Alicia Air Conditioning & Heating

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I would give Alicia Air about 2 stars. I put one star here, though, to try to balance out the five star review above, which was posted by the company itself, in violation of YP's terms of service. Peggy Swingholm is the office manager for the company. I reported it to YP, and they have refused to take action, and suggested that I post this review instead. They won't even enforce their own terms of service.



Here's the reason for the 2 star review. Alicia Air seems like they do pretty good work, once they actually get out to your house to do the work, and once you pay more than the market rate to get them to do it. I think they're fairly honest, at least in terms of what's broken and what work needs to be done to fix it.



I had a brand new HVAC unit put in four years ago. This summer, I noticed the AC unit wasn't able to get the house cool. I called Alicia Air, since they installed it and the parts are still under warranty, to figure out what the problem is.



First, they're very busy, so it's really difficult to get a fix scheduled quickly. My first diagnostic appt ($89) had to be scheduled about 3 weeks out, in summer. The diagnostic guy said the refrigerant was low, meaning it leaked from somewhere.



Diagnostic guy said the only way to figure out where the leak is coming from is to do an isolation test ($350). That had to be done by a DIFFERENT guy, apparently. So I schedule the second appt for the test. Second guy comes out, does the work, says he'll be back in a week to check.



At the third appt (no charge because part of isolation test), the guy says that he can't tell for sure which part is leaking, since the drop in pressure was not very big, and the gauge used by the prior guy to measure the pressure in the respective areas when he filled them has a little blow-off when it's disconnected from the system, which could have been responsible for the slight drop in pressure. He recharged the system, using a different gauge which doesn't release so much pressure when it's released from the system, and said he would come back in two weeks.



At the fourth appt, he measured the pressure and determined it was the evaporator coil which was leaking, which was still under warranty. He said the office would contact me to give me a quote for the fix.



I received the quote via email, and they're trying to charge $1,100 (after applying a $350 credit for the isolation test) just for labor to replace the coil. Ridiculous. I asked why it was so high, and Peggy (the one who posted the aforementioned review) told me that it's because they bid it as a full-day job. It should NOT take a full day to do the change-out of a coil. It took less than a full day for them to install the entire HVAC system, indoors and out.



I got a competing quote from another business (White Mechanical - 4 1/2 stars on Yelp compared to Alicia Air's 1 star there), and he said that they can do it for $922, including recharging the refrigerant and reconnecting the system which Alicia Air left welded shut after their isolation test. That's right, he came in about $180 CHEAPER than Alicia Air and that doesn't even include the $350 credit that Alicia was supposedly applying to reduce the price of the coil change-out.



In short, I paid about $5,000 or so 4 years ago for a completely new HVAC system, the coil was apparently leaking from the start, and even still, Alicia wanted me to pay about $1450 for the LABOR ONLY of replacing the defective coil. Plus, the whole process of the multiple appointments meant that I didn't have a working AC unit for almost the entire summer. AND, for the icing on the cake, this is a company that is willing to stoop so low as to post false reviews about their own company to boost their image.



Go with another company, folks. Alicia seems to do the work competently, but you will pay dearly for it and it will take forever to get it done.