Absolute Heating & Cooling

I am surprised that there are no other reviews for Absolute Heating & Cooling. I am guessing it’s because Bret Potter recently went out on his own and is a one-​man operation. Anyway, my oil supplier had recommended Bret when I needed routine maintenance for my furnace two years ago, and he was very nice and did a good job. Bret’s bill was fair and reasonable.
Recently, I had a bad experience with another company — One Hour Heating & Air Conditioning — and Bret came to the rescue. I called One Hour to service my central A/​C because they had installed the compressor three years ago (the former home owners had used them), and I had a problem. They sent out a technician who advised me that both the (new) compressor and the capacitor in my unit were shot. I found this to be odd since the compressor was only three years old; prior to that, the old one had lasted for 14 years!
After the technician left, no one from One Hour got in touch with me. I had to call them, and got Tom Coutant — the general manager of what I am assuming is a franchise — on the phone. He advised me that a new compressor would cost $ 2,300 but that they were not comfortable putting another one in an older A/​C unit. Tom was pushing me to purchase a brand new air conditioning system for my house, which would have cost thousands of dollars more.
Call it female intuition, but I wasn’t buying this. So I called Bret from Absolute and fortunately he was on a service call in the next town. He came to my house 30 minutes later, looked at the outside unit, and said that the problem was the capacitor (a $ 40 part) which had rusted. He replaced the capacitor, cleaned up a couple of other minor things, and — voila! — success! The A/​C has been working fine ever since.
When I told Bret that I had paid One Hour $ 2,300 to replace the compressor three years ago, he was shocked. He said he would have charged $ 1,200 to do it. What really irks me is that I was experiencing severe financial difficulties when I was told I had to have the compressor replaced, and went through hoops to pay their bill. I feel they took advantage of me.
I spoke with Christy from One Hour and told her the story. I asked for the service call charge of $ 85 to be refunded to my credit card. She said she would take care of it. I have also put in a dispute with my credit card company because I feel as though I was being scammed … not once, but twice!
Let’s hope One Hour does the right thing and refunds the service call charge on their own.
Meanwhile, Bret’s our man for anything HVAC!
NB: I also placed a dispute with my credit card company, and I did get a refund of the service call from One Hour on 8÷06÷15.