Reliance Home Comfort
Reviews and Complaints

An article named Lien on me: Furnace rental contracts can be registered against your home which unveiled Reliance’s immoral behaviors was posted on the news paper The Hamilton Spectator. The writer Al MacRury asked anyone who has had a consumer problem to contact him. Call [protected] or email him at amacrury@thespec.com 

In the article, it said: The Ministry of Consumer Services says it's watching the marketplace and will respond if there's any sign of trouble. So let’s all shout it out and let our voices be heard. We need to work together and put them out of business.

You can read the article by opening the link below:
https://www.thespec.com/news-story/5616616-action-line-lien-on-me-furