Reliance Home Comfort

I bought my home in February of last year and moved in in May. The water heater was a Home Reliance rental which I took over. The house was built in 1910, so it has an old chimney which now contains the vent pipe for both my gas furnace (owned) and my gas water heater (rental). Because the house is old, there is a small access door in my basement wall that was once used for cleaning out the chimney. It was patched over with concrete but there was evidence that a very small amount of water was seeping down the wall during freeze-thaw cycles from just below this door. Unfinished basement, only caused a damp spot on the floor, not a problem. This Monday January 6, I went to take a shower and there was no hot water. I checked the water heater and the pilot light had gone out. I tried to restart it and it would not stay lit. Called Home Reliance and they had a technician come out the next day. To make a long story longer, he spotted the leak under the vent and decided that my chimney was "deteriorating from the inside and outside, chimney liner has water in it, chimney must be repaired" and he shut off the gas to my water heater. Then he shut off the gas to my furnace and proceeded to tell me that I could die in the night from from CO poisoning if my chimney collapsed and blocked the vent. He made a Violation report to Union Gas so I couldn't turn the gas back on until the problem was repaired. Outside temperature -20 with windchill -35 to -40. Record breaking cold. Then he called a mason friend of his ( even though he's not supposed to refer people as he said) and conveniently that guy couldn't come out that day because of the cold, but he could tell me it would be about $2000 to fix the chimney...or...I could rent a furnace from RHC and get free installation and they would vent it directly outside and I could leave the chimney alone. Oh and upgrade my water heater too. So I called two masons, who came right away and both agreed that my chimney was sound And the thermocouple was probably shot on the water heater. One of them called RHC to try to get my gas turned turned on at least to the furnace. The other just turned the furnace back on, as Union Gas said he could do so if he found it to be safe. Here's what he wrote on the Gas Violation Form "the pipe is not in a compromised state. The structure around it is solid. There is no need to turn a furnace off on the coldest day of the year by the morons at Reliance". Needless to say I don't appreciate the attempt to blackmail me into renting a furnace. I'll be giving them back their water heater and buying my own.