Since literally being brought back to life from being within days of dying because of the illness that I was experiencing just over a year ago, my life has been unbelievable to me. I am recovering well and I am very thankful to those who continue to support me in so many different ways.
I want to share a story with you.
After getting a thorough home inspection, we were advised that before moving into our new home in Tecumseh, a new furnace should be considered. It wasn't a question of if the furnace would go, but more of a question of when it would stop working properly. Calling him in, a Reliance Home Comfort employee concurred that one of the first major things that we should do in our new house was to replace the furnace completely in our basement and to add other small features during that process to improve our townhouse for the future. Frankly, to me anyway, it really wasn't such a big deal because this was an expense that usually came up.
We decided to go ahead with the purchase. For others it may have worked out well when they made the changes in their basement with the new unit being installed. However, for us, it was quite a crazy experience to deal with! Unfortunately, because of my health condition at the time in May of last year, I could not be involved in watching the new unit being put in. That task went to my daughter, Melissa, and to her boyfriend, Bill. Fortunately for her, Bill had some experience in dealing with home heating systems and knew the right questions to ask. Nevertheless, the person putting it in, who was an employee of the Reliance subcontractor to whom the task was given, must have done something wrong because installation was a mess and the furnace did not work properly.
According to my daughter, a number of things happened that seemed to be improperly done during the installation. I need not bore you with all of those details but when I heard about it I contacted Reliance and spoke to some senior officials there. My tone was not exactly friendly either. I warned them that, if I had to call them one more time after supposedly everything had been fixed up, I would require them to take out every piece of equipment that they put in and reinstall everything again properly or else! I also told them that I did not want their subcontractor involved in the unit replacement because of the mess they had made and how bad our phone conversation was.
Reliance performed beautifully to satisfy us. They literally sent us a team of employees to check out everything that was done initially, fixed it all up and the system worked perfectly. They fixed the outstanding problems that their employees spent hours trying to figure out, but had difficulty in doing so. They had various people checking the different pieces of equipment. Now that is service for just a plain customer with no other connection with the Company. It cost us zero dollars as well!
Everything worked well for months and months until a short time ago when I started to hear a noise that was coming from somewhere in the house. My guess when I first heard the noise, in the middle of the night naturally, was that it probably came from the basement because of the cold weather. It was just some expansion and/or contraction of some parts I felt. I had experienced a similar issue in a previous household where I lived. As time went on, the noise increased from a few times a night to several times during the evening and then throughout the day. My wife and I could not figure out from where the noise was coming or what the problem was.
After spending too long hearing these peculiar sounds, we asked my daughter's boyfriend, Bill, to come over and try to fix up whatever was going wrong. By this time, I had fortunately lucked out I thought. The noise seemed to come from the bathroom beside my bedroom. In fact, the noise seemed to come from the toilet, believe it or not. Bill made the decision that even though the time period was so short from installation, the problem probably came from the toilet itself with a flush valve not suctioning properly and so it was causing air bubbles to form and it may not necessarily be a problem that Reliance can help. He went to a local hardware store nearby and purchased a new flush valve to potentially alleviate the problem.
It took a fair bit of time for Bill to get the rubber part of the valve on properly. It would not seal flat and what a frustrating process! He finally did it and replaced the old part with the new one. Hallelujah, success! The sound disappeared.
My wife and I had a great night of sleeping the first evening. On the 2nd night however, everything broke down. It was a mess. I heard a sound at about a quarter to midnight that night and that sound came back every 10 minutes or so thereafter. My wife and I spent time trying to get that sound to stop. We achieved nothing. The decision was made by us that we were going to call up Reliance to have a worker come out that night under their repair service to have someone take a look further into what the problem may be, so we could finally get to sleep.
I spoke to a lady by the name of Patty who was in Reliance's Services group. She seemed to be nice. Obviously, I have no idea what she looks like but she seemed to be a bit older and she knew how to talk to a person who had a problem. She had a very friendly personality so late at night, which was comforting. Patty was very knowledgeable and our discussion lasted almost 45 minutes.
