KALOS SERVICES INC. KALOS Company took payment citing they fixed my HVAC unit but it was not fixed Clermont Florida

I have made contact with co-owner and GM of Kalos Servicing over the past week and was able to come to a mutual resolution. It was a completely different experience and a positive one working with Jesse.

He showed the side of the business which many consumers have commented positively on and genuinely wanted to have things resolve for me moreso than their business which I highly applaud. Given this recent experience, I will consider using their services going forward.

 We’ve called and left multiple messages and revised all of your recorded calls and called back on the number you called on. We spoke to the card processor and we cannot make the review process of a charge reversal go any faster. If you cancel the reversal we can refund.

Please call our office and ask to speak with Jesse Claerbout and he will take your call immediately. I would encourage you to go ahead and get your system repaired from a contractor you trust immediately by replacing the system or the coil. There is no reason to delay. You will get your money. Thanks

Mike, 

Except in this case the only offer was to credit the leak sealant wanting to leave me to eat the expensive cost of all the R22 refridgerant that was put into the system which not only leaked into my house but ultimately into the atmosphere within a day. Then again wanting to charge again for another set of that refridgerant in a replacement follow-on job. This after assuring me the leak sealant would fix the issue to begin with as he confirmed pinholes which was obviously mis-diagnosed.

I believe the context in interpeting the EPA laws have been misunderstood by some professionals in the industry. The intent of the law is not to have HVAC professionals dispose of R22 via their customers systems which they have failed to seal correctly or at all. And doing this for monetary gain and profits is definitely illegal.

I hope you are correct and this company you state puts their customer's interest ahead of their own would make this right and provide the full refund they said here they will do. This would definitely show another side of how they operate and their true intentions and concern for their customers.

Our leak sealant is designed to seal pinhole leaks in coils as a cost saving measure to a consumer.  To be effective, a pinhole has to be under 300-400 microns or less. Pinhole sizes can be estimated, but knowing the exact size of the leak is not always possible. A professional contractor who cares about earning customers offers this by presenting the facts, instead of just saying the coil or unit must be replaced. Many will offer the sealant as the first step and if the sealant is not effective, then deduct this initial payment off of the price of replacing the equipment.  

Keeping old R22 systems up in running with sealants has been a very common practice since the phaseout started simply because of the cost involved in a unit replacement.  I currently have an 18 year old unit that I put sealant in once a year, and it is still effective.

I know the contractor in question, Kalos Services, and find them to be an extremely professional, with high integrity, who always puts the customers interest ahead of their own.  I can also confirm that no EPA laws were broken.

If the homeowner wants to reach out to me directly, I can try to offer some assistance to help fix the situation.

Bryan,

I am not sure if you have my correct number of not, but I did not receive a call from you on the date you said you will call. I am not sure why the charge shows pending reversal on your end. Please contact the processor and have the refund processed.

In regards to what you have attached, that pertains to owner/operator, not HVAC companies who exceeds this across systems.

Let's just please agree to process my refund and make this right as I really do not want to move this further and consume more of my time. I still have a system that is broken since mid-oct '18 I have to get working.

Thank you.

 Please answer when we call tomorrow. We have every intent of refunding you fully completely and the charge still shows and pending reversal on our end. I can assure you we did nothing opposed to any laws or best practices.

I encourage you to contact Jeremy Arling with the EPA to confirm this and I can assure we are not under any investigation because no law, code or best practice was broken. EPA 608 subpart F has no recharge regulations for systems containing less than 50lbs of Refrigerant.

Making claims stating that we broke the law when we did not is unethical and I would kindly request you cease. We will make sure you get every dime you paid back, not because anything was done incorrectly but because we don’t want any money from you.

Jim, you are right. No mention of  this by Kalos Servicing. They pride themselves in letting R22 leak into the atmosphere. I asked them to fix the leakage, not band-aid it and as they cited in their response, the A/C Smart Seal they used would have sealed it. This was not requested by me, it was advised by them.

