After arriving home after 2 weeks away on a Friday realized I had no heat. I called Evergreen, who had installed my heat pump system less than 5 yrs prior, and they said the soonest they could get someone out was Tue morning. But I could call on the weekend and see if the weekend “on call” person may be able to come out. I called and talked with their AI system, which was worthless, and I was promised a call back either way. To clarify, I asked if they are not able to come I will receive a call, the reply “yes”. No call.
Tue morning service technician arrived and begin to troubleshoot. Thinking it would be a simple solution, after an hour I asked what is happening . He said, “I don’t know I need to call my manager”. After 2 hours of checking the system he said the system is out of coolant and provided me an estimate to repair it.
I received a bid with 8 lines of vague description of the work to be done, with a list of “quantity 1”, then a total price of $5778. No itemized price for each item, no description from the technician other than the work/bid will look for the leak, repair it, and fill system with coolant.
I called Evergreen multiple times that day to get more clarity and specifics about the bid. In total, between Feb 20-26 I had no fewer than 11 calls between myself and Evergreen. The office people were very nice and attempted to be helpful . I asked “how does a system that is less than 5 years old have such a catastrophic failure???” They said the service manager would have to answer that. I asked for a call back from the service manager. I did not receive that call back until Thursday noon. This was my 11th phone conversation with Evergreen. By this time I had been a week without heat!!!
Because Evergreen was unable to answer my questions regarding the failure of a new system, the lack of transparency in pricing, lack of specificity of what failed in the system, I no longer had faith in Evergreen. I must admit I choose Evergreen for installation because I was impressed with the individual that did the bid—very professional and very responsive. I even recommended Evergreen to friends.
I understand that sometimes in the industry a company may attempt to use new equipment. Not sure if the fittings were considered new at the time of installation, but if it fails I expect Evergreen to stand by the product and the work. Instead the burden was on me, to the tune of $5778!!!
Because of all the reasons listed above I sought additional estimates. Another technician was recommended to me, arrived at the house on Thursday morning and within an hour diagnosed the problem and found the leak. It was a faulty fitting, one that is no longer used in the industry because of it’s poor performance. I understand one major supplier no longer distributes this fitting because a pattern of poor performance was repeating itself. Others report it is improper installation that causes fittings to fail so quickly (LESS THAN 5 YEARS!!) Because this fitting was used on all of the lines in my system it required replacement of 10 fittings!!!!!!!
How was Evergreen unaware that the fittings they had installed were known to fail??? Did they not have other systems with this issue? Once they identified coolant leak, and knowing the fittings you installed on the system were faulty, wouldn’t this be the logical first place to look once you are aware of coolant leak? Why was AJ unable to determine this in the 2 hours he visited my house?
I talked to Chris, service manager, on Tue after the work was completed at my house. Submitted a complaint and requested a response. After a week I called, left a vm, and sent an email. NO RESPONSE.
BEWARE: If you had a heat pump system installed by Evergreen between 2021-2022 you may have these fittings in your system. Recommend if your system needs repair or fails, you find a service that is more responsive and stands by their product and service.