Yes, it was that detailed because I felt first that it was necessary for me to disclose our problem in our house because I couldn't figure it out. Also I did explain to her my medical situation and so sometimes I may get words wrong or it may take me longer to explain. She was very understanding and handled this complex situation in a professional manner, mentioning she would call back and let me know if someone could come and check out the issue.
Patty called back within a half an hour and told me about how many people she had spoken with already. I was shocked by how many to be honest and how senior they were even so late at night. I was told not to expect anyone coming in until around 8 o'clock that morning. I accepted what she said and we ended up chatting on the phone for a while more. I thanked her for her time and great efforts and said goodnight. I have never received such great customer service before in the middle of the night!
It was probably about 2:30 in the morning when we were all finished and Marsha and I went back to bed. I normally do not sleep very well in a difficult situation. However that night I fell asleep right away and got up a few hours later feeling quite relaxed. At around 7:30 AM, Patty called me again with a bit of bad news. Regretfully, I was told that the person that they wanted to come to take a look at the furnace equipment who was experienced would not be able to come until later in the morning because he was attending a conference for which he had been scheduled before. I accepted that because I wanted a senior employee to come over and we had settled the problem temporarily.
It was around 10 AM, the time when I was told that his conference would end, that I received a call from him, Ian, who told me that he was coming over immediately. It wasn't very pleasant outside because of snow and he told me that it would take a bit longer to get here than normal. He told me not to worry because he was going to remain at my house until he solved the problem. Another phone call came. Ian said that there was a problem with his daughter's car and he needed to tend to the situation right now. I understand that family is important and so I told him to come when he was ready. Fortunately, it worked out and his daughter was able to get the issue dealt with and Ian was heading over to fix this mysterious sound.
We spent a good amount of time when Ian arrived here talking about the system that I had arranged to be put into our house and the problems that we had experienced initially. I was afraid that one of them either was coming back or had not been identified before because of the mess of the system originally. He wanted to know everything that might be wrong with it now so that he could fix it up. It did not matter how long it took because he was there to solve any problem that I possibly had.
To be direct about it, as we were speaking, one of the situations that I discussed was that I heard a lot of noise directly from our toilet in the bathroom. That made him think that it was actually a toilet issue itself that caused the problem. In fact, it turned out that the work my daughter's boyfriend had struggled with was due to the fact that even the new flush valve was poorly manufactured and was not sealing properly again!
Ian had to go out and buy another piece of equipment to install. He went to one of the big Hardware stores in town to get something that was better quality. He did not accept what they had in stock, so off he went to another outfit where he was able to get a good piece of equipment with which he was very comfortable to install.
If you think that Ian stopped there just to repair that unit, then you are wrong. He went into the basement and took a look at all of the equipment down there. In fact, he organized changes for some of it even though it was probably earlier than it needed to be done because he told me that he did not want another issue a short time later. There were several actions that he took to change equipment to make sure that I was not going to have to solve another problem shortly thereafter. Thank goodness for that!
When Ian finished all his work after about 4 to 5 hours being in our house, I was thrilled. I could not believe how long he stayed here and how much work he did to help us out so much. I must say that I was a bit nervous in case I heard another noise that evening coming from the water system telling me that the problem still had not been solved but I heard nothing. Everything that Ian had done was perfect!
I was not finished after Ian left. I had a very important job that I had to do as a result of this situation. I spoke with Ian's supervisor, John, and expressed my gratitude about the great work that he had done. I also spoke with John's supervisor, Ghislaine, and then all of their supervisors, including Amanda, who lives out of town, to express how happy I was with what happened.
That's it, dear reader. I wanted to set out in great detail what took place so that not only would you understand the great relationship that I have developed with Reliance, but more importantly with many of its employees who made it their job to make sure that everything worked for our family so well. If I would have encountered a negative experience, I would share that too, so you are aware of how to deal with these situations. If you're looking for a furnace or any other equipment for your house, I would highly recommend booking an appointment with a rep from Reliance. It makes me happy that they offer live 24 hours a day, 7 days a week service to their customers. I intend to be a life-long customer. Go here to contact them: http://www.reliancehomecomfort.com/Pages/default.aspx
So that's the end of the story. I enjoy letting people know the good and the bad of anything that takes place in my life because maybe a similar situation has happened to you, or may occur in the future and so reading my blog will help you know what steps to take.
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