Moncrief Heating & Air Conditioning

Charged us almost $ 500 for a repair (replacement of a $ 50 part) that did not fix the problem. Then gave an estimate of $ 2000 to fix it permanently when it broke a month after the first repair. There was no communication or clear descriptions of the repairs needed, just an illegible scribble on a receipt.
Other reputable company gave detailed estimate, answered all questions, never pushed or tried to sell a replacement unit and cost half the price for the full repair.

David P. in the sales department is amazing! Anyone in the market to replace or upgrade their heating or air conditioning system should give him a call!

We have subscribed to a service plan for our 30 year old HVAC unit for 20 years and have always enjoyed excellent service. They always send a technician immediately when we call. The technician is always punctual polite and patient. We have been able to put off an expensive investment for 10 years or more. They may cost a little more but the service is worth it.

I am a repeat customer, but in this recent case the company let me down miserably. They were very late and provided no service when they did arrive. Said a second appointment was necessary, and this seemed classic hook and bait. Basically a rude technician. No communication. Never a follow up call even when one was requested several times by the office. Determined a new unit was needed. Price quoted was more than twice competition. They are a very poorly run and greedy company, so stay away like the plaque!

I was an unhappy customer. Moncreif had no interest in looking into my complaint. From the nature of the owner’s responses to complaints on Unilocal and my conversations with their service managers, it appears their policy is never correct a mistake even if it loses further business. In this forum and others, they want to be right, blame the customer, and stand by excuses no matter how lame. They wouldn’t discuss my complaint at all, or make m the tiniest offer to deal with it. Some companies would go the extra step of doing something to please a dissatisfied customer even when they believe the complaint has no basis. I never made any specific demands, but simply explained what happened to several people.
The technician missed a simple loose wire on my expensive Nest Thermostat, telling me erroneously and without testing that the unit was defective. It was Sunday and below freezing. The heat wouldn’t come on. He replaced Nest with a cheap contractor’s Honeywell model, but only AFTER he had destroyed the older thermostat the Nest had replaced that I provided. I didn’t know and wasn’t told at the time that Moncrief is an authorized Nest dealer/​installer! My Nest, purchased online six months earlier, was under warranty. The technician never offered any help with replacing it, nor did any of the people at Moncrief I spoke to later. I had mentioned I hadn’t been able to get through to their phone support. I learned the next day that Nest has a separate call line for pros, available ²⁴⁄₇. If this technician had been trained, competent, honest –or whatever he was not — he could have fixed it in seconds, literally, and been on his way. It was a matter of checking to see if the wires were secure. The Nest is the simplest of all thermostats, designed to be easy for the homeowner, but certainly a snap for a professional. It’s no different in principal, just easierI would have been grateful to have paid the $ 59 trip fee and my ire would have been directed at Nest for their phones being jammed. Instead he took most of the afternoon, missed the problem and charged $ 251. They «only» charged me 1hr labor for replacing my perfectly good thermostat with junk. I’m guessing since they had now lost money on me (providing me a «free» thermostat after breaking the extra I had on hand) they couldn’t spend time setting things right. (They did mail me a contract for regular service. «Welcome to the Moncrief family,» it said. It had all the facts about my systems wrong.) Moncrief charged nearly $ 200/​hour for labor plus $ 59 for a visit. (I was not quoted the rate when I called; only told that they don’t charge higher rates for weekends.) Naturally, I contacted Nest the next day. I expected they would send me a new one as the Moncrief pro had declared it defective. A Nest tech talked me through the reinstallation and testing. There was absolutely nothing wrong with it then (Nov. 2014) and it has worked flawlessly ever since. I later purchased a 2^nd Nest for my main system and installed it with no problem. I’m guessing the loose wire that caused it to quit was due to vibrations. The thermostat is in a hall outside the closet that contains the heat pump air handler, washer and dryer, all of which have motors and moving parts. It seems an experienced professional would have thought of this.
I emailed Moncrief that I was not happy, and got a call from a service manager. He said he’d look into it. I never heard back. Another manager called me a month or so later soliciting a contract. I told him my story. He shrugged it off, saying, «Hope the next time it will be better.» After 90 days without a response, I put the charge partly in dispute. My credit card refunded without any opposition. I didn’t dispute the trip charge, just labor. The guy had showed up and got my heat working, and I wanted to be fair. It should have been a five minute job requiring no parts. It would have worked out to an hourly rate of about $ 700. He was an extremely (or should I say, suspiciously) laid back guy who just kept messing up and seemed to take it in stride each time. Moncrief describes him as «our best technician.» Good luck to anyone who gets one of their dimmer lights.
Edit (⁵⁄₂₃): I see they still stand by the story that Nest is too complex for their techs and the ONLY thing they could do to get my heat running was replacing it. FYI: Installing a Nest thermostat is a matter of connecting a few color coded wires. It was created by the guy who headed the original iPod team at Apple.

