Wouldn't you know, my home's 30 year old AC unit failed the evening before a big weeklong heatwave was forecast to begin here in Toronto. Given the unfortunate timing, I figured that I was either going to be frustrated with calling around to find a service technician to come to my home without a long wait, or that I would fall prey to an unscrupulous contractor given my urgency in wanting to restore AC for my family.
Fortunately, I was completely wrong on both scores. Several minutes after submitting my request to HomeStars, a handful of contractors had replied. One that caught my eye was Climax Air, primarily because of all the glowing 10 star reviews. I was a little incredulous with the reviews, but I called and spoke to Sam. He mentioned that he was heading cross-town to another appointment, but would stop in on his way to take a look at my AC condenser unit. True to his word, Sam arrived within the hour. He took his time to troubleshoot the compressor, including confirming gas pressure and substituting a new capacitor to try and bring it back to life. Unfortunately, after 30 years it was well and truly dead.
Of course this is the point where I expected the hard sell -- after all, I'm a desperate homeowner with no option on a 40 degree day but to replace my AC ASAP. Fortunately, Sam patiently walked me through my options, and answered all of my questions with a calm no-nonsense approach. He didn't oversell nor undersell the job, he didn't pressure me to sign on the spot, and he set clear expectations as to the performance of the new system and the necessary compromises due to the placement of the condenser unit and the legacy HVAC infrastructure in my house. We settled on the equipment and contract terms, and then I was expecting him to tell me that it would be a week or two before his team could begin the work. Again, I was completely taken aback that Sam managed to arrange for the installers to come to begin the work a few short hours later the same day.
Often, once the work begins on a project and expectations inevitably fail to be met, buyer's remorse can quickly set in. As it was late afternoon I felt for sure someone would call me to tell me the job would be put off till another day. However, true to his word, the Climax Air installers pulled up in my driveway ready to get to work. And work they did. Behzad (Ben) and Hassan immediately got to work replacing both my AC unit, and my equally old gas furnace. There were some challenges they had to overcome adapting some of my old ducts and infrastructure, but they diligently kept at the job till midnight so that I would have AC for my family -- and they delivered. They arranged to return the following day to complete the furnace install (hooking up the gas, etc.) and again, arrived on time and worked hard to finish the work. When they were done, everything worked just as Sam had originally promised, the old equipment was removed, and Ben and Hassan made sure everything was left clean and neat.
Based upon my experience would I recommend Climax Air to others seeking HVAC assistance? Absolutely! In a world that sometimes feels filled with fly-by-night charlatans who never live up to their promises, it's an absolute delight to work with a company like Climax, staffed with honest, decent, hard-working, competent and authentic individuals.
