Comfort Defender

Shelley M.

I strongly advise anyone considering using AirBenders to call elsewhere!

As you can see from my earlier review, I had previously given AirBenders two stars due to their poor customer service, inability to arrive when promised, and difficultly in contacting technicians by phone. My review was replied to by their owner, David Jalal, who proceeded to personally attack myself, one of my family members, and my tenant with false statements and allegations. At that point, it became painfully obvious that my prior statements on poor customer service were just the tip of the iceberg. Anytime a company responds to a complaint with false personal attacks either has a serious miscommunication among their staff or the intentional intent to deceive - which likely also extends to their work. Either way, it's a red flag to choose another company!

However, since I had call logs and screen captures to verify my side of the story I posted them on Yelp. David's response was simply to delete the original (incredibly unprofessional) attack and leave a short scripted line and add a bit about being human and making mistakes. Since when is the response to valid criticism with personal attacks a ""mistake""? This entire incident reflects even more immaturity in their behalf considering the owner of the company was the one sending these messages. (For what it's worth, I did try to contact him through Yelp before posting those screen captures, but he did not respond.)

For those interested, here are a few remarks from that exchange:

David/AirBenders: ""However at this point we (AirBenders) were informed by (customer) that the tenants would not be home until 6:00 PM. Again, despite the fact that our normal working hours are 07:00 AM -5:00 PM, we agreed to provide service out of regular hours.""

My Response: As stated in my initial review, the entire reason we used AirBenders was because they said they could provide after hours and weekend service! Their website also states in extremely large text ""Always on Call! 24/7 Emergency Service."" When they came out on Saturday, the tenant specifically requested an evening appointment on Tuesday and was told (without hesitation) that could be done.

David/AirBenders: ""(Customer) told (AirBenders) to pickup the part whilst (customer) contacted the tenant, it was agreed that he would call us back with a more precise timing. We did not receive this call. So after we sent out our technician to pickup the part from Gainesville we attempted to call (customer) and the tenant several times with no answer.""

My Response: As clearly indicated from the call log, there were *no* missed calls or repeated calls. We had a shared understanding from Saturday's initial meeting that the tenant needed an evening appointment. As reflected in the call log, we called AirBenders at 12:45 PM on Tuesday to inquire whether the part was found because we had not heard from them since Saturday. We also called the technician at 1:18 PM, and as we can see from the call log, the technician called us ONCE at 2:02 to confirm the 6 PM repair time. Their call WAS answered as indicated by the screen capture.

David/AirBenders: ""Later that same night after 9:00 we received a call from both yourself and the tenant at the same time demanding after hours service.""

My Response: A text message received the tenant at 9:19 PM on Tuesday verifies that the tenant did not know who was providing the service so they could not not have been calling AirBenders! I did not reply to the tenant's text until 10:07 PM (because we were on hold with AirBenders and then eventually were able to speak to a technician -- at 9:57 PM). Furthermore, we did not ""demand"" after hours service. What we requested, which is far from a demand and wasn't even done regardless, was for the technician to call the tenant that evening and *apologize* for their mistake!

As far as we know, the A/C work was done well, but the absolutely poor customer service absolutely makes this company one to avoid - even in an emergency. Personally, I do not believe the customer is always right; sometimes customers can be unreasonable but the reality is (and the evidence confirms) that the unreasonable party in this exchange was always AirBenders. If they would have simply explained to our tenant that the mistake was on their end rather than leaving a new tenant believing that their landlord failed to schedule repairs, I may have used them again if I had a need after hours. Regardless, everything could have just ended there but instead the reaction to telling other potential customers of my experience (through Yelp) was for the owner of AirBenders, David Jalal, to unnecessarily, unprofessionally, and immaturely blame the customer!

William C.

I've used these guys several times for several different things (AC, Water Heater, Furnace, etc). Always reliable, always fair, definitely recommend them to anyone.

Susan H.

Extremely knowledgeable and professional service. David, the owner, took my service call and identified the issue being a failed breaker. It is obvious that David is a Master HVAC professional. He spent a lot of time explaining to me the potential problem and had all the advanced tools which quickly identified that my breaker had gone bad. This was the second service call since the issue was not identified or resolved on the first. I was only charged for one call nor did David charge me for some other things he fixed. Prices quoted were very fair and again, I will be using them for all HVAC services in the future.

Ghulam I.

We called AirBenders once our AC upstairs had a slight burning smell and quit. David came on time and discussed the issues that led to the outage. He explained quite well what really happened and did not try to oversell, specially as our home is more than a decade old. The problem was fixed quickly by replacing a capacitor and charging freon at various points, which added up to several hundred dollars. Anyway, it was lot cheaper than replacing the entire AC units. He also left some advice about changing filters frequently in order to delay the costly replacements ($6000 or more).

Joyce C.