I called around 2:30 pm on a Friday afternoon for someone to come out to my house for a heating issue. Someone was here by 3pm– working on the issue.
I had Wane and Sandy here trying to figure out a poorly designed system. In the past other companies have told me they would have to tear out sheetrock and replace an expensive motor, one told me the whole system would have to be redone! I asked them– what would be the most affordable way to get the system working and they did their best and got it going. They went way above and beyond what they needed to do. They could have easily taken a shortcut.
At the end I had a coupon and they even let me use that. So something that was going to cost at least $ 800, came to less than $ 150 bucks!
LONG story– short: AMAZING company, amazing folks. If you need anything, Moncrief is the only way!

I would give these folks 10 stars if I could… We moved into a home and had a CoolRay maintenance contract grandfathered to us by the previous owner. Our upstairs AC wasn’t running, we paid a $ 69 service charge to have some come «repair» the unit. In this time they tried selling us a whole new $ 5k + system… After getting the run around with them and being treated poorly we knew we wanted out of that contract when in expired in August. We cold not be more please with Moncrief… Honest, friendly and affordable — even as new homeowners. We paid for a new furnace and one additional return. (They actually marched cool rays price for us) The contractor found a return that was covered by the builder, and opened that up, installed a new one, AND installed the furnace. They were there for 6 hours … CoolRay quoted the same thing and said they could complete it in half the time. That to me raises a major red flag…
Months later… We received an unexpected HANDWRITTEN thank you! Such professionals, and we wouldn’t use ANYONE else! HIGHLY recommend them.

Called these guys out to fix my AC. They correctly diagnosed that the compressor had failed. What they didn’t do was diagnose ‘why’ it had failed nor did they try and investigate it. They charged me $ 95 to come out.
They quoted me $ 1700 to replace the compressor component of the outside system. NOT the whole unit outside, just the compressor part. The labor charge was quoted at $ 200 per hour.
My unit is 8 years old so it seemed to make more sense to replace the entire unit. The quote for this was thousands more.
I received a recommendation from a friend of mine who runs a property company. He recommended PIERRE REFRIGERATION SERVICES. I called Don, from PRS, and he came over to check it out. He recommended that I change the outside unit due to the age and the cost. He checked the coil, saw that it was excessively dirty, and he cleaned it thoroughly.
He replaced the unit outside with a new one, put a new pad under it, and the total charge was $ 1600 including a brand new 3-​ton, 13 SEER unit.
If you want to overpay and stick with a big name, go to Montcrief or any of the other bigger companies but if you want to go with someone that takes a lot of pride in his work, very honest, will uncover the cause of the problem so it doesn’t happen again, then I’d call Don at 678 778 6648.
This is a genuine review, I’m not receiving anything to post this, I just feel strongly that these big companies are taking advantage of naïve customers.

Today Moncrief came out to fix my HVAC problem. The technician was a professional, personable guy, and looks to have done a good job on the repairs my HVAC needed. My only problem was when I received the invoice. Over the phone the company agent told me the initial visit was around $ 100.00 which I agreed to. I was not informed of any rates or billable time after that and was surprised after the task was completed to find myself billed $ 230.00 in labor on a 1.25 hr job. That’s $ 184 an hour. Now I know getting under a house in the summer time and doing this kind of work is not an easy thing to do. I do wish I would have been informed of the billable rate amount prior to repair work beginning. I will probably look around abit more next time hvac needs a repair. I do not fault the technician. He did a good job with repair. Just wish that I had been informed up front of the billable labor rates.

I called Moncrief around 4pm on a Thursday when my AC stopped working (the high for the day was in the 90s). They came out the very next morning, called when they were on the way (very important to me — not all service technicians seem to follow through on this), and fixed my issue in under an hour. The technician was very friendly, knowledgeable and described my issue in a way I could understand. He told me what he was going to do and how much it would cost before he did it (again, very much appreciated). I was able to meet him, get my repair done and get back to work in about 1.5 hours. This is my kind of service!

I have used these guys for years. They are very reliable but a bit expensive. They do however deliver excellent customer service.

