Johnson Controls Inc Doing Business As: Evcon Brand Unitary Products Lack of support and inaccessible warranty on their Central Air units. Unit had to be replaced in less than 3 years! Norman OK

We had one of Johnson Control’s Evcon central air conditioning units installed on 7/13/2017 at a cost of $3,400.00. At the time we were told it had a 10-year parts warranty. In June of 2020 (less than 3-years later) it stopped cooling altogether so we had an HVAC company out multiple times to troubleshoot the problem at a cost to us of $535.89. On the first trip they determined the refrigerant had completely leaked out so they checked all connections but everything appeared fine; so they filled it with some refrigerant and a UV dye so if it continued leaking they could determine where.

On the second trip (a week or two later) they spent hours checking but could not find any visible leaks (or traces of the UV dye) in or around any of the connections and determined the unit was almost certainly the issue. They cut us a break on the costs to troubleshoot but also told us the only thing they could do was replace the unit unless we wanted to spend (potentially) thousands continuing to diagnose. We asked them for a quote if we ultimately needed to replace the unit and in the meantime reached out to Johnson Controls, assuming that surely they would stand behind their product and be able to assist.

We sent the first email on July 9th to their recommended consumer relations email at cg-upgconsumerrelations@jci.com. We never did receive a response to the email, but we followed it up with a phone call to 877-874-7378 (Evcon product consumer relations again) later that same day and sat on hold for a while.




We called that local company very shortly after and were informed they could not help us in any way, that they only do work with commercial clients and properties. They told us they had no idea why Johnson Controls would have given us their phone number. Keep in mind at this point we’ve had about 2-weeks on and off without air conditioning in 80-90 degree weather, have spent close to $600 trying to troubleshoot and have gotten zero real help from Johnson Controls. We needed a solution asap and rather than continue to go in circles, so we opted to replace the entire unit at an additional cost to us of $4,268.

We followed all of this up with another very professional email to cg-upgconsumerrelations@jci.com on July 28th recapping the entire story and our total frustration with their product and service and asked for a reply with what they could offer to help make the situation right. After all, we installed one of their brand new units less than 3-years ago and had to spend almost another $5K and weeks of the family literally sweating it out while we tried to troubleshoot and find a solution (with little assistance from them). We obviously no longer had any use for their product and offered to give it back if desired. On July 30th we received a response that the unit carries a 10-year parts warranty and to contact…. the same local company they told us to contact weeks back who told us they could not help)!!! We got the sense that they barely read our email and very likely did not care at all about our predicament.

Side note: It appears that there was a class action lawsuit a few years back related to issues with these units as well... too bad we missed the deadline on that and are now stuck with a $3400 boat anchor.

Be careful if you are considering a Johnson Controls (Evcon, York, Fraser-Johnston, Luxaire, Coleman, Guardian, etc) consumer brand HVAC or air conditioning unit, it may cost you more than you bargain for!