Update: The issue was fixed by our condo association's plumber in one consultation (they simply snaked the drain). I did not want to pay AirBenders because they did not fix the issue and caused my tenants a great deal of stress. They agreed to not charge me. They asked me to change my one star Yelp review to three stars or else they would put a contractor's lien on my home. This is blackmail but I complied because I did not want to deal with them anymore. I have since sold the condo so I am changing my review back to one star. I understand AirBenders is a small business and they are doing their best, but I have to be honest with my bad experience. Others have obviously had a good experience with AirBenders, so maybe I was just unlucky.
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I called AirBenders on Sunday about a clogged shower drain and scheduled for them to come in Monday. They came and did a consultation and arranged with my tenants to come in on Wednesday (yesterday). No one showed. They said they had a scheduling issue. We arranged for them to come in this afternoon. They said the issue is more serious than previously estimated, and that they would have to charge me $750 more than the original quoted price of $225-$250. This is not a negligible amount. What's the point of even doing a consultation if the original quoted price isn't honored? I agreed to the upcharge because my tenants have been without a working shower for the past 5 days and I didn't want to deal with bringing in a new plumbing company. They told me someone would come between 6:30-7pm tonight with the correct part. No one came. I called to check and was told that they had to order the correct part, which will be expedited tomorrow. They said they would call my tenant to confirm a time, and that they would get back to me. They never called my tenant and no one called me back. I've called them three times since and could never get through to the plumber, who is the only one that can address this issue and give me a truthful answer. Two customer service reps have told me that someone will call me back as soon as possible. My tenants cannot keep waiting around for someone to maybe show up and fix the clogged shower. This has been such a source of stress for us and I still have no idea what is going on.

Bottom line is that Airbenders provides a terrible customer experience. They do not respect your time and will blatantly lie to your face. Avoid at all costs!

Bruce N.

They are amazing and you won't go wrong with them. I would strongly recommend AirBenders to service your air conditioners. I have a warranty insurance. As usual my warranty company sent me 3 subpar service providers before and they all didn't know how to fix my unit so they gave all kinds of wrong diagnosis. I was out of luck and thinking about replacing with a new unit so I called AirBenders initially to get the quotes for the new unit. They were very responsive, came out the same day and took a look at my unit. They were very honest instead of trying to sell a new unit, they recommended me to try fixing it by replacing a part. So I agreed. They replaced a part and spent more than 2 hours waiting and adjusting to make sure my unit is working flawlessly. No service companies have spent that much time in the past. AirBenders is very passionate about their work and their work is superb. thank you Bryan and David! you guys did an amazing job. My unit is working flawlessly since then.

Ashley W.

AirBenders was the best choice I could have made for my hot water heater. What I thought was going to be a lengthy and expensive repair was an easy and cheap one. David was extremely knowledgeable and very helpful. They worked around my schedule and answered all one million of my questions.

Chris F.

Our a/c died on Friday evening, July 15 -- right at the start of the Arlington/Metro DC heat wave. I called our longtime hearing and a/c provider, Snell & Sons (now Snell Co.) and they were able to get a tech to come on Sunday afternoon, which I greatly appreciated. The tech said our compressor was gone on the system I had them install in 1999 (so I got 17 years out of it), and we would need a new a/c system (new condenser outside and new coil inside on top of our furnace/fan) (installed in 2009). He said someone from Snell would call to set up an appointment for an estimate. Call From Snell on Monday left on our answering machine but no call to my work (Snell has my numbers on file). Tuesday, same thing. I called them Tuesday late afternoon and got first available appointment, and it was for Friday. We were ready to check into a motel, it was so hot. But I went to Google and found a Yelp top 10 heating and a/c providers in No Virginia, and AirBenders was on top of the list. So I called on Tuesday late afternoon and they said I could have an estimator at my home the next day (Wednesday). Excellent reviews on Yelp, some of which talked of the owner, David, showing up to do the estimate. On Wednesday, here came the tech on time, and it turned out to be David, the owner. He spent 30 minutes inspecting, explaining options and reasons, telling me about how he bought the company four years earlier, etc., and then giving me an estimate that was $2k less than the low end ball park given me by the Snell tech on Sunday afternoon. And David said they could install on Friday -- two days later. I couldn't get an estimate from Snell until Friday (meaning an install would likely not happen until the next week sometime) and here this guy would get my new system up and running by then, for a great price. I immediately wrote a check for half of the cost and on Friday, the AirBenders installers (crew chief was David's brother) had my new Trane system up and running by late afternoon. Full 10 year warranty on the Trane system and a 2 year labor warranty. They are Trane certified dealers -- I think they install exclusively Trane systems, although they service all brands. The Trane is quiet and efficient. And they also have a master plumber and do plumbing. We are enjoying our air conditioned home while it is blistering hot outside, and I am a new and very satisfied AirBenders customer, grateful that there is out there a company that provides excellent and quick service, at a very reasonable, competitive price-point. Good service and good pricing -- it doesn't get any better than that. Thank you David and AirBenders.

James L.

It was 97 degrees in our upstairs zone on Saturday evening when I went upstairs! I called Airbenders at 8:30 Sunday morning, and they had a technician at our house by noon. The capacitor was fried, but the tech had it on his truck and everything was fixed within 15-20 minutes. He was very knowledgeable, consultative, and professional. Everything with the service was top notch, and was a 5 out of 5. The only negative was that we had to pay $180 service call fee because it was Sunday. If it had been any other day it would have been $89, and while that was all disclosed up front, we didn't have a choice to wait until Monday because of work commitments. I don't blame them for charging the premium, as they pay their techs overtime on Sundays, but it was a big pill to swallow for such a short visit. Just plan your outages accordingly or wait if you can!

Amer S.

Great service from David and team. I had an emergency with my hvac unit on a holiday, and airbenders crew came and took care of the problem same day and came back the next day and install items which needed attention. Highly recommend these guys.