Would never recommend Airmaster Services Houston

Last month in July, I had an air conditioning emergency and was referred to George Saleh of Airmaster Services in Houston, who installed a new air conditioning unit for $2,600, which I paid for in full at the time of service. Just last week on Sunday, August 16th my air conditioning stopped working and I placed a service call to Mr. Saleh. Within a couple of hours he arrived and determined that the problem was a fuse which he replaced at a cost of $120. At the same time my sister asked Mr. Saleh for the part he replaced. Mr. Saleh bristled at the request and became angry and raised his voice and pointed his finger at her, talking about how long he has been in business and saying that he is a member of the BBB. My sister responded by ordering Mr. Saleh not to point his finger at her. Obviously there was a negative charge in the air after this exchange.

Nevertheless I (the customer who has paid this man close to $3,000 in the past month) went on to give Mr. Saleh his check and he left. At that point the a/c was working so I left the house. I returned a couple of hours later only to learn that the air conditioning had shut off shortly after I left the house. I immediately called Mr. Saleh and he said he was no longer in the area, and that he would return the next morning at 9 am. Mr. Saleh never showed up at 9 am, nor did he return any of my voice mail messages that I left on both his phone numbers. He did pick up his phone however when my sister called him on her cell phone (which doesn't show a number he was familiar with) and said he would arrive at the house between 5 and 6 pm. He never arrived nor did he ever call to offer an explanation. I have not heard anything more from Mr. Saleh.

I finally had to call someone else to come in and look into my problem.

Mr. Saleh only appears to be interested in getting the money and doesn�� seem to understand the art of customer service at all.

Dana Wallace

P.S.

This complaint was filed with the Houston BBB and the issue was never resolved. AirMaster claimed we the customer never called them back, a blatant lie that can be proved with telephone records documenting the calls that went out to AirMaster requesting them to return to complete the service call.

Comment On This

As a former next-door-neighbor of George Saleh, the behavior described in Dana Wallace's complaint sounds all too familiar. I cannot speak to the quality of work performed by George or AirMaster Services (which I believe is owned by his uncle, Sam Muqatash), because I would never hire them to work on my own home. However, I can comment on the content of George's character.

During the year-and-a-half that we lived next door to him and his family, George consistently displayed rude, obnoxious, disrespectful, dishonest behavior toward our family and the other neighbors on our block. After many attempts to talk with George in a rational, adult manner about being a good neighbor, we, and other neighbors, eventually had to resort to calling the police on numerous occasions to address repeated noise disturbances, harrassing behavior, and reckless driving on our residential streets.

Since George represents his uncle's business, I would expect that Mr. Muqatash would want to take more of an interest in ensuring his nephew rectifies his behavior before he loses more customers like Ms. Wallace.

In addition to filing a complaint with the BBB, I would also suggest to Ms. Wallace and anyone else who has experienced poor service from AirMaster, or any other contractor, to consider filing a complaint with the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation, the state agency that licenses heating and A/C contractors:

http://www.license.state.tx.us/ACR/acr.htm

- R. Johnson