We recently contacted America's Best to come out to look at our gas furnace & gas hot water heater. The first time I made an appt America's Best completely dropped the ball and didn't show up. I understand things happen with scheduling sometimes so I went ahead & made another appt. This time the serviceman was very late. I called the company to confirm someone was coming out & they said he had an emergency service but would still be out. It would have been nice if they had called me to let me know this. Anyway, the serviceman shows up later and is unfamiliar with gas hwheaters. He uses his cell phone to call his company for advice on servicing the heater. I describe the problem: hot water is running out faster than usual. He tests the hot water and says we are lucky to have it hot as long as we do. Then he tells us the hot/cold control dial for the shower is probably the problem. I ask him about defective dip tube problem I read about online. Between the years 1993-97 lots of manufacturers were using the same plastic dip tube. He thinks this is unlikely because the hwheater was installed in 2001 (when we bought the house). After he left I did some more researching on hwheaters and found out that the 1st 4 digits of the serial # are the month & yr it was manufactured. In our case it was Jan 1994 and probably is a defective dip tube. I would expect a repairman to be trained to recognize this. He tests our furnace and vaccuums our filter because he said he didn't have any new filters in his van. He charges us $100.00 and leaves. The serviceman was nice but I am disappointed with America's Best for sending out someone who seemed so inexperienced.
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