Alberta Indoor Comfort

My experience with Alberta Indoor Comfort (AIC) was not positive. We replaced our two furnaces with another company 3 years ago. I have a small furnace which heats the upstairs and a larger one that heats the main floor. My wife was contacted by phone and agreed to have AIC come and clean and service the furnaces. The first thing the tech noticed was that the inlet and outlet combustion air piping was too small. Kudos to him for seeing that and alerting us before even getting into his work. He then performed the cleaning and inspection of the furnace and presented a recommendation to replace all combustion air piping and blower motors for $8600. He said that the piping didn’t meet “code” and because the piping was too small the motors were shot and needed replaced. I have 3 things that were very disappointing and should be red flags to all. 1. They were dishonest or incompetent. The recommendation to replace the piping was only partially correct. After reviewing the manufacturers installation manual I found only one of the two piping installations was a problem. The smaller furnace was well within the recommended pipe size with 50% additional safety factor. I got a second HVAC tech out to give another opinion and he confirmed that no change was required to the small furnace piping. He also checked the motors and found nothing wrong with them. 2. The cost was very high. They quoted me $1500 to replace each motor. I found the motor online for less than $250 and the HVAC tech I got the second opinion from pointed out Lennox has a 10 year parts warranty and would have covered them anyway. The piping replacement was quoted at ~$5400. I looked the piping material cost up online at Home Depot and based on the fact that they said they could complete the work that day, and after the cost of the piping, their labor rate per hour would have been a little under $1000/hr. 3. I reached out to try to talk to someone at AIC. I did get a hold of Justin, the Operation Manger, and he was very responsive. After sharing what I had found about the piping and motors he still stood behind his HVAC tech’s recommendation so I asked to talk to his boss. Mike the President/Owner reached out later that week by email to ask when I could talk. After giving him a couple option of times there was radio silence. I email 3-4 times more before writing an email similar to this review and have yet to hear anything. They ended up charging me an extra $600 in addition to their higher than average cleaning/inspection fee (which, in fairness to them, the second HVAC tech I got out did say they had done a very thorough job) because my wife had actually agreed to complete the work before I got involved and shut it down. I recognize they put off other customers and lost money because we agreed to proceed then cancelled so I can’t blame them for that but the fact that they were going to charge me so much money to complete unnecessary work left a very bad taste in my mouth. I was fairly surprised at my experience because they are so well rated on google, so buyer beware. My recommendation is if you do go with them be wary of any repair/replacement recommendations and make sure you get a second opinion before spending too much money.