Mid-Florida Heating and Air Wrong System, Wrong Installation, & Wrong Settings in Gainesville, Florida

Last spring, my girlfriend and I decided to replace our aging HVAC system that was going on 15 years.  It was a relatively inefficient 4-ton system, and the house was always around 50% humidity.  Our average electric bill was around $250 at the time.

Somebody who had a decent experience with the company recommended Mid-Florida to us, so we called them up, and they sent a salesman out who promptly convinced us to "upgrade" to a 4.5-ton unit.  However, it was 16 SEER instead of 10 like the old one, so we figured that it would actually be more efficient.

Mid-Florida was actually quick with the installation.  They were in and out of the home within a day, and it seemed to be working well at first.  Unfortunately, the humidity crept up to 55-60% humidity.  With the service contract, we had a Mid-Florida tech out on three separate occasions to change the settings to reduce the humidity, but the humidity actually increased to about 65% after the second guy.  After the last guy looked around for two minutes, he told us the truth of the situation: "these new systems won't actually reduce the humidity that much."

The sales guy had told us how it would always be 45% humidity.  Feeling a little put off, I went out and bought a dehumidifier, which quickly dropped the humidity below 50%.  Then the utility bills started coming in, and they were on average $100 more than the same month the previous year. 

Mid-Florida could not explain why our bills went up so drastically with a "more efficient" system.  After 4 months of the higher utility bills, we called up an air conditioning tech at the University of Florida.  After 30 minutes, he diagnosed the following problems:

1. The system was too large.  He estimated that we needed a 3.5-ton HVAC instead of a 4.5-ton.  Mid-Florida sold us the bigger system to make a quick buck.



2. The Mid-Florida tech reps who had first installed the system hooked up the emergency drain instead of the main one.  Because of this "oversight," our indoor unit has about 3 inches of sitting water in it, which contributes to the higher humidity.



3. The system fan was set too low.  The university AC tech told us that over time the fan motor would burn out at this low setting.

Those are just some out of the dozen or so mistakes that the university AC tech told us Mid-Florida had made over 4+ trips out to the house.

We called the system manufacturer, Goodman, who promptly told us that they did not employ any tech reps and that we would need to hire our own local AC techs to repair the system.  Big surprise that an unhelpful AC dealer would work with an equally unhelpful AC manufacturer.

Once we receive a second opinion, we're going to hire an attorney and sue for our money back.  It might be easier to get Mid-Florida to simply replace the system with a 3.5-ton unit, but we want nothing to do with the company by this point.  We're going to have a completely different AC company come out and install a system.

Unfortunately, we've heard about half a dozen horror stories about Mid-Florida since we got the system installed, which would have been much more helpful before.  A former employee at the company told us that he got fired when Mid-Florida ordered him to convince an elderly woman that her "broken" AC needed to be replaced.  It turns out that her breaker was simply off.  He turned it on, told her to have a nice day, and got fired for his actions.

I've never written one of these complaints before, but Mid-Florida's terrible service and outright lying convinced me to take some basic action.  I hope nobody has to deal with the company's reprehensible business practices ever again.