Transcript
Speaker: We have main engine start.
Speaker: 4, 3, 2, 1, 0, 1.
Speaker: Brian, you know, last time we talked, we talked about, you know, when's the right time to decide whether you should repair your system, replace your system, and I think we got a good idea for our homeowners whenever they're coming up with those ideas.
Speaker: But,
Speaker: When the time comes and it's time to replace your AC system, I think the first thing a lot of people are going to start to do is research.
Speaker: And you would think, hey, let me start researching what brand and what style of unit and different things like that, when really they probably should be looking at the company itself.
Speaker: You know, we always want somebody to choose something local.
Speaker: That's ideal.
Speaker: If you need a big name box brand, that's that's for you.
Speaker: That's good to go.
Speaker: But when you're researching a company, it's usually you start with the Google reviews, right?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So when you are looking for a company to do something for your home, how are you looking at these Google reviews?
Speaker: Well, for me, I like to look at the reviews and compare those to other companies that are comparable companies.
Speaker: In our industry, in HVAC, I like to see a company that's been in business for 10 years that usually tells me that they're going to be around another 10 years.
Speaker: The best indicator of future success is past performance, right?
Speaker: The warranty for this equipment is usually 10 years on parts.
Speaker: So if I see a company that has 10 years, I'd like to see 200 reviews or more.
Speaker: That's common for our area.
Speaker: It may not be for all areas.
Speaker: And then finally, we get to how many stars do they have.
Speaker: Where we're at, really at around 4.7.
Speaker: That might indicate there's some issues you want to dig a little bit deeper into.
Speaker: You should always sort the reviews by the bad ones.
Speaker: Read those.
Speaker: And also look how frequent were those bad ones posted.
Speaker: And then you really want to read the review.
Speaker: Sometimes the homeowner is really aggravated about something that is very common in our industry.
Speaker: They just aren't familiar with how this works.
Speaker: No, and you're exactly right.
Speaker: You know, I've seen that with clients.
Speaker: Whenever I'm doing it, I like to go, I sort them by the most recent so that I can kind of see what's happening in this, in the newest timeframe, because there could have been change of management.
Speaker: You know, there is turnover with technicians, changing jobs, install teams can change, things like that.
Speaker: You want to see consistency, right?
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Whenever you're looking at the bad reviews, you're exactly right.
Speaker: Maybe the homeowner accidentally clicked one star and said, this company is great.
Speaker: I would use them all day.
Speaker: And I've seen that.
Speaker: But you find trends with some of these reviews.
Speaker: So what are you seeing out when you're looking these things up?
Speaker: You'll see people rescheduling appointments like a no-show, no-call.
Speaker: They had an appointment.
Speaker: Just no one showed.
Speaker: No one called them.
Speaker: Now, if you see that happening over and over again, that's a problem.
Speaker: That's a pattern.
Speaker: That's called a pattern.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: And also you want to look at recency.
Speaker: How often did that happen?
Speaker: How recently did it happen?
Speaker: Has this been going on in the last year?
Speaker: Those are things to be concerned about.
Speaker: You also might see quality of work issues.
Speaker: Something was installed and it broke and you get that over and over again.
Speaker: Now for most homeowners, the best thing you can do first is to call the company and give them a chance to make it right.
Speaker: I think that you reserve bad reviews for when you've given them an opportunity to write something that's wrong and they punted, did not do it for you.
Speaker: Well, no, that's...
Speaker: That's right, because there's a really famous saying that if you're not getting better, you're getting worse.
Speaker: There's no such thing as being stagnant, especially not in this industry.
Speaker: There's always more to learn.
Speaker: There's always more that you can do to take care of your homeowners.
Speaker: And when you see the owner or manager, whoever it is, responding to these reviews, that's also a good sign because that means they're on top of it.
Speaker: But sometimes it's not always the best response, right?
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: You can judge that company.
Speaker: Sometimes there's animosity directed at the homeowner for leaving a review.
Speaker: That's a first red flag.
Speaker: That's a first red flag right there.
