Reliance Home Comfort

I've been a customer of this company for almost 20 years, renting a water heater from them. We recently purchased a new (to us) house and decided that we didn't want to rent a water heater any longer so called them to inform them of the move date. The current invoice (pricing included here) was for a pre-paid amount of time and covered a period longer than the time left in the house so their CSR advised me to not pay the current invoice but wait for the final pro-rated invoice that only covered the period we would actually be using the heater for. He seemed to take extensive notes and add all of this information to my file and I hung up thinking that things were resolved and I would just wait for the pro-rated invoice to pay the bill.

Today I was left an automated voicemail from them threatening to send me to collections due to my delinquent account if I didn't contact them immediately. After almost an hour on the phone and speaking with 5 different people no one could resolve the issue and they all said that the previous rep gave me bad information about them sending a pro-rated invoice and that I should just pay the bill and "worry about the difference" later. They said all they can do right now is to say that I've made payment arrangements with them and that the automated system would stop calling me with the collection threats until the close date of the house. They also then informed me that they would only be sending out a pro-rated invoice after we had moved (but didn't want my new address) and 3 different CSRs tried to "estimate" what the bill might be and said I should "just pay us $40 now and we'll try and figure out the difference later."

This is probably the single worst customer service experience I have ever had. I'm now being charged late fees (which they say they can't stop, but they backed out the ones already on the account) and that I should "just pay the bill and they will credit me the difference at the new house" -- even though I told them multiple times that I'm closing the account -- which also should be right there on my customer account records but apparently was not. The one woman would not even let me finish a sentence before cutting me off each time so I couldn't even actually explain the situation.

Think long and hard before you get involved with this company if you value your time. After following their advice and then in turn getting threatening voice mails about being taken to collections for a "seriously delinquent account" the lesson that I've learned here is that one department here doesn't know what the other ones are doing, and no one could handle what I thought would be a simple customer issue. I've now paid the bill in full and will never deal with them again (and likely never see the remainder of the pre-paid amount of money because they don't even have my new address).