Sharp's Home & Appliance Service

Sharp's damaged my AC liquid line while painting home exterior. I paid an AC company for service call. Sharp's said they would repay, but now refuse.In July of '13, [redacted] and crew of Sharp's painted my home exterior. They damaged the freon line on my AC. On July 19, 2013,[redacted] Heating and Air came out. The service call was $258.00, which I paid. I talked with Mr. [redacted] about this and he offered to work it out by doing some small projects I had. I waited a full year, but he never called back. I finally called him in July of '14 and told him I was tired of waiting on him and to just send me the $258.00. He said he would get back with me but has not. I have called him several times since and he will not take my call or return it. I have also called[redacted] Sharp the owner. He returned one call while I was out of town, but I have called him back and now he will not take or return my calls either.Desired SettlementI only want Sharp's Home Repair to reimburse me $258.00, the amount I paid to [redacted] Heating and Air for the service call. [redacted] admitted it was their fault by offering to do some extra work. I waited a year and now I just want my $258.00.Business Response This is an unfortunate situation, one that we find particularly disappointing because we take pride in providing 100% customer satisfaction, and have worked very hard to uphold that criteria. If our customer is not satisfied with any portion of our work, we correct it, no matter what the expense whether labor or material cost. In the case here, of Me. [redacted], the job we did for him included a complete exterior restoration. We tore off hundreds of feet of bad wood, around the entire house, spent weeks restoring the glazing on his window mullions, and re-engineered his "critter-defense" system in his soffits to be more reliable and less visible. We spared no expense in the carpentry, window reglazing, sanding scraping and re-siding of the house. At the conclusion of the job Mr. [redacted] was very happy with our work. As we wrapped up He expressed concern that the upper sash in some of the double hung windows did not slide freely, only the lower sash, so I freed up the upper sash portions of the windows, and I addressed any other little issues he had at the time. Mr. and Mrs. [redacted] told me they were very happy with the work, which is important to me. If I even "suspect" a customer is at all unhappy about any portion of our work, I take that personally, and work to resolve it. So the job was concluded, we were paid evryone was happy.And then the issue (now at hand) cropped up.Mr. [redacted] called me to tell me that the company who installed his central AC unit had determined that the unit they installed previously at his home had leaked all of its freon out, and due to this needed to be replaced. During the course of our work at Mr. [redacted]' home, in the first week we were there, Mr. [redacted] mentioned to me that the AC didn't seem to be operating correctly, did I know why that might be. I told him that the only thing I could think of was that perhaps our opening and closing the doors so often to go in and out the house was putting a strain on the system. this of course, proved to be a faulty assumption, as over the next few days the AC stopped cooling altogether. At this time we were not halfway through the job, and we actually were able to visit the possibility, with Mr.[redacted], if the failure of the AC could have something to do with our repairs on the outside of the house. The customers and myself actually discussed this, and I investigated into the possibility, as if it was something we caused I wanted to fix it. Ultimately Mr. [redacted] told me the unit is fully covered under warranty, he preferred me to not mess with it, as he would have his people come out. So at the time of the failure it was agreed mutually that we could not have been the cause of the failure. At that time, I thought the problem had been addressed and resolved. It was not until he received a bill sometime later, that Mr. [redacted] phoned me to tell me that it was the "opinion" of the company with which he had the warranty that we are to blame for the failure. Now, we never saw these people, they never saw us. Mr. [redacted] mentioned to the AC people that we were there working on the house when the failure occurred. And they told Mr. [redacted] that we must have done it.My problem with this is that it is a conclusion on their part based purely on speculation, and it is a conclusion that actually relieves the burden of their own responsibility. It makes for a very "convenient" out on their part. We were not included in any discussio concerning how we might have damaged the unit, or why that conclusion was drawn. Frankly, I disagree with the conclusion.Over the years of doing home repair we find this type of "discovery" happening, in other ways, all the time. Often homeowners are not very familiar with the state or condition of certain elements of the home, because