Speaker: They gave you an opportunity to get better by telling you this.
Speaker: Now, if they're just crazy, you have to count on people being able to read this and read between the lines and go, okay, this homeowner is being irrational.
Speaker: But you can't.
Speaker: No, and it's very rare that that's happening, right?
Speaker: Most people in the service industry, they're being real.
Speaker: Hey, you know, I had this service technician come out and the last five times they've come out, they've tried to tell me I need a new system when it's under warranty.
Speaker: These are part of the trends that you need to be looking for.
Speaker: But if a homeowner says, hey, it was a no call, no show, and then you see a response from the owner, hey, we didn't see anything in the system.
Speaker: We really apologize.
Speaker: We'd like to make it up to you.
Speaker: We'll give you a free service call.
Speaker: Please give us a shout back.
Speaker: At least they're making an effort, right?
Speaker: Because things do happen.
Speaker: We are human.
Speaker: We do use these computers and programs and there's glitches and things do happen.
Speaker: I've had it happen to me.
Speaker: I've shown up to the wrong house and knocked on the wrong door.
Speaker: Probably more times than I can count.
Speaker: And speaking to that point, we've had a bad review one time.
Speaker: We never even went to this house.
Speaker: They had us confused with somebody else.
Speaker: No, that's exactly right.
Speaker: Some companies have very similar names.
Speaker: And this was a, we got called out for doing home warranty.
Speaker: Well, our company doesn't even do home warranty.
Speaker: So we know, absolutely know it had nothing to do with us, right?
Speaker: It had been us.
Speaker: So, I mean, do you have any examples of some of these reviews like this?
Speaker: I know we don't want to kind of, we want to get out of our market because our market is here in Houston.
Speaker: We don't want to do any of our direct competition or anything like that.
Speaker: So what did you end up finding when you were looking at reviews online?
Speaker: Well, that is a great question.
Speaker: Let's look at a few here.
Speaker: This first one comes from a company that had about 15 years of business.
Speaker: That's a good start.
Speaker: That's a good start.
Speaker: You know they've been in business.
Speaker: 15 years, 200 reviews, right off the bat makes me think it's a mom and pop company and maybe they're just not too good at doing the whole online thing, right?
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: I think you nailed it because the reviews they do get are really good.
Speaker: And they're probably- So here's one bad one though.
Speaker: Okay, let's hear it.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Had an appointment scheduled for 9.30 a.m.
Speaker: I was texting at 9.45 asking for an EPA.
Speaker: Technician arrives at 10.10 a.m.
Speaker: saying that they are there.
Speaker: Got tired of waiting and left.
Speaker: Poor service, no communication.
Speaker: So with that one.
Speaker: Yeah, I agree that there was poor communication.
Speaker: In this industry,
Speaker: with service technicians, most clients are going to get a time window of when they're going to show up.
Speaker: They're going to show up between 945 and 1045 because we don't know how long it's going to take on the last call.
Speaker: You don't know how long it's going to, you don't even know what you're going to fix right at the last call, not to mention traffic and things like that.
Speaker: Did the
Speaker: owner of the company ever say anything back?
Speaker: He did respond back.
Speaker: He apologized.
Speaker: Took full responsibility for it.
Speaker: I just think that this is a phone call to the owner of the company.
Speaker: This isn't a legal one-star review kind of issue, right?
Speaker: No, I don't think.
Speaker: For one, they never got service, right?
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: So they can't say poor service.
Speaker: Yeah, poor communication.
Speaker: But this is something where she should have just called the office and
Speaker: I wouldn't hold it against the company per se.
Speaker: Now, if I saw five or six more of these as I'm filtering during a certain timeframe, hey, maybe we have a problem.
Speaker: But as long as it's just a sporadic one like that, I'm okay with that.
Speaker: And why do you think people leave a bad review?
Speaker: I think there's two reasons.
Speaker: One is
Speaker: you want to express your displeasure.
Speaker: You're so angry.
Speaker: And then two, you want to warn others of, of a bad situation.
