Kozik Plumbing, Heating & Cooling

We will definitely not be doing anymore business with this company. Let's start from the beginning so there's no gray area here. Several weeks ago, our AC stopped blowing cool air, so we called Kozik to have them come take a look. She came out and filled the refrigerant and I also opted to have her put some dye in to monitor for a leak. After a few days, my husband and I discovered that there was in fact a leak. We knew we could not afford to pay anyone to install a new A-coil, so an old family friend ordered the A-coil and the other materials that we needed so that my husband could do it himself. (Mind you, my husband can pretty much do anything. He had done these before. He did this type of work for years, and even became the inspector for Community Action/Ohio Heartland's winterization/energy efficiency program. He knows what he's doing.) He changed the A-coil, and we called our friend back over to fill the refrigerant again. He checked everything over and it all looked good. A couple weeks ago, on a very hot day, it seemed as though the air and the AC was not cooling again. So we called Kozik because we thought we must have a slow leak. The woman was mildly rude over the phone, and refused to give him any kind of timeframe on when they would be out. They showed up the following day, looked everything over, determined that there were no leaks or problems to be found, and left our house in 26 minutes (several of the last minutes were spent undermining my husband's work, even though he had done nothing incorrectly). Because of the short nature of their visit, and because no repairs were actually needed, I expected our billing to be minimal. I was aware because of the previous visit, that they had a $30 service call fee and a minimum of one hour labor charge. I was shocked to receive a bill for one and a half hours worth of labor, plus the $30 service call fee. When I called in about the bill, the man (I can't refer to him as a gentleman) advised me that the timing started from when the repair people left their shop, until when they returned to the shop. Their shop is anywhere from 5 to 7 minutes away from our house, so we are not looking at an extra hour in drive time here. I told him that I was aware of that policy, but there was no way that they could justify charging me for an hour and a half. He said that he would lower the bill down to the minimum of one hour worth of labor, but that was really cheap for having AC repairs (I can't help but to wonder why they have hourly rates, if they still just want to make it up as they go). He said he would do it if it would make me happy, and then proceeded to tell me that next time I should not call them for future work. At this point I was pretty shocked. I told him I would appreciate him correcting the bill, and that we would gladly take our business elsewhere. He told me that we obviously do not appreciate tradesmen coming and taking care of our problem. I assumed that he was referring to my husband changing the A-coil himself, so I advised that we are not wealthy and we could not afford to pay someone several hundred dollars to fix something that he could fix himself. He then asked why my husband did not finish the job then, to which I replied that the job was finished and that there was nothing wrong. This pushed me right over the edge and my husband saw that I was upset, so he grabbed the phone from me and gave the guy an earful for being so rude to me. Clearly this guy really had no idea what was even going on, because after my husband finally made him understand that no repairs were actually even made, he changed his tune and said, "Oh okay. Well have a good day." It's been along time since I had anyone treat me that way (for no reason), or dealt with a business that was this unprofessional. The moral of the story is, they were mad because my husband had done some of the work himself instead of calling them, and they intentionally tried to overcharge us because of that. I think it's quite unfair and extremely outrageous that a business would operate this way. And then to tell me to take my business elsewhere because I called them out on it. (Also note that they left their high dollar flashlight at our home, and when we found it, we returned it to their shop right away. Too bad they don't have a similar moral compass.) Shame on you, Kozik!