Air Doctor of Clearwater, Pinellas County
Air Doctor is an air conditioning and heating firm located in Clearwater. They serve the Tampa Bay area, including St Petersburg, Clearwater, Pinellas County, Tampa and Hillsborough County.
Buying Air Conditioning Equipment from Air Doctor
In May of 2006 I was having problems with the air conditioning in a home that I owned in St Petersburg. I contacted the company with which I had a home warranty on the home, American Home Shield or AHS. They sent out the company, Air Doctor, that AHS uses to service the Pinellas County area. As it turned out, the issue was that the A/C unit for the house was insufficient to handle the size of the home. Obviously this is something that a home warranty can't cover. So, I selected Air Doctor to provide me with a new system, consisting of a new air handler and compressor. The cost of the system and installation was approximately $4000. I didn't bother shopping around.
Trouble with Air Conditioning in St Petersburg
In August 2007, the tenants in the home called to let me know that there was a leak in the ceiling. As it wasn't raining the culprit was obviously the overflow tray of the air handler that was immediately above the location of the leak. I got up into the attic and sucked the water out of the tray using a wet dry vac. I also contacted Air Doctor and told them what had happened. They said that they would send someone over to look at it and that there would be no charge.
The technician arrived and quickly summed up the situation as being that the drain pipe for the air handler was clogged. He used a wet dry vac just like mine to suck the crud out of the pipe. I had to lend him my ladder, which I had brought to the house, as he didn't have one. He told me that the charge was $75 for the ten minutes that he was there.
I told him that I had been promised that there would be no charge. I also asked him why the pipe hadn't been cleared when the unit had been installed and if it was such a simple matter why it hadn't been suggested to me to do it myself. One also wonders why there was no drain pipe directly from the overflow tray as well as from the air handler. There is a float switch which turns off the air handler if the amount of water in the overflow tray becomes excessive but obviously it was set at a level insufficient for this tray as now there was water ruining the ceiling.
I paid the $75 begrudgingly though I told him that it was under protest. You have to pay these things otherwise you get slapped with a mechanic's lien or have to deal with some other sort of creditor's harassment.
Air Doctor Makes A Promise
I contacted Air Doctor later that day, and they conceded that though they wouldn't waive the fee, that they would give me a free inspection and tune up. This was promised to me by Melody in their front office. I shouldn't really need that but I accepted it as the only way I'd get some true value for my $75. Being busy I didn't have time to schedule it at that time.
St Petersburg Air Conditioning Installation Faulty
In October I was up in the attic to inspect the damage caused by the overflow. Fortunately, it was non existent. The ceiling below had been stained but the drywall in the attic seemed in good condition. I did note that there were two holes, about a 1/4 inch each in the ducting, immediately after the ducting exited from the air handler. This didn't impress me, as there seemed to be a substantial leak of cool air from these holes. It seems unlikely that they couldn't have been noticed at the time of installation. All I had at hand to clog the holes was some insulation as I had no desire to go down, get some tape and come up again into that attic. These leaks seem to fit in with the tenants complaint about the extraordinarily high amount they were paying for power.
On my way out, I must have kicked or bumped the outlet pipe from the air handler to the drain pipe to the outside. Usually these two pipes would be taped together where they were connected, however the installers from Air Doctor failed to do this. My bumping the connection, disconnected it. The condensation from the air handler was now spilling onto the inside of the ceiling rather than draining to the outside.
A couple of weeks later, this load of water then caused the ceiling to collapse. Once up in the attic, it was easy to see the root of the problem and solve it by connecting the two pipes and taping them up. However, it also meant $150 to get the ceiling fixed.
Air Doctor Takes Back Their Commitment
About the same time as the ceiling problem was building up, for some reason the A/C in my residence stopped working. We had cool weather so it didn't bother me for a week, but then I decided to contact Air Doctor and see if I could use the "credit" with them to have someone come over and diagnose the issue. The phone was picked up by someone who sounded articulate and authoritative, and I estimated that this may have been one of the owners. He identified himself as "Will". I explained the situation and he said that he would investigate and call back. Unfortunately Melody was no longer with the company and was not available to verify the situation or what she said.
Will called back and told me that he had spoken with the customer service manager and he said it was a "he said, she said" situation (that is what you say when you are calling someone a liar), and that there was no such promise and they would have to charge the diagnostic fee of $75 if I wanted to use Air Doctor's services. I thanked him and said that I would call him if I thought that would be the case. I had also offered to him, since he was one of the proprietors, the opportunity of using my services for search engine optimization. Their site came up for someone entering something like "air doctor pinellas", but that would only be people who knew they existed, someone entering "air conditioning pinellas" would find them at #95 on Google.
I thought about it and sent the following e-mail:
"Attention: Will
Dear Will
I spoke to you earlier about fixing my system and you said that the free tune-up offer had been rescinded, in fact never existed as far as AD was concerned.
How about since I came to AD through AHS (a relationship which eventually resulted in $4000 worth of business to you) we split the difference and I only pay the $45 which is the standard AHS fee. $30 isn't a lot but as you know people get upset about the principle of the thing. One person in a company says that you are getting something and the next says no you aren't.
Of course, one day we will have to talk about the search engine optimization thing. On Google for air conditioning pinellas you are about #90, and not even in the top 100 for air conditioning clearwater.
It would be dead easy to get you ranking for those terms."
So I was offering to meet them half way, and also the possibility of a win win situation. I get some business and their profile on the web would be higher. However I never heard back from Will Abberger (I looked it up on SunBiz.org).
Air Doctor Recommendation
From my experience with the problems of both the installation and the customer service from Air Doctor, I would not recommend that this company be used.
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