Jen wrote on 08-13-2012

Horrible Customer Service

Let me start by saying that I have never had as bad of an experience with a company as I have had with this company and never seen a company show such disregard for their customers. I hope this review saves some people from the horrible situation and massive amount of time, frustration, and money that we have been subjected to by this company. We bought an A/C unit from Helton's less than 2 years ago and on 7/19/12 the unit was not working when we came home. We called and they sent a technician out the next morning at 7 a.m. to work on the unit. He tinkered on the thing until 2:30 p.m. and came and left for parts 3 times before finally taking the entire fan off of the inside unit and told us that they would have to special order the part and it would be here hopefully by 7/23/12, but for sure by 7/24/12. Due to the intense heat this year, my husband, 2 year old, and I could not stay at the house while the A/C wasn’t working; it was 90 degrees in the coolest part of the house. The company was aware of this, but didn’t seem to be concerned. They did not offer to bring in a portable A/C unit to assist us in the meantime or anything, even though the unit was under warranty. They even refused to request rush shipping on the part. I called on 7/23/12 to check on the part hoping the repairman was right and it would be in that day, but the ladies in the office told me that it would be in on 7/24/12 and that they typically get their packages around noon. So, when we hadn’t received a call on 7/24/12 to let us know what time the repair guy would be there with the part, my husband called and they told him that they expected it in the evening on 7/24/12 or the morning of 7/25/12, but they weren't sure. It had now been 6 days of no A/C and I was having to book hotels one night at a time at this point because every day they’d tell us tomorrow, then the same story again the next day. We live by the airport and the hotel would be booked the next day when I called. So, I’d have to pack up and move all of our stuff from one hotel to the next, which is super fun when you have a 2 year old that doesn’t understand why he’s in a different place every night; and then to have to make it to work and daycare on time was incredibly difficult and I lost time out of work checking in and out of hotels. No one in the office would track the part for my husband or tell him when to expect the repairs to be done. He then asked if he could speak with the owner and she told him that the owner was out working on a call. I was not satisfied with my husband not being given a straight answer by the office lady, so I called and insisted that they track the part and find out exactly when it would be in. I explained to her that I have been having to book hotels by the day based on the information she was giving us and that this was getting to be really expensive and hard on my toddler. She refused to help me. I asked if we could get a portable unit in the house in the meantime and she said I would have to pay out of pocket for it, which I don’t understand since our unit was under warranty and this was happening because it wasn’t working. I didn’t break it, so they should cover it. I asked her if I could speak to the owner/manager because she was acting like she didn’t care and she was deliberately giving me the run-around. She told me that the owner was out of town and she did not have a way to contact him. (Not the same as what she told my husband.) So I asked her again to get the tracking information for the part, and this time said she wasn't even sure who the distributor was that they ordered it from and that I would need to talk to the lady who was handling my account, that she could not help me. I said ok, I would like to speak to this person. I could hear the lady who was supposedly “handling our account” screaming in the background, and was told I would be transferred to her, but instead, she hung up the phone on me. I filed a formal customer service complaint at this point. The lady “handling our account” called my husband later that night to say that the part would definitely be in on 7/25/12 but she still did not have any tracking information on it. On 7/25/12 when we still had not heard from them as to when to expect the part and repair man, my husband called again. They still did not have the part or know when it would be in, but the lady handling our account told my husband that she was insulted that we filed a formal complaint and that she did not want to help him anymore. She actually started arguing with him about the customer service complaint! My husband at least managed to get the part distributor’s contact information from her this time before he hung up. So, he called the parts distributor and was told that the part was expected on the morning of 7/26/12. He said he didn’t have the tracking info because he hadn’t had a prior request for it, but that he would be happy to put one in to headquarters for us. This would have been nice to have had done on 7/23/12 when I was told by Helton’s that it would be so that we would know when to actually expect the part and could’ve booked a solid block of time at an extended stay hotel. Of course at this point the part was in the next morning before the tracking request was answered. On 7/26/12, the distributor was nice enough to call us and let us know that the part was in. We still hadn’t heard anything from Helton’s so my husband called and apparently the repair man was on his way to pick up the part and come to our house. I have no idea when they were planning to tell us that given that it was a weekday and no one would be home to meet him. My husband called my mother-in-law and she was able to go to our house to let the repairman in. He left around 3:30 p.m. and said it was working. When I got home at 5:45 p.m., it was not working. It was after 7:00 p.m. when the repairman got back to our house. He worked on it for a little while, said it was fixed and left. Five minutes later, it broke again. Luckily he was still sitting in the van out front smoking a cigarette and we were able to flag him down. He came back in and worked on it until 9:30 p.m. Come to find out, the problem was not the part that we had to wait a week for, but something to do with the pressure on the outside unit. It was still 90 degrees in the house when he got it “working” at 9:30 that evening, which was too hot to have the baby in, so we had to get a hotel room yet again. By 7/27/12, we had A/C in the house and the temperature had gotten down to a livable degree and we were able to sleep in our house finally. The lady I spoke to on 7/26/12 said that the owner was aware of all that had happened and would call us to follow up on 7/30/12 when he got back in town. We never got that phone call. We never got any type of follow up phone call. In my formal complaint, I had asked for an apology for the poor treatment I had received, but in the response I received from the company, the lady insisted that they had kept us well informed, done their job and even said that they did not hang up on me; all of which is completely untrue. At the same time I filed my rebuttal to the formal complaint, I also posted several online reviews detailing our unbelievably horrible experience. Low and behold after a few days, the A/C stopped working again. I called and this time they sent a different repairman out on 8/3/12. This guy had to redo everything that the other repairman did; he took out an extra unneeded filter that was blocking the air flow and wasn’t supposed to be in there as well as completely drained and recharged the unit to factory specs. On the way out he asked me and my husband if we would take down the Google review I had posted. I explained the situation to him and said that I would if I received an apology from the lady that hung up on me. My husband said he would still like to speak with the owner about the situation and would appreciate that phone call that we were promised. The repairman said he would relay the message. Out of sheer exhaustion and a hope that if I made the first move we would get to speak with the owner or get some sort of resolution to the situation, I took down the Google review. Days passed. We never got a phone call from Helton’s. Upon receipt of my formal customer service complaint rebuttal, the lady that “handled” our account finally called my husband on 8/6/12, not to apologize, but to start an argument with him again. He said she was very condescending to him. He told her to call me if she wanted to discuss the complaint further and gave her my cell number. She never called. Today, I received a notice regarding my formal complaint that the company had decided that they would not apologize. So, I am reposting my review in its entirety to hopefully shield other unsuspecting customers from a horrible experience with a horrible company that does not care about their customers in the least. There are a lot of other companies that do this type of work in our area and Helton’s should be the last one you consider.