I've been an Enercare home service and water heater rental plan subscriber for many years.
Event #1 -This year my furnace died after about 23 years of service, of which, I've been on the Enecare Furnance plan for 17 of those years. Over the years the service guys have done a great job cleaning and supporting the furnace. However, when it came time to replacing the furnance the sales, and administration groups were a nightmare to deal with. The sales person tried to sell me a top of the line furnace/air conditioner combination. I asked him if he could do better on the price, and he said "Enercare believes in fixed price offerings, so no he couldn't do better". He would, however, save me a little money on the air conditioner install. The price was so high that I decided to go out for a second quote. The second quote came in at about 60% of Enercare's pricing. It wasn't entirely an apples to apples quote, but it was close enough for me to know that I was being sold a bill of goods by Enercare. I told the Enercare salesperson that his price was over the top. He came back with basically a revised version of his quote adjusting components to match the other quote that dropped his price by about 25%. I asked him "why didn't you offer this deal originally?". No real response was forthcoming, so I decided to go with the other vendor. They did an excellent job installing the system, and I'm completely happy with the purchase.
Event #2 - Once I decided to go with the other vendor, I needed to cancel my support agreement for the furnace. I called up the rep at Enercare to cancel, and was told "oh sir, your contract anniversary date was two months ago, if you cancel now, you will need to pay us for the remaining ten months". I go "but I thought this was a month to month contract". The rep then went on to tell me that it's actually an annual contract that is billed monthly. I asked the rep to put me on no renewal, and I would just let the contract run out. The response "sorry sir, we can't do this. You need to call us 3 months before the contract is due and then we'll mark you as don't renew. I was surprised by the response given the fact that no one would design an IT system that wouldn't allow a non-renewal flag setting to be set at any time. I can see where this is all headed. I will call them in the fall, and they'll pass my call to various areas of the company to "upsell" me on keeping my plan.
Event #3, my girlfriend's house suffered a significant flood in the basement that caused her gas heater to fail. She is on a rental plan with Enercare. The Enercare service guy shows up and says the heater needs to be replaced. This is the first time an Enercare has had to come to look at the gas heater in 6+ years - the last time being when her old unit needed to be replaced. The service guy calls the sales guy, and the sales guy tries to convince her to stay on the $25/month rental plan rather than buy a new unit. According to the sales person, it's too expensive to buy a new unit ($1800), and that she has all the benefits of the care-free service plan on a tank that is expected to last 15 years. My girlfriend signs, and then calls me. I tell her to drop the rental plan and buy a new tank. She calls the salesperson to cancel, and he tells her that she still owes $1000 on the failed tank. She tells him that after 6+ years to owe $1000 on a commodity that costs possibly $1200 (worse case) is ridiculous. He then goes on to tell her about the benefits she's had with worry -free service over the past 6 years. Another ridiculous defense of very questionable sales and operating practices.
Neither my girlfriend nor I will ever use Enercare again. Their rental plans/homecare plans with APR's >20% put them in the operating class of an "Instant Cash" business. Avoid at all cost if you can afford to do so.
