Comfort Sentry Inc

mrpickem _{on Google}

Aug 6th, 2012

My complete carrier unit was installed by Comfort Sentry in 2005. After a couple minor followup adjustments, the install was a success. It worked very well and I had no problems. I let them do annual checkups for a couple years and never had any problems.
A couple weeks ago my a/c failed as the outside unit would not come on. I called Comfort Sentry on July 26th at 8AM and was told they would have a tech out between 3-6PM that day. The tech arrived within a couple minutes of 6PM. Very nice guy. He went straight to the outside unit with nothing but a cordless drill to remove the side panels with. Before he had the 2nd panel removed he informed me it was a bad run capacitor and he doubted he had one on the truck. After he got the 2nd panel off he looked at the capacitor and wrote down some numbers off it, then went to his truck checked and did not have one. He came back, wrote down the rest of the numbers and did nothing more than a visual inspection of the unit. Said they would order the capacitor and call me the next day. I paid a $80 Service call for maybe 5-10 minutes.
The next morning, early...I called Totalline for availability and price on said capacitor and was informed they had several and it was $10. An hour or so later I received a call from Comfort Sentry saying they were picking up the capacitor and would come by before noon to install it at a price of $200! I assumed this had been properly diagnosed so I told the lady it would be much quicker and cheaper for me to replace the capacitor myself.
I went directly to TotalLine and picked up the capacitor. Went back home and replaced it in 5 minutes or less. It is very simple replacement. After powering the unit back up, it still would not come on! I then called back to Comfort Sentry at maybe 1030-11AM and they lady was very unsympathetic, although she tried to be nice. She said it would now be Monday before another tech could return and it would be another $80 service call. This was Friday and the temp was close to 100 degrees. I really believe that if the original tech would have took more time to properly diagnose the problem, instead of assuming it was a common issue. I really consider this a shoddy business practice and will NEVER use Comfort Sentry again and definitely cannot recommend them to anyone I know.
Later that day I got another freelance a/c tech by to recheck the unit and it was discovered it was a bad breaker in the sub panel mounted right beside the unit. If the original tech would have at least broke out his tester, I'm sure he could have fixed it on the spot.
I give them a zero on the service call, but give them a 1 overall because the original install was a decent job some 7 years ago. Maybe them techs have moved on...I don't know. But, I do recommend everyone steer clear of this outfit.