Speaker: They don't want to be in.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Another reason I've found is they want a response, you know, maybe they've tried calling the office and they've gotten no answer or, Hey, we'll have,
Speaker: The manager call you back, but they never call back.
Speaker: They never call back.
Speaker: When you put a review, you know that everybody at that company is going to see it and that you're probably going to get a call here soon.
Speaker: Well, you would hope so.
Speaker: You better.
Speaker: There's something to know.
Speaker: One-star review.
Speaker: What else are you finding out there?
Speaker: Here's another one.
Speaker: This is from a nationwide company.
Speaker: Well, they don't do warranty work, but they've been around for over 10 years, probably about 4.8, and there's about 1,700 reviews for this company, so it's big.
Speaker: Yeah, that's pretty big.
Speaker: So here's how it starts.
Speaker: These are bad people.
Speaker: My AC was out due to a power surge that fried the motherboard on the unit.
Speaker: Since the condenser was 12 years old, parts were difficult to come by, making replacement the only choice instead of repair.
Speaker: They told us this, and it was confirmed by other contractors.
Speaker: So they had a second opinion done.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: That's what it sounds like.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So they sent a slick salesman to upsell us on replacing the entire system because it was really better to do the whole thing.
Speaker: Um, I guess that other company they called came out and just replaced the condenser at half the price of what the other company recommended.
Speaker: Well, that it's going to be half the price anyways, if you're talking about a big nationwide company, right?
Speaker: You've got more overhead.
Speaker: You've got the bigger marketing budget and things like that.
Speaker: And unfortunately, the end user is going to be the person who pays for it.
Speaker: When I hear that review, one, she admits or they admit that this unit was old.
Speaker: Parts were hard to get.
Speaker: You know, a 12 year old system.
Speaker: And this is, I believe, in Dallas that we're looking at some of these reviews.
Speaker: We're two and a half times the national average for cooling hours.
Speaker: So like a 10-year-old AC in Houston is 25 years old in Kansas City, 30 up in Chicago based on cooling hours, very high mileage.
Speaker: And she's been told by a couple of people that it needed to be replaced.
Speaker: Now that's understandable, right?
Speaker: But keep in mind that word, what was it?
Speaker: Slick salesman, sleazy salesman, something like that.
Speaker: it is going to be a sales guy that's coming to your home, right?
Speaker: Unfortunately in this industry, there's not many sales guys who have actually put tools on equipment or had the experience and actual design.
Speaker: Once they sell it, they turn it back over to the company.
Speaker: That's what they do.
Speaker: That's it.
Speaker: You know, thankfully for us, we're very involved in what we do and being able to be there with the install teams and actually designing these systems and stuff.
Speaker: So I don't know.
Speaker: Does it make them unethical because they charge more than the other guy?
Speaker: No, not at all.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Not at all.
Speaker: In fact, they probably are operating at the exact same profit margin as the other company.
Speaker: When you have more vans and more trucks and more commercials and bigger buildings and all of this stuff, it all plays into what the end user is going to end up paying.
Speaker: And that's also one of the reasons why we say,
Speaker: You know, if you want to get the best value that I'm not saying the cheapest unit and I'm not saying the best unit, but the perfect mix of local, fair price, decent brand, good warranty.
Speaker: You know, you're probably going to be with a more mom and pop type company.
Speaker: It's just less overhead, less things that you have to pay for as the end user.
Speaker: I mean, for me, when you talk about an unethical company, that's a company that doesn't respond to problems that they caused or should reasonably you would think they caused it.
Speaker: And they've just washed their hands and they're ghosting you and they're not responding.
Speaker: That's what unethical is.
Speaker: Charging you more than the next guy isn't unethical.
Speaker: No, I mean, unethical to me is telling you you're getting a warranty and then they don't register it, right?
Speaker: Or telling you you're getting a certain efficiency rating and then putting something else in there.
Speaker: And I've also seen these reviews where people think they're getting a less efficient unit just based on the Energy Star stickers and things on the side.
Speaker: You need to dig deep.