Been with Moncrief for 6 – 7 years now and have always had great service. Whenever I have had an issue, they can get someone there that same day to assess the problem. THere service plan is very economical and worth it. We also just replaced our entire HVAC system which was close to 30 years old with a special deal with Carrier for 0% financing over 5 years. Highly recommend Moncrief

Two guys came to do a tune up on two AC systems in our house and discovered a «hot mess» in the attic with the duct work. (We had very little air blowing into an office/​library on the top floor of our townhome and needed a fix before the heat got too bad.) They completed their work promptly and then recommended that we re-​do the duct work and replace the aged furnace and AC units. They took me up to the attic to explain their findings. The next day, an engineer came by and mapped it all out and, again, took me into the attic to show me how the original installation was not up to code. He sent a proposal that same day.
It took me a couple of days to mull it over and decided the answer to our problem was a complete re-​do. Three guys from Moncrief did an excellent job on the hottest day of the year so far (94%), spending time up in the attic installing a furnace and reworking bad duct work, and hoisting a monstrous AC unit up onto a five-​foot platform on the side of the house. The guys had to call in a 4^th guy and a long, wide plank in order to get the AC unit in place without disturbing the landscaping. Day 1, they got the AC working, then Day 2, they sent one guy to finish up a few tasks. Very respectable, respectful men (although two took a lot of cigarette breaks … ewww … but of course they didn’t smoke inside). Everything was tidy and the system is beautifully efficient. Highly recommend Moncrief!

They do great work. But they charge $ 150 to diagnose and over $ 180 per hour on top. The tech fixed the problem and was gone in 45 min or less and the bill was $ 288. That’s a lawyer industry pricing, not service industry. And by the way, they’ve called twice to ask if I was satisfied and I explained this to them exactly. Their only answer was to offer to sign me up for a pre-​pay HVAC warranty for 2013 to reduce the impact of their high labor rates. That was not the right answer.
Good communication and great workers, but you need to plan to pay close to double and don’t be surprised.

Showed up on time and quickly got to work which is the quickest way to impress me when you come to my home to do work. Just a maintenance call before the serious Atlanta heat hits. I’ll come back at the end of the summer and upgrade/​downgrade my rating depending on my my AC performs :)

We have a zoned HVAC system and one zone quit working properly. Called Moncrief’s out.
$ 271 later they diagnosed the issue as a bad damper motor. Not on the truck they would have to call with a quote for the repair.
Two days later they called with a quote of $ 550.
I looked up the model number on the side of the existing motor and it was readily available online for $ 67 and held in place with a single bolt. Easy enough to replace myself. Compare that to Moncrief’s $ 830 — approaching the cost of an entirely new system. Probably the last call to Moncrooks.

Bob, I hope your boss reads this. I should have written it this summer: I owe you big-​huge thanks.
Bob from Moncrief showed up at my house like an angel from heaven the morning after our A/​C started blowing hot, nasty air on us. Three things you should know: We had not called Moncrief or Bob. I had 1-​month old twins sweating in their cribs. It was July, and the temp was over 100 midday.
I thought it was a miracle.
Turns out Bob was there because my downstairs neighbor had called about a knob, and technically he was not supposed to respond to her AND us – two separate residences. But Bob took pity on my newborns and called his boss, who gave him the OK to look at our unit. He checked our attic and took at look at the unit outside. We were low on freon and the condenser coils needed cleaning. He finished the work in under an hour, and even gave me some great suggestions for insulating the attic door.
As a representative of Moncrief, Bob gets four thumbs up from my family!

HVAC tech to business owner:
«Your heat exchanger has a few problems. It will cost $ 10,000 to repair. But things could be a lot worse.»
The business owner replies: «Oh yeah, that’s pretty expensive. How could it be worse?»
HVAC tech: «Well, it could be my heat exchanger instead of yours.»
That’s just a joke but all kidding aside, I am pretty disappointed with Moncrief. Back in July, I paid Moncrief to do an HVAC inspection on a 10,000 square foot building we were considering purchasing for our business headquarters. The inspection wasn’t cheap, but there are 3 commercial units on the roof, and 3 residential units outside. I wanted to make sure I knew what I was getting into, so even though I had paid for a general building inspection, it seemed wise to also pay for an HVAC specialist to come check things out.
Since I had previously had good experiences with Moncrief on residential HVAC needs (which is why they get 2 stars instead of 1), I used them for the commercial inspection. Moncrief said there was no major problems with the units. There were a few minor problems, but Moncrief estimated it would be less than $ 1000 to fix these. I went ahead with the building purchase and did not negotiate with the seller for any allowance for HVAC based upon the inspection and estimate Moncrief provided.
I purchased a service agreement from Moncrief and hired them to do about $ 8500 in duct work during the buildout (which was done well, another reason for the 2 stars instead of 1).
The problem is this. When the Moncrief technician came out to do the initial service on the units, they pointed out that the two largest units have cracks in the heat exchanger and need to be replaced. This will cost around $ 8000. I asked the Moncrief sales person why this wasn’t determined during the inspection. He said the inspection doesn’t include extensive disassembly of the unit, which was necessary to determine the heat exchange. While I felt that I should have been presented with the option to pay more since I had asked for a thorough inspection, I initially trusted that this was the case.
I had Coolray come in for a second opinion. After popping the top on the unit, which required the removal of about 12 screws, that’s it, he confirmed the heat exchangers needed replacement. Popping the top of the unit was hardly extensive disassembly. I could have easily done it myself if I had known how easy it was. The Coolray technician also said that the heat exchanger is definitely one of the main things that should be included in a commercial HVAC inspection. Seeing how easy it was, I have to agree.
While I think Moncrief is a good company for residential HVAC needs, I’d definitely suggest steering clear of them for any commercial needs.

