Carrier Heating & Cooling Reviews

Regarding this poor performance of the said AC, I have followed up with Carrier India authorized service centre at Kolkata and have also expressed my concern to the regional heads and the country head. This has been going on since 21st of June’09. But nothing has resulted as yet. Though I have sent mails to Mr. Zubin Irani , Managing Director, Carrier India and to Mr. Geraud Darnis, President, Carrier Corporation , USA . The AC capacity calculator provided in Carrier Website showed that an Air Conditioner of less than one ton is sufficient for my room. Now, Carrier India has withdrawn from their website, the feature of “Air Conditioning Capacity Calculator” under the pretext of “Page is under construction”. One of my critical complains is based on this webpage and I have mentioned about this in my mails to Carrier India as well as Carrier USA. This proves that a deliberate attempt has been made to conceal the fact that Carrier India had actually misled many consumers like me. My grievances are : 1: Product Related : The machine is not performing form the date purchase as the cooling cut off was 23 degree and above. In the second year of the Purchase it has gone up to 27 degree. The machine is only two-year old. 2: Service Related : Reluctant approach of Carrier India just to bury the issue and to humiliate a Consumer. 3: False Information : The air conditioning Capacity Calculator of your website suggests that for my kind of room the capacity requirement is not even one ton whereas the AC machine in question is having a capacity of 1.5 tons. Your own calculation certifies that I have purchased an over capacity machine. Still I am not getting the optimum performance. Sandip Chatterjee Kolkata India Cell No. : 919831566467

The letter from our service tech below. This is to inform you of the ongoing problem with Carrier model FV4BNF006000AAAA, FV4BNB006000AAAA, FV4BNF005000AAAA drain pans. This problem of cracking pans is a pattern I started to see in machines 2-3 years old. The failure has always been in the same place. In January 2008 it started to effect pans in machines that were less than a year old. Pans that had been changed were cracking again! Carrier requested that defective pans be returned for inspection and analysis and I sent them six cracked pans. My opinion, as I told them, was that the 35 45 lb. A-coil (depending on the model) combined with the leverage was not properly supported and cracking the plastic pan. Carriers response was that they had no problems anywhere else and not to use chemicals in the pans. I asked Carrier again for help in July 2008 when the issue continued and had not been resolved. They sent out a technician who looked over two installs that had repeat pan cracking. He indicated that there should be a way to check the weight pressing on the pan and we should not have this problem in the field as they are made to last and not crack. As far as I know he made a report and submitted it to Carrier Hawaii though I havent heard anything from that visit to date. In the first two weeks of Nov. 2008 I had found (in the course of quarterly service) 12 cracked pans in my customers homes! On November 12, 2008 Les (Carrier regional director) and three other staff (Carrier Hawaii) met with several contractors and service companies on the Big Island having the same problems. After that meeting there were a few small suggestions (1, Isolate drain connection with vinyl tubing. 2, Tap down a flange on the A-coil. 3, Install a strap that Bill Gordon and I designed to relive coil weight pressing on the pan). I took the Carrier staff to three sites where we had multiple pan failures. Carriers response (once again) was that they dont have this problem anywhere else. Carrier warrantee personnel Dodson Leong (800-757-3668) said warrantees would be case by case. It takes $900.00-$1000.00 to complete the repair. The machines brought in from CSD Carrier California (not purchased through Carrier Hawaii) would have to be warranted from California. Les said he would call them and work with them on this issue. California warrantees were left very open ended and Hawaii did not commit to a warrantee amount to be paid. On November 20, 2008 I called CSD Carrier California (866-754-4822) and their warrantee personnel said they did not warrantee drain pans. She had not been called by Les concerning this pan warrantee. She gave me two numbers of other people to talk to and I spent 45 minutes getting the run around. I called Cont. 2 of 2 Re: Carrier pan failure Dodson Leong to prompt Les once again to contact the CSD warrantee department. To date, Les nor CSD Carrier, has called. I see no guarantee from future cracks in Carrier pans without design correction. I cannot carry the warrantee of cracked pans if Carrier deems that you are out of warrantee. If I change out your pan there are no guarantees or warrantee made by Tropical Air Conditioning, Inc. that this defect will not show up again. I like the Carrier product for a lot of reasons but this is a problem they must address. Other makers of a/c equipment (Trane, York, Weatherking and Rheem) have plastic pans and no problems I am aware of. Please know that you may not get or continue to get a warrantee from Carrier on your cracked pans. I cannot guarantee that this will not happen several more times in the future. I will do the protocol (that I told you about in paragraph 3) on all future installs and repairs. But I cannot warrantee the part from being defective or my labor for repairing it a second or even third time. Doug Thatcher

Due to a design flaw the heat pump air handling section had to be substantially modified at my own cost. The fan was mounted on the shaft of a horizontally mounted motor, with no end support. Apparently the squirrel cage fan lost one of its balance weights and kept burning out motors. One was replaced under warranty but I quickly became disenchanted with the $100 cost of replacing fan motors every few weeks. The motor and fan were eventually removed and replaced by a motor with a belt driven fan which was supported at both ends with bearings. This corrected Carrier's initial design flaw. This modification allowed the heat pump to run for serveral years with only occasssional fan belt replacements.

This is not covered under my extended warranty.