Speaker: There's always an asterisk.
Speaker: When matched up with certain other parts and pieces, it will get a different efficiency rating.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You just gotta read these reviews with caution.
Speaker: You know, the key is to keep looking for patterns, look for that timeframe of the lab, maybe the last six months or so, looking for how long that company has been in business.
Speaker: And that's a pretty good start.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Let's look at another one here.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: This is, she starts out.
Speaker: Now this is a pretty well-valued company.
Speaker: They have,
Speaker: I think it was a 10-year-old company with probably 600 reviews and about a 4.8 star rating.
Speaker: So she starts this with unethical business.
Speaker: That's a good start, right?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Let's listen in.
Speaker: That's a good business to pick.
Speaker: So she starts an unethical business.
Speaker: Made a service call for one of my outdoor AC units for functioning properly.
Speaker: The root cause, the bad capacitor.
Speaker: Um, the technician remained recommended replacing the capacitors in both my outdoor units.
Speaker: They quoted me 573 for two capacitors.
Speaker: I was in a bind and have young children at home.
Speaker: So I had no choice, even though I was well aware of the ridiculous inflated markup for two components that cost roughly $20 a piece.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: What do you think of that?
Speaker: One, I would agree.
Speaker: that it's inflated, but two, it's inflated for a reason, right?
Speaker: You're not paying for the part.
Speaker: If you want to get the part, go ahead, order it on Amazon.
Speaker: But you still had to pay for somebody to one, come out to your home and diagnose the issue.
Speaker: Then you're paying for the labor and the knowledge that somebody has spent years getting to be able to change that and do it safely and effectively to put that in.
Speaker: Three, to be able to get a warranty and have somebody actually back that warranty.
Speaker: You know, 500 and some change for two capacitors, it's not bad.
Speaker: I've seen companies charge 500 for one.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know, but you're not paying for the part.
Speaker: Just like any other thing on an air conditioning system.
Speaker: Realistically, all the equipment for a single speed air conditioning complete system, it's only a couple to a few thousand dollars.
Speaker: but it's all the other miscellaneous parts and the training and the knowledge and the certifications and the insurance and the workman's comp and all these other things that go into this, not just the part.
Speaker: Yeah, I don't know what AC company you're going to go with or what she thought was a reasonable markup.
Speaker: In this industry, that is, you could say it may be a little high, but it ain't outrageous.
Speaker: No, it's not.
Speaker: And I think if she would have called three or four other companies, it would have put her at ease a little bit.
Speaker: Or maybe it would have angered her a little bit more.
Speaker: But that's going to be pretty typical.
Speaker: But if you called three other companies, you'd have to pay the show-up fee for three other companies.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah, it just keeps adding up.
Speaker: $240.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, you know, for a pricing like that, you know, 500 for two capacity, if you call five companies, you'll probably find two companies more expensive, two companies a little bit less, and one right on par.
Speaker: I'd agree with that.
Speaker: You know, it's not a hard part of the change, but I've seen that.
Speaker: Let's check out one more.
Speaker: Doing that.
Speaker: So I'm not going to say much about how this one, let's just start it and we don't have to go very far.
Speaker: I was initially referred to this AC company by blank, our home warranty company.
Speaker: Red flag, red flag.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: We can talk all day about this.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And we will talk about this in a future episode, but, um,
Speaker: Home warranty companies, or AC companies that do works for home warranty companies, generally aren't rated as high.
Speaker: Now that has to do with the expectations of the people that call them.
Speaker: A little bit has to do with the AC company themselves.
Speaker: Because nobody made you go into business with these guys, right?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And we'll talk about that later.
Speaker: But I can tell you that
Speaker: An AC company is in a no-win situation.
Speaker: They're doing work for home warranty companies.
Speaker: No, they're either just starting out and they're trying to gain some clientele or
Speaker: They're clawing tooth and nail to try and stay in business because they've lost their clientele over the years.
Speaker: I've found most home warranty companies, it's not going to be the people that you're going to see when you're searching for top rated AC companies in your town.
