Modern Mechanical

Reed Z.

My home warranty assigned me this company to replace my 22yrs old water heater and Leo the guy who came to do the job wanted to rip me off by asking $160 for the county permit which actually takes only $60 !!!

Nope! No integrity, no business!

I ended up asking a cash out from my HW company and find a plumber myself. For only half of the price out of pocket, I now have a brand new AO smith water heater in my basement !

Jimmy O.

Excellent service and very responsive. They actually show up on time and provide follow to make we were satisfied with the work completed.

Richard S.

Immediate relief!! We lost our a/c three weeks ago. Another company came three times without repair (including replacement of the compressor!!). Finally called MM and they came that day - replaced the fan motor and bingo! the house is now cool.

Thank you Modern Mechanical!!!

John T.

I had been using MM for some time to keep our 13 year old Trane system working. The most recent issue before this last event were bad breakers in the air handler that shorted out the system, which MM did, I think, go the extra mile in working to fix. It was with this positive experience in mind that I called MM to investigate why the heat pump in our house suddenly stopped working...the breaker for the heat pump kept tripping off.

MM scheduled the call for the following day, which was understandable...summer was starting and everyone is busy. When the tech arrived, he was friendly as expected. He seemed a little lost in diagnosing the problem though. He fiddled with some wires, did a few things, then reset the breakers. I'm not sure what he did, but when he did it an arc of electricity went from the compressor and ruptured the cooling line. If you felt a little hot about a month ago, that was probably us and the expulsion of our coolant into the local atmosphere. Anyway, the tech stood there and stared at the compressor for a good 10-15 minutes. He then told me ""well, the compressor is shot."" OK, thanks. ""It will need to be replaced, and we'll also have to repair the line and recharge the system."" OK, got that. Now some background...we had replaced the compressor two or so years ago. I asked how much it would be and he said ""probably about as much as it cost last time."" Well, I guess that's helpful, sort of.

He went to his truck to call home base and suss out an estimate, which ended up being such that a new system suddenly became economically reasonable. The tech then left, and I was left with this thought - my system was actually worse off than before the tech did anything with it. So that was the frame of mind I was in when I started calling around for estimates for a new system.

I did call MM for an estimate and a salesman came out. Now, again, keep in mind that I know the HVAC life - my dad lived it, after all. The salesman, and he was a salesman, came to the house in his BMW M and dressed with the stylish clothes and italian shoes. I'm left thinking ""oh, boy, what's this going to cost?"" He took some notes on the air handler, did not ask to look at the outside unit (guess he didn't want to get his shoes dirty) and instead asked me questions about tonnage and such. I will put this next part in caps: ""HE DID NOT PERFORM A HEAT LOSS/HEAT GAIN SURVEY."" In other words, his assumption was that the existing unit was sized correctly, which is frankly one hell of an assumption.

He then started in with options. I will congratulate him on knowing the product, I will criticize him for his bearing. For instance, I told him I'm very happy with our Nest, we like it and it does exactly what we want. He said the Nest is obsolete and akin to a Blackberry phone. Well, where I come from, insulting a customer's preferences is probably not a good way to engender goodwill. He also heaped scorn on other makers, comparing his Lennox to a BMW with Trane and other makers being less-desirable marques. He did spec out a system, and I will be fair to MM that it was a competitive quote.

When we compiled all of the quotes we had received we found that we had two front runners. I am not joking when I say we figured the quotes were such: MM's quote was for very good equipment but a slimy and aggressive salesman, whereas the other quote was for less-known equipment but the owner came out personally and, yes, did a heat loss/heat gain survey to be sure the proposal was speced out properly. The issue facing us was if we wanted to deal with MM for the next ten years or not. Based on the salesman's attitude toward us, this was no small decision...I don't like to reward shabby treatment.

The other firm called back to offer a price incentive for us, and when we looked at specs we were actually leaning toward MM if they could work a little on price. I emailed the salesman and he wanted to know the details of the other quote. I sent it to him and he emailed back starting to badmouth the equipment. Again, bad juju. I had to say that I was satisfied with the equipment speced and could anything be done about the price? They did come down on the price, but then it dawned on us that though the prices were about the same, the competitor's system had a better heat pump (two stage instead of one). The MM guy recognized this in a voice mail to me where, in a fit of pique, he said the other gear was cheaper, and there's a reason for that...it's buying a Ford instead of a BMW. Well, my Ford Cobra ran much more dependably than my finicky BMW 330i, so I guess I'll take the Ford. Thanks, pal.

The takeaway here is that for bread and butter maintenance, MM is...OK. For service, they are hit or miss. For sales, well, unless you like being insulted by an arrogant and aggressive salesman, go somewhere else.

patrick r.