who really critically inspects their house without cause. what happens is when you call someone to start working on it, now you have a reason to start looking for issues. Frequently we find homeowners "discoering" faults which had been there for years, they just never saw them before. It is a natural conclusion to draw that, well, the worker must have done that. I never saw that before. Happens all the time. And usually, when they think about it, they realize, yes, that's right. It was laways like that.I only say that to illustrate how easy it is to attribute an unrelated problem to the worker who happens to be at the house when it happens, or when you "discover" it. this happens to auto mechanics a lot. A failure on one part of a car, after having another part fixed, "well, t6he mechanic must have done something to cause it"The whole situation is sad, because I think other than this disagreement Mr. [redacted] was happy with the job we did. we are not in business to alienate our customers. Most of our business comes from referrals.Unfortunately there are a lot of crooked contractors out there, and blame can be thrown around quite effortlessly by the customers and contractors alike. sometimes for good reason. I like Mr. [redacted]. He is a nice man, and good person. But I don't believe we are the cause of the failure of his AC. To try ansd speculate beyond that, why it failed, or how, I wouldn't know. I hope we can all put this behind usConsumer Response (The consumer indicated he/she DID NOT accept the response from the business.) There are some accurate statements in the narrative submitted by the company but they conveniently left out a few details that would hurt their position. They essentially have attempted to spin the information so that they appear as "innocent bystanders" in this event. I wish to point out inaccuracies. It sounds like [redacted] wrote their response, so I will say that [redacted] is wrong when he says that I called him to inform him of the AC problem. [redacted] and crew were still on site completing their work when I went outside to discuss the AC problem. We first noticed a cooling problem inside our home on Thursday, July 18, which was just two days before the paint job was completed on Saturday, July 20. On Friday July 19, [redacted] Heating came out to diagnose the problem. I never spoke with them as I was at work myself. My wife gave me an update when I got home Friday night. She said [redacted] found the compressor had "gone out" (my wife's words). She said it was still under warranty and would be replaced at no charge, although they did charge us $258.00 for the Friday service call. On Saturday, July 20, I had the conversation with [redacted] and one of his workers about the AC situation and the worker admitted that he heard a spewing noise while he had been working in that spot a few days before and that he smelled freon. This was their last day on our paint job. I pointed out to them how LUCKY THEY were that my compressor was under warranty or they would have been out a lot of money. They agreed. Prior to the AC problem, [redacted] and I had discussed some smaller "odd job" projects which I needed done around my house. I had a leaky commode tank in a bathroom, needed another electrical outlet in that same bathroom and needed a new electrical outlet installed in a lamppost in front of my house. [redacted] said he could do these things, but not right away because they already had their next job scheduled. We never set up anything definite. On that final day as we were talking about the AC situation, I told [redacted] that we had to pay [redacted] for the service call. He referred to those other "odd jobs' and said that when he came back to do them, he would work out the $258.00 at that time. Being the nice guy that [redacted] said I am, I agreed to let him work the $258.00 into those other jobs later. He said he would call me to set up a time when he could come back. Why would [redacted] suggest such a plan if they were not responsible for the damage to my freon line? I waited nearly a year but [redacted] never called. I realized two things. First it was difficult for [redacted] to find time to work me in to his schedule, and second, if he did work me in, I would find it difficult coordinating my time to his since I would have to be home or have someone here to let him in. Therefore, sometime in the late spring or early summer of 2014, I called [redacted] and told him that I no longer wanted him to do any odd jobs for me and asked him to just send me a check for $258.00 to settle that issue. I personally could care less about the money. I am more disturbed by the intent of [redacted]'s Home Repair to escape their responsibility for an unfortunate mistake made by one of their workers. If [redacted] and [redacted] think this is about the money, then I challenge them to make a donation of $258.00 to[redacted]'s [redacted] or some other legitimate charity which needs the money much more than I or they ever will.Final Business Response