I’m 18 months into my first home. The sellers added a 24 month home warranty instead of replacing the 24 year old HVAC. Fine, we love the house. Of course, we’ve had trouble with the thing on a regular basis. Every time there’s an issue, the warranty company charges us 80$ and sends out the their preferred contractor to put a band-aid on it. It got to the point where I’d hire someone to diagnose it and only then can the warranty company so that I could verify their story.
Well, a month ago my air conditioning went out during a heat wave. I call an independent to diagnose, turns out my old-ass air conditioner has a leak. The outside cables are frozen, definitely a leak. The independent tells me the thing needs replaced, even if they wanted to repair it, the unit takes R22 which they don’t make anymore. So, armed with this info I call the warranty company, and they send their guys out, who proceed to put a bunch of R422B in my system. Thankfully I have it all on camera. I didn’t complain at the time because I know nothing about HVAC and figured my system must’ve been retrofitted at some point. For context, they didn’t even find the leak as there must be “two refrigerant incidents before the warranty company will allow us to find the leak”.
Fast forward to this week, my house hasn’t been hitting the thermostat temp consistently. I’m keeping it above comfortable room temp, the AC is always well above (unless it’s a cool day). I call the warranty guys and tell them there’s still an issue, they charge me anyway. I tell them I want a different contractor. They send a new contractor, much more professional, he tells me my coil needs cleaned and that my system is not retrofitted. I tell him what happened with the previous contractor and he lets me know it’s a problem that should be fixed.
I send the warranty company my evidence and they go radio silent but go ahead and authorize repairs by the new guy AND try and send the shitty R422B guys back to “fix their mistake”. Keep in mind they don’t tell me what they’re going to do— I assume because they don’t know or want to know. As I see it, the only thing that can be done is draining my system, finding the leak, fixing it, and either retrofitting or using R22 to charge my system back up. The warranty agents don’t seem to have the time or inclination to understand, and they insist I must let the shady contractors back to remedy the issue, which I will not allow.
Does anyone have a similar story? Can anyone advise me as to how I can get a good outcome here?