Timeline for my experience with an ARS routine maintenance service call for ductless AC units.
- Called ARS to schedule a routine annual maintenance check on the ductless AC units since we had a maintenance agreement with them. All units were currently running fine.
- ARS calls the day of the scheduled appt and says they need to reschedule.
- ARS calls the day of the rescheduled appt and says they don't have a qualified technician currently available to work on the ductless units and will call back with a status.
- ARS calls back and says a technician is on the way.
- Technician arrives and asks to see the thermostat. I remind him that these are ductless units and are not controlled through the thermostat to which I receive a slightly surprised look.
- During the maintenance check, the ARS technician sticks his temperature gauge into the head of one of the units and shatters the fan blade inside. Shortly thereafter he calls it a day to get a replacement fan blade.
- 2 days later the ARS technician arrives to replace the broken fan blade and complete the routine maintenance inspection and informs us that two of the units are low on refrigerant. We discuss that they are closed systems that should never need refrigerant but I agree to have him add the refrigerant trusting his knowledge.
- After the technician leaves we discover that we are no longer getting cold air out of the units where refrigerant was added. We also discover that the unit head is not properly seated on the wall support where the fan blade was replaced by the ARS technician.
- Having lost faith in ARS, I called Save Home Heat to come look at the units for a second opinion since we had previously used them.
- The SHH technician finds that 2 of the systems were overcharged with refrigerant by the ARS technician. One had a PSI rating of over 230 when it should be 130 PSI. The other had a PSI rating of over 90 and should be at 70 PSI. If this was not corrected it could have caused permanent damage to the units.
more