Reliance Home Comfort

Don't Be Fooled

Like most other genuine reviewers, I also received very poor service from Reliance Home Comfort, but I finally took my concern to the company CEO, the presumptive repository of corporate wisdom and conscience. The gist of my message to him is as follows:

A service technician responded to my complaint that my water heater was producing insufficient hot water and that its blinking LED green light status was coded Weak pilot signal on last call for heat. By the time the technician arrived, the GFCI outlet had tripped, the water heater turned off, and the LED disappeared.

Without any reference to my complaint, the serviceman (who turned out to be an electrician) declared with God-like certainty that the electrical outlet was the problem: it needed to be a dedicated outlet and the three wires attached to it made it non-compliant. He was adamant the outlet had to be replaced with a dedicated one directly from the fuse box at my cost. He offered to instal it for $300-$500. His underlying allegation was that the homeowner modified the electrical outlet from what RHC originally installed.

I firmly objected. The installation is original, and the extra wires have to do with the furnace, which RHC installed. Its highly unlikely that both RHC furnace and water heater installers used non-compliant electrical hookups, and that none of the service people who visited over the past several years, failed to recognize the non-compliance. Moreover, the technical instructions for installing the water heater says nothing about a mandatory dedicated outlet. Notwithstanding, if the outlet is non-compliant, its RHCs responsibility to fix it at its own cost. (I subsequently checked, and my two neighbours have the same electrical set up. Another electrician neighbour confirmed that theres nothing wrong with the outlet.)

The CEOs intervention, through his assistant, led to a dead end. She repeated the same line the serviceman gave me, and when I asked for a certified electrician to inspect the electricals, she wrote that it would cost me $100, which I expectedly turned down. I dont know what RHCs game is with the water heaters electrical outlet, but my heater wasn't diagnosed nor fixed.

Interestingly, on November 28, 2023, ryan in Toronto complained on Home Stars about the same experience, which also fizzed out in a dead end.

Homeowners should take note that RHC ratings are predominantly at the extremes - 1/10 and 10/10; few are in between. Consequently, I encourage homeowners to take seriously a company's negative ratings.