accounts/108421903622590264635/locations/6263384682218367374

A while ago, I posted a very negative review of this company. Seemed like they’d offered us a very expensive repair for a very simple problem, which we later got fixed free by a contractor working on other things in our house.

But then John Moroney, the general manager at Jones, took the trouble to call me. I can’t blame him for being upset, or for wanting to improve the way his company looked online. But I have to say he seemed genuinely upset that I’d had a bad experience.

Here’s the story. One of our two outdoor AC units developed a knocking noise when the fan turned. This had happened before. The units are close to the wall of the house. Our metal roof is steeply slanted, and in the winter, ice can fall off. If it hits one of the units, it can bend something inside, so that now the fan knocks against something when it turns.

When this happened previously, I called a local one-man operation, who fixed it quickly, charging us around $200 (maybe less) for the visit. Since this company now was out of business, I called Jones when the problem happened again.

The repair guy came quickly, was friendly, and said the repair would require replacement of part of the unit, at a cost of $1200. He suggested that we might want to get the job done on both units, so they’d look the same. Also said he might be able to get us a discount, if we agreed on the repair immediately.

We couldn’t imagine paying that much for what seemed like a simple problem, or at least not without looking elsewhere. So we said no. We were having extensive work done on our house unrelated to the AC. When we told our contractor what had happened with Jones, he opened the unit, and fixed the knocking noise in 10 minutes with a hammer. Which is about what the previous repair guy had done the first time we had this problem.

John Moroney, very much to his credit, was happy to discuss all of this in whatever detail was necessary. He said it wasn’t Jones’s policy to do seat of the pants repairs the way our contractor did, because the company couldn’t guarantee the results. That might not be an approach I’d want to take if I ran a company like Jones, but I can understand that a big company might want to play by the rules, do repairs by the book. Essentially what our repair guy had done was look up the standard solution to our problem, as the company saw it, and recommend what the book told him.

I told John that, from my point of view, this left customers a little bit out in the cold, since they wouldn’t be told that a simpler, cheaper repair could be done by someone else. Much cheaper!

So John and I, after more talk, came to an agreement: It would have been better for the Jones repair guy to have told us this. To have said something like: “Our company recommends that you have a thorough repair done. It’s the only kind we can guarantee, and the cost unfortunately will be $1200. It might be possible to find someone else who could fix the problem more simply, for a lot less money. That’s not something we would do, because we feel we couldn’t guarantee the result. But you should understand that the option is open to you.”

I have no idea, of course, if Jones repair staff are now telling customers that, but I thought it was good that John agreed it was a good thing to say. And I have to honor him for caring about the problem, and for reaching out to me. He also refunded what we’d paid to cover the cost of the visit, since we hadn’t been happy with the result. I can honor him for that, too.

So our experience with Jones didn’t end so badly. I think one moral of the story is something most of us know — always get a second opinion. And when someone offers only an expensive option, push back a little, and see if that’s really the only choice.

The four-star rating I’m giving here is more about John Moroney’s response to me. I’d still give the repair visit a lower rating. But my opinion of Jones is better than it used to be.