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Had a technician come to the house and do a system check on my furnace before this coming winter season. I was not home, so my wife did all the communication with this individual. The furnace was purchased from Schaafema and was installed by them. The furnace is 14 years old. The technician made several videos explaining the work that he was doing and explained several problems that needed to be addressed. The technician told my wife that if these issues were not fixed, he’d be surprised if the furnace would make it through this coming winter. He told her that the unit was wired incorrectly and he then needed to re-do the wiring. He also told her that he needed to replace the battery in the unit which I know there is no battery. The only battery with the heating/air conditioning system is located in the thermostat. He told her the burners were extremely rusted and the flame sensor was in pretty rough shape. The videos the tech made were a very condescending tone and seemed to be made only to justify to his manager the work needed to be done. The tech sent a proposed work order of $755 dollars for new burners and flame sensor. My wife paid for the system check up for his service in the amount of $272. I became concerned and questioned the judgement of this technician and called another HVAC company to get another opinion. The new HVAC company did another service call and found nothing wrong with the furnace. I asked him about the rusted burners and flame sensor. He showed me the burners and said they were in good shape. He did a carbon monoxide test on the flame sensor and said it was perfectly safe and in good operation. The new technician told me he replaces maybe one or two burners a year, and that’s when the systems run off propane gas. Our furnace has been running of natural gas since day one. I really feel like the Shafesma technician was a salesperson trying to put fear into my wife that our furnace would fail soon and we needed to do something about it before winter. Very glad I got a second opinion even though I had to pay for a second service call from another company. I will not be using Shafesma again, and will tell my family and friends to do the same. By the way, the new HVAC company noticed water was leaking from the joints from the furnace vent and staining the concrete. He discovered that the PVC joints were never glued together. They disassembled the PVC tubing and glued the joints together so it would not leak water.
Response from Schaafsma Heating and Cooling:
We appreciate the feedback. I would like to clarify some items from your review. While we did install the furnace 14 years ago, this is the first time we have been out to service it. I’ve reviewed the videos the technician created. He showed how the thermostat which was re-wired this summer was wired incorrectly. He explained how the battery terminals in the thermostat were corroded from a battery that had been left in too long. We make videos like this to be as transparent as possible when making recommendations. The videos clearly show rust on all the burners and the burn mark on the flame sensor. We would be happy to re-send the videos. I did not notice any condescending tone in the video. Rather he was simply pointing out the furnace was in need of maintenance.
