Featured Testimonial

At Custom Mechanical you never seem to run out of those who deserve recognition for customer service, at least to me, and now for fixing my sister’s heat pump, which I discovered was not producing heat at all, and even no heat when I put it into the emergency mode on the thermostat. I recommended that my sister call you and she did, because of the good work that you did for me and because you are local to my area and also my sister, who owns a nice house in Bay Forest, a newer development.

My sister called your office and she said she spoke to Lynn, who offered your company’s technical service to her to fix her heat pump without charging for an emergency, even though she was experiencing an emergency at the time. My sister was snowed into her home with a long and winding driveway up on a big hill, with a great ravine to fall into, right next to the driveway, should you slide off of it, and nothing to break your car’s fall down that hill except trees. Because my sister couldn’t make it to DE from PA, I offered to open the door of her home to your technical service employee, whose name was, and still is, Dennis. Dennis showed up on time, and called before he arrived at my sister’s home and called my cell phone to let me know he was coming, because that is what Lynn said to me that he would do.

When Dennis first arrived at my sister’s home in Bay Forest, he put on a mask and boot covers on his shoes, and with a backpack on his back full of tools, he asked me, “where is the heat pump at.” I explained to him that I it was my sister Bernadene Wasserleben’s home, and that I was Bernadene’s brother and thanked him for coming so fast. I filled Dennis full of ideas, of which I had many, because I have two masters degrees in Engineering from the University of Michigan, that I felt that I could help him focus in on the problem. He listened to my ideas and did not judge me, for bragging about my degrees in engineering, but all he could say to me at that time, was that my guesses were as good as his guesses, and he needed to follow a service procedure, that I didn’t see, so it must have been tucked away within his head. I offered my explanation of what the thermostat said was an error code, and he said he had already read it, which I didn’t think he had time to do yet, and then he wanted to see the second thermostat located upstairs.

Since I could see that he had things under control, and that my suggestions at that time were just wild guesses, and everything needed to be confirmed by him, through a thorough examination. So I decided to sit in the kitchen and enjoy my visit to my sister’s house, accompanied by my dog Eddie, a Papillion. I found a box of wine in her kitchen refrigerator and felt the need at that time to enjoy a glass of it, which I happily sipped on at the kitchen table. Dennis at this time, had parked himself in front of the inside unit of what he described as a dual fuel heat pump. I knew that there was such a thing as dual fuel, but I had never seen one before. After what seemed like a good amount of time Dennis came back to the kitchen, and I explained to him that all I was doing was sipping on a glass of wine and waiting for the little red warning light to go out on the thermostat. He said that the light would go out, and that everything was fixed, at least that is what he thought and he produced a small fuse, that was corroded, inside and outside of the metal parts of it. He said that he felt that this fuse was only part of the problem, that there was also a sending unit outside, with batteries in it, and these batteries were very low on voltage, which was also important, but some technicians don’t even know that they exist. The house started to get warmer as we spoke and the little red light went out, and he explained to me that the unit knew when to apply emergency heat, based on the outside temperature that was relayed to the main control panel in the unit and also to the thermostat, for the owner to read. I did not have to worry about putting the heating unit into emergency mode, because that is something that it does automatically if everything is working and the batteries are renewed outside on a regular basis, something the homeowner should mention to any technician who they chose to service the heat pump because a lot of technicians, would not know to look out for them or that they even exist.

So the moral of my story is that you have a great technician in Dennis who is extremely conscientious and can explain things to customers better than an engineer can do, because he can do it in plain language. He also said to me not to write everything he said down, because he will put it all on the service invoice, and I was happy for that, because I needed to take another sip of wine at that time. Dennis cleaned everything up and left, although he did not make a mess, but there were plenty of tools out of his backpack that were on the floor near the heat pump air handler and propane backup furnace assembly, and he went on his way. I could not wait to play show and tell with my sister, when she visited Delaware this coming weekend, for the Fire and Ice Festival on the boardwalk, something we both looked forward to. I had laying on the kitchen table, a corroded fuse, that I had never seen happen before in all my experiences that Dennis said in his mind contributed to the malfunction, but was not the only cause of the problem, because everything needed to work together and be right, or the unit’s brain would shut itself down, to protect itself, even though the occupants of the house may be cold at the time.

Thank you for listening to my story about my service experience with Dennis, and I believe that your competitors knew that Dennis could do all of this, they would certainly offer to steal him from you. I like to write in an entertaining way, at least because it is entertaining to me to do that, and also a lot of fun for me, as well, and I hope it can entertain others too.

Sincerely,

Your customer forever, or as long as I exist,

Thaddeus Sliwinski