Speaker: That's not going to be those people.
Speaker: It's going to be chucking a truck or staying in a van and there's nothing wrong with that, but they're not getting paid.
Speaker: to give you the service that you deserve.
Speaker: They're getting paid to put a bandaid on it, have the unit at least turn on and get out.
Speaker: I've had clients with a $1,400 power bill on their 28 year old air conditioning system and their home warranty company said, nope, everything's good to go.
Speaker: It turned back off.
Speaker: And is that fair to the homeowner?
Speaker: No, they could have financed a top of the line system for $250 a month and been saving $1,100 a month, you know, things like that.
Speaker: So I know that you have worked for a company that did home warranty.
Speaker: I know that you got out of there as fast as you could and came to us, but which we're so thankful for.
Speaker: But I'm looking forward to learning more about that side of the industry from you.
Speaker: Well, I'm biting my tongue right now.
Speaker: I'd like to say more about it, but I'm holding back for that podcast.
Speaker: If you read your reviews and you start seeing trends and clients talking about, I used them through my home warranty, you may want to start looking into another company just right off the bat.
Speaker: I agree with you.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Not trying to piss anybody off, but my experience has been that it's not as good
Speaker: My experience is when homeowners that I've dealt with are using their home warranty for their HVAC system, they end up canceling their home warranty.
Speaker: I mean, 90% of the time they say, what the hell was I paying for?
Speaker: But most of the time it's used as an incentive when you're buying a home.
Speaker: Hey, we'll throw in two years of home warranty.
Speaker: A lot of times nobody's even paying for it anyways.
Speaker: It's just given to them and they think it sounds like this magical fairy.
Speaker: We'll take care of everything.
Speaker: That's not how it works.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, all right.
Speaker: I think that concludes this episode.
Speaker: Do you have anything to finish up?
Speaker: Be weary when you're reading these reviews.
Speaker: Make sure that you're sorting these reviews based on time and also on the stars.
Speaker: Because if not, you're just going to be reading the best ones.
Speaker: Make sure that you're not going based on the reviews from your company's website, because those are handpicked and chosen.
Speaker: Go to Google.
Speaker: Go to Yelp.
Speaker: Go to the Better Business Bureau.
Speaker: There's a lot of different ways that people can get in touch with companies and give their personal opinion.
Speaker: But also...
Speaker: Look for, we always talk about patterns.
Speaker: Look for patterns in these reviews.
Speaker: My service technician was energetic and very punctual.
Speaker: People don't talk like that.
Speaker: That's probably a paid review, right?
Speaker: Probably.
Speaker: You know, we get contacted.
Speaker: How often would you say we get contacted for paid reviews?
Speaker: At least two or three times a week.
Speaker: We'll get an email from someone offering to write reviews for us.
Speaker: I've seen from what I've seen for every hundred good reviews, you've had someone write, it only takes three, one stars to knock you down one 10th from a 5.0 to a 4.9.
Speaker: So that's why we say a 4.7 is a target for most companies.
Speaker: There's a lot of factors, but that's one thing to keep into consideration.
Speaker: I mean, another red flag for me would be if they had 800 reviews and it was five stars because it just goes back to we're humans.
Speaker: There are errors.
Speaker: You know, things happen.
Speaker: If everything is perfect, you should be questioning that also.
Speaker: So just be careful when you're reading some of these reviews.
Speaker: Not all the bad reviews are actually bad, you know, connotation on the company itself.
Speaker: Sometimes there's a bad apple and maybe the company got rid of that and they remedied it.
Speaker: So just be careful when you're looking at these reviews.
Speaker: It's not what it seems to be sometimes, right?
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: So next time we're going to get into these home warranty companies, we're going to get into how do I choose the right company for my HVAC replacement?
Speaker: And we're definitely open to any ideas or thoughts from our listeners that may want to listen to something else or have some questions that they need answered.
Speaker: All right, guys.
Speaker: Well, thanks for listening.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Thanks for listening to the comfort zone, y'all.