They know it wouldn't work (even if they used anything at all) just so they can charge to recharge the R22 twice. Knowing the date as you mentioned, they seem to want to get rid of it and are doing it this way of charging consumers to put it into the atmosphere.

Well, since you brought up EPA laws, R-22 refrigerant phases out on 01/01/2020, according to EPA regs - less than one year from now.  Did anyone offer to either (a) have your HVAC unit replaced to a more high efficiency unit using less electricity, or (b) install a converter on your current unit that would run R-410 - the replacement refrigerant for R-22. 

Since R-410 will eventually blow out your unit without a converter, it is kind of important to install this equipment.  I mean choice (a) is inevitable and if you have a unit that is more than 10 years old, you're wasting energy and polluting the environment all at the same time.

If you as the consumer is properly concerned about the leakage of R-22 violating EPA regs, then I would think you as a consumer should be more concerned about this issue that may not have been addressed?  As the repair company, if you didn't make the suggestion, then you should have.

The actual events of what happened are as follows as what was stated in the rebuttal is misleading. I asked the technician if the leak would seal for about a year with the sealant if we went with that option and he said a positive yes to that question. He said the leaks were very small and the sealant would work. I trusted him as only then it made sense as I would get a year further use of the system. The technician left without the system cooling even though I showed him that even on his own gauges the subcool did not match the manufacture specification and was way below it. He gave some excuse as why it wouldn't match which I already saw his incompetence trying to explain it and knew it was a mistake to have trusted his advise.

The system never cooled completely (remained luke warm) and then completely failed within a day. Who would have paid this much and authorized this fix if they were told it would last a year but fails in a day? Again, I do not think this company knows how to properly diagnose an issue much less how to resolve it. They pride themselves on bit and switch and I have also found previous incidents where they damaged customer's system so they can charge them more to fix it.

The technician knew the fix wouldn't work (as admitted in their response above) and that is why he sent a quote (while in his van) even before he drove off after taking payment (Why would you send me a quote if you said it would last a year, the quote would be invalid by the time I needed to replace). If you knew the system was leaking and the fix would not work, why would you even recommend that option? I asked you to fix my A/C, not experiment on options you put back on the customer as their choice. You are supposed to be the experts and only offer the option that would fix the problem. Given options which do not work makes no sense when you fully well knew it wouldn't work but said it would last a year for me to go along with it.

Yes, there is Federal law violation according to the EPA if you knowingly (which you admitted you knew) recharge R22 into a leaking system. You might as well just left that many pounds of R22 refrigerant go directly into the atmosphere as that was exactly what you basically did.

I did not send threatening emails, again another misleading comment. I basically said that you violated EPA law (I didn't even mentioned the fraud you committed in misleading me) which according to them you did. That is a fact, not a threat.

You never tried to contact me, and according to my phone records, I called you at least 7 times even the same day when the system never fully cooled. You never responded to any of my calls. Only when I posted a comment on google did you find time to rebut. I have made every attempt to contact you to resolve this but it looks like you're just out to scam your customers.

I have not received any refund from the credit card company so again, this is misleading. I would like your company to provide this refund.

The customer called us to inspect his A/C. We found it low on R22 and performed an electronic leak detection. We located a leak in the evaporator coil and quoted the customer to use an industry recognized internal sealant (A/C Smart Seal) to try and seal the leak as well as provided a quote to replace the coil which is the permanent fix.

WE informed the customer that if the leak did not hold we would deduct the cost of the smart seal from the price of the coil. The customer chose to have the system recharged and the smart seal added. The customer feel that because we sent a coil quote that we knew it was leaking, this is true we did know it was leaking which is why we quoted both options.

It is an older system and we always provide all options for the customer. The customer claims we broke federal law and this is incorrect. There is no federal regulation on recharging systems containing under 50 lbs of refrigerant according to section 608. 

The customer has sent us threatening emails demanding a full refund.. We have called the customer on many occasions and he has never responded. The customer has now reversed charges on his card so at this point I'm not sure what else he wants.