I promise 3 stars aren’t bad; it means A-​ok after all.
I haven’t lived in a place with central AC in years. I bought my house last November and haven’t really had a need to use my new central AC unit yet, until Sunday that is. At my family get together Sunday, they berated me for being too cheap to turn on the AC so like all great warriors I had to fall.
I went home and, since I was now prepared for a cool climate in my house, it felt especially hot. I went to turn on the AC and nothing– no air blew from those vents. I had a mini melt down… from the heat and POS AC unit.
I called Moncrief Monday. They told me it is $ 59 just for the tech to arrive and $ 41 per 15 minutes Tech guy came out Tuesday. They gave me a window of 8:30 to 12 with a call when he was on his way. They called me at 8:15 and he arrived at 8:30 — score. He spent about 2 hours diagnosing and fixing the problem; circuit breaker tripped, water pump needed to be replaced, and I had him change my 1950’s thermostat to a new one I had already. Total $ 440. He said the part was $ 100ish or so.
The tech did a great job, was friendly, and the system is working now. I think the prices are a bit steep, however I did agree to those prices on the phone with the receptionist beforehand and I have never had to have another AC unit fixed so what do I know. I do know that next time I will call around and ask for prices since a friend told me her AC company charges a flat fee and deducts that from what you get done, but I can only take her word for it. That review is for another time and place.
Moncrief is A-​ok with me.

Exactly 24 hours ago, I was in a two-​piece swimsuit lying on a cold wet towel in front of my open freezer door. My thermostat read 93, and it wasn’t budging. After a week long trip to Florida, I wasn’t expecting to come home to the same beach-​like temperatures in my Midtown condo, and my efforts to fix my broken air conditioning on a Saturday evening seemed futile. Trusty Unilocal pointed me to Moncrief, and I called their emergency number right away. Within 5 minutes, I received a return call, and the pleasant, helpful rep set me up with a service appointment the very next day, Sunday, with a 12:00 — 3:00 p.m. window.
I was psyched to hear their rates for service on a Sunday are no different than what they charge on weekdays. After a night of tossing and turning naked on a damp bedsheet (by myself, mind you) trying to block out the deafening chirping of a NASTY CRICKET that leapt through my open balcony door, I really don’t think I could’ve waited an extra night for an a/​c repairman. Although I was devastated to miss my very first dim sum dining experience with a group of Unilocalers, I had no choice. I have a feeling had I showed up at Royal China sweaty, agitated, and with a frizzy ‘fro that would’ve most likely gotten stuck in congee, it wouldn’t have made for a pleasant dining experience.
Anyways, I love Moncrief. Their service was awesome, and everyone I dealt with was courteous, friendly, and helpful. They’ll call you with a heads-​up when the technician is about 30 minutes away, too, which I liked. My a/​c technician, Barry, came just after 1 p.m. (conveniently inside the 3-​hour window — a welcome change from the cable companies I’ve dealt with). He was really, really nice and very knowledgeable. He was also experienced with working with highrise a/​c units, and he knew just where to go on my roof to fix my unit’s pipes. I felt a difference in my condo within seconds as my shirt became unstuck to my chest and my hair began to gradually flatten.
I found their pricing reasonable: $ 59 initial fee for driving to your location, and $ 41 for each 15 minutes of labor. My total came to $ 223, and I truly feel I was not ripped off; if anything, Barry spent extra time teaching me simple ways to keep my a/​c unit running smoothly.
After nearly suffocating in my own recycled hot air, I’ve learned that it is true that you really may not appreciate something that you take for granted until it’s gone.
I highly, highly recommend Moncrief.