Our oil burning hot water furnace stopped working the night of Thursday Jan. 15th 2009 over here in East Greenbush, when temperatures were below 10 F. Used electric space heaters for the night and called Roland the next day. A guy came out pretty quick and 'diagnosed' our furnace for an hour to tell us basically we needed a new one and it was not safe to work on (carbon monoxide, even though i told him we have a $80 Carbon M. alarm), and so left us with no working furnace for probably one of the coldest nights of the year 5 degrees to -10 F and charged us $107. We finally got a hold of another small furnace/gas supply company named Legenbauer and they were able to come out luckily before they closed and literally diagnosed the furnace in 15 minutes and told us we needed a new tranformer, replaced the part and were on there way in an hour. Basically we payed about the same for Legenbauer to come out and fix the furnace and get our heat back in the same amount of time it took the 'Service Expert' Roland J. Down's to tell us we needed a whole new furnace and leave us in the cold. Either the guy from Roland wasn't skilled enough to figure out what was wrong or lied to us and with held info to try to rip us off. I believe the latter, as he also told us other things were wrong with our burner etc. even though all it need was a tranformer to get it going so we could live in the house without freezing to death. I understand it is the way of the business for these places to lie and withhold info in order to make profits, but i think it is funny how the smaller companies are usually more honest and wont do things like try to make profits over leaving people in the cold.
I was looking to get a new central air system installed. I called 3 different places for estimates. Roland J Down was by far the highest. Now they are trying to bill me $100 for the estimate. No one else charges for that and I had no idea so I guess they’re out of luck. I googled it and it clearly says they have to make you aware that there is a fee for estimates if they want to charge. Jerks