaired at a minimum. He stated that the unit had been working for 3 years without a problem so it couldn't be their fault.
The lead tech repeated over and over that he was sorry about the situation but that he was just the messenger, but he would get started right away filling the system with the refrigerant and dye that day and we could run the system and they'd be back in a week to check it out. I politely refused, paid the service fee, and contacted someone else. Why I would pay someone to fix their own bad work is beyond me.
The upside to this situation is that I got in touch with a much better local company who came out and didn't have to rely filling the system with dye or doing soap bubble tests with nitrogen for hours on end, because they actually had tools to detect refrigerant leaks in the system. As it turns out, J and J had done a poor job on the installation, not just because they did a poor job sealing the line coming into the house, or running it to the furnace, or letting old equipment hang off the new unit instead of being removed, but because the evaporator coil in the furnace was already at its end of life when the new AC unit had been installed. That was the actual source of the refrigerant leak, which the company I did end up going with did not even need to take 2 seconds to look at to figure out that was the problem. It was a rusted discolored mess, and the refrigerant detector went off immediately when probed.
When J and J had come to our house to diagnose the problem, they did not look at the evaporator coils at all. They glanced at the furnace, glanced at the line downstairs, checked our thermostat and then went outside to tell us there had to be a crack in the line because of the lack of refrigerant. They repeatedly tried to push back on us that we had somehow messed something up by doing our own repairs, trash talked their own work, told us they'd stand by their work, reneged on that promise, then tried to stick us with the bill for a problem that turned out wasn't even the problem but would have been plain to see if they had done a cursory review of the entire system.
Go with someone else besides J and J. read more