I am a property manager and use old republic warranties for many of the residential homes I manage. When a furnace or central air needs a replacement, it's not unusual for the process to take 3 weeks. First diagnosis, then parts need to be determined and handed off to the warranty company, then the warranty company buys and ships to the hvac contractor, and once they arrive then the hvac contractor has to schedule the install.

I am happy to report Modern Mechanical cut thru the red tape and got the job done! They have the know-how to fix a system and they answer the phone when you call and give you an update. Yes, I had to escalate the situation to a higher level of management, but they did the job as expected in the final analysis and that is rare for a company to step up and do the right thing.

Good luck

Andrew N.

Modern Mechanical replaced our 20+ year old HVAC system and hot water heater. The job was not an easy one given the complications of getting the condensate lines from the furnace to the outside compressor, but Modern Mechanical stayed late each day during the installation to make sure it was done right.

They were very honest about recommending the right system for the house and balancing upfront cost with energy savings, maintenance,reliability, etc. In the end we went with a Lennox XP25 with a dual fuel SLP98V furnace. We've had the system for 4 months now and it is running beautifully, with significant energy savings.

We were really impressed with Modern Mechanical from the initial visit and quoting process all the way through the end of the installation. We would definitely use them again and would highly recommend.

Judy G.

I recently had an issue with my toilet in my condo, leaking so much water that it leaked into the condo below, damaging their ceiling. Modern Mechanical sent a plumber immediately, which made me very happy (as I wasn't a previous customer). The plumber, Leo was very professional, and honest . . . explaining to me exactly what he thought the cause could be and what he'd have to do to stop the leaking. Turns out that it was not very serious, and was a somewhat ""easy and inexpensive"" fix. I feel that Leo was very honest. and would gladly due business with Modern Mechanical again based on my interactions with Leo. You all have a great employee with Leo. I also appreciated that they could call me ahead to meet them there so I did not have to miss a ""4 hour window"" from work.

S M.

Prior to putting in a new system in my condo, I'd had good luck with MM. A couple of the guys who'd serviced my old equipment (twice a year) were really good and I was pleased. Last winter I was told I needed a new unit. After the shock of discovering my old system was failing (it was 10 years old), I was told how much my new machine would be ($5,400). My neighbor ironically needed a new system - the price she paid was substantially lower than what MM quoted me, but I thought I was getting great, professional service, so I opted to have the new equipment installed. The guys who placed the unit were nice guys but they couldn't wait to go to lunch that day. On the way out, one of them handed me a 'how to program your unit' card and in as much as I was surprised about that, it wasn't nearly as bad as when I looked at the outcome. Honestly, it looked like they'd popped in a somewhat new piece of equipment but all the foil stuff that surrounds it and padding, was coming apart and just looked terrible. Joey fixed it for me several days later but I was horrified initially. I took photo's. But that's not it......I chose to sell my place this Spring. Couldn't believe it when the home inspection report said my HVAC needed service! That was one of my big selling points and it needed looking at? I was on holiday when the engineer came by to fix it. When I came back, we'd had a warm spell so I didn't notice he hadn't plugged the HVAC unit back in! How would I know you can actually unplug a unit? It turned cold and I was constantly trying to turn on the system. I called MM and they came out and told me right then and there that the equipment hadn't been turned on. Oh and I forgot to mention that the person who came by that day, in as much as he was polite, sat in his van on a phone call for 20 mins before he came up to my condo. I'd had enough. I was promised free service for one year but I think I'm better off going back to M E Flow. Not to be negative, and I do think I had a bout of bad luck, but service was sub par and I won't recommend. Sorry.

Darren F.

Modern mechanical is great at advertising themselves for sure. I went with them due to the quick professional response time and great prices. I had a new unit installed and still have nothing but problems. Lucky it was under warranty the first year. They had to come out at least half a dozen times within 6 months and had to rebuild the unit. I just had another major component need replacing and now the warranty is expired. Forget trying to call a manager, their customer service matches their product.
I must say their technicians are top notch. Pay a little more, but go with another company. Sadly I recommended them to a friend too.

Robert E.

This is an update review. I changed my rating from 1 star to 4 - the co-owner of the company provided a refund which we had mutually agreed upon....and although that does not eliminate the unfortunate incident which my family endured - it does show that the owners themselves do care about the service they provide and they stand behind their work. I believe what happened is that the Company management (one level below owners) were not empowered to make certain decisions, and when I spoke to the co-owner about this he said he was going to implement a policy to allow them to act on the owners behalf on situations like I encountered. I believe this will go a long way to getting their company an outstanding reputation.

They'll have another opportunity to show their professionalism in the spring when they perform the spring A/C checkup. I'll post another review then.