Carolina Air Conditioning Inc

Converted to a central HVAC system back in ’98. Went with Carolina A/​C and a Trane unit.
It failed this weekend so called Monday morning. Was advised that Mondays are very busy due to weekend volume catch up. As promised the tech, Joe K., arrived late in the afternoon. I gave him the symptoms and my diagnosis which he immediately verified, a blown condenser fan motor. Some good luck too, the replacement model was on his truck. Quickly installed, up and running, coolant lines tested and found to be in good shape. Back in business. Bring on the ’90’s.
I value loyalty and reward merchants who provide excellent service and value with repeat business, recommendations and honest reviews.
Carolina A/​C has retained my continued loyalty today.

Purchased the coupon for the inspection and maintenance. They didn’t find anything that I had to do right then and there wasn’t any high pressure sales pitch for other services, just recommendations. The technician emailed pictures of the work to be done before getting started.
Having had a lot of interactions with contractors I have to say Carolina AC is awesome.

So, ordinarily I’d be weary if the same company that comes out for a simple coupon and cleanup gave me the worst possible news, but I already knew there was a problem and I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt.
So large problem told and I gave them permission to fix it right away — the following day I had whole new unit. No waiting, no killing my house guests coming for the weekend and no carbon-​induced-​illnesses over the holidays.
Since the new unit has been installed and the old crap totally cleared away — everyone has been extremely helpful. Follow ups have been informative and they’re even looking out by way of rebates and no-​interest loans.
Thanks Carolina Air. 10 years of hassle free heating and cooling — WAY better that all the problems I’ve had with other venders over the last year!

Dana the receptionist was most helpful in setting up the appointment and communicating schedule changes. Justin the tech was able to diagnose what was wrong with my Rheem heat pump and reprogram the thermostat within a couple of hours. The unit was brand new and I did the initial installation myself so it wasn’t wired completely correct. Needed an expert to finish the job. I would also be skeptical of the other reviews this company’s prices were more than reasonable for the time and the skill the tech obviously had. The technician was also courteous in taking shoes off before entering residence without my asking. My house is surrounded by good old Orange County clay. Would definitely recommend this company to anyone.

In April 2013, Carolina came to service our air conditioner on the third floor. They recommended that we install a «safety float sensor» in the drip pan as a secondary fail safe in case the drain clogged. It would provide us «peace of mind» for $ 130.
In September 2013, our third floor unit overflowed causing $ 3,500 of damage (could have been worse had we not caught it). Carolina diagnosed the issue as a clogged drain. Asked why the «safety float» they installed didn’t work, the response was that it was installed at a higher elevation than the vent to the drain pipe. In layman’s terms, it wasn’t installed properly.
We asked the manager to reimburse us through the technician. The technician said the manager’s answer was «no». We asked to speak with the owner/​manager and technician replied he could not as the owner had dinner reservations. I had vacation plans for the next day, but he didn’t seem to care.
Thus we are now «subrogating» the claim to our insurance. Until that is complete, we’re out of our deductible and stuck fixing major water damage.
Update: 10 months after filing the «subrogation» claim through insurance, we finally recovered our deductible from Carolina.
This is not a company you can trust.

Beware! This company will attempt to over charge you! We had one of their service techs come out as our air conditioning was working, but felt a little warmer than last year. Last year we had the coils replaced and our unit was under warranty. In fact, our unit is still under warranty. We knew there was a very very minor leak, but wanted it checked to see if we needed the unit refilled with coolant.
Well, this company charges you $ 100 to even come out to look at the problem — we didn’t think that was unreasonable since they promised to do a complete diagnosis of our unit to ensure our leak was OK and give us an estimate for how much it would be to put coolant in. The guy showed up, and about 10 minutes later comes back to the door to let us know that it’d be close to $ 600 to put coolant in — and to diagnose the unit would be more money since he didn’t know what the leak would be from, but it might be the coils. When we told him we already told the company we replaced the coils last year, he said «Oh, well then it’s not that.» No… really? He then said he had no clue why it would be leaking, but he was sure it was a big problem. In fact, we need to probably replace it. We asked WHY the hell we paid $ 100 because he was supposed to diagnose the issue, he said no, the $ 100 is just for him to show up at your door.
Needless to say, I got another estimate. And guess what? NOTHING was wrong with my unit AT ALL. A very very minor leak, which was within normal range for the unit and certainly not an issue. And we only paid $ 200 for the coolant in the system. When we told this other company how much this company wanted to charge, he said that was over double what the cost was. BEWARE this company! Take your business elsewhere!