When you're experiencing a major heat wave in the summer in Texas, the last thing that you need is to have your air conditioner go out. Unfortunately, this is what happened to us. Fortunately, our home was still under warranty. Unfortunately....Capital Air & Heat is the company that was contracted to "fix" the problem.
We have had problems with our air conditioner pretty much from the time we moved into this house (which was a new construction house). We have had to call them out numerous times because the house does not seem to be "cooling off" properly (the thermostat will be set to 78, but it will be 83-84 degrees in our house and even if we turn the thermostat down, the temperature doesn't really change). At one point, we had water pouring through our ceiling upstairs because of problems with the AC unit. Last September, after Hurricane Rita, our AC just stopped working. We had a home inspector come out last month because our warranty was about to expire and he told us what we had already expected - our AC wasn't cooling off properly again.
We filled out a warranty request and the person who handles the warranty work for our builder called us back promptly and told us that he had been in contact with Capital Air and that someone would be calling us to set up an appointment. Several days passed before we heard from them. The time they wanted to schedule it for was almost a week away (and a week had already passed by at this point). When I explained my concern about the long wait, the person I was speaking to said, "Well....it's just warranty work." I'm not sure what that is supposed to mean, but that is not a good way to get (or keep) customers.
We were told that they would come between 8 a.m. and 1 p.m. on their scheduled day. I waited and waited. By 1:30 p.m., no one had come. We finally called and they said someone would be out "within an hour." By 3:00 p.m., no one had come. We called again and were told again that it would be "within an hour..." It was our anniversary and my husband had taken off of work early to spend time with me and we spent most of our day waiting for them to come and they never did. Someone did come out the next day and in checking out the system they discovered that we had a leak. They charged it up to get us through until they could come back and then scheduled an appointment for the following Tuesday and we were told someone would come "first thing."
I was up and ready and waiting for them to get here "first thing" which of course came and went. Around 9:30 a.m. someone from the company called and told me that they were shorthanded and that no one would be able to come out. They rescheduled AGAIN and again we were told that we would be the first appointment of the day. They did finally show up at 9:30 that day. They said that they were just there to "replace a coil." I thought that there was more involved than that because we had been told that there was a leak and that they would have to "pressurize the system" to find out where it was. The two guys looked at me like I was an idiot and left within 45 minutes. I called my husband at work because something didn't seem right. He then called the person handling our warranty claim who said that the job should have taken at least 2-3 hours.
A few days later, someone else came out. His last name is Cruz and he is the ONLY person from this company who seems to have a clue and who seems to be genuinely interested in finding out what is going on with our AC and fixing it. He was here for several hours fixing things and also discovered (which was no surprise to us) that the guys who had come out earlier in the week had not done what they were supposed to even though it had been clearly outlined for them.
It's been less than a week now, and already we are back in the same boat where our thermostat is set to one thing, but the temperature is reading much higher and the house will not cool off. I wish we could just get someone else out who will be competent and fix the problem. I am dreading going through this whole ordeal again. Also, our electric bill has been significantly higher because the unit is working overtime trying to cool the house off.
This has been an absolute nightmare for us and if we wouldn't have had to use this company (since our house was still under warranty), we would have definitely found someone else by now. I'm just concerned because the warranty on the house is now expired, but the problem still doesn't seem to be fixed and I am wondering if it will ever be fixed. I have talked to several other neighbors in our subdivision and the same company installed (and services) all of our AC units and several other neighbors have had similar problems. My advice is simple - avoid Capitol Air and Heating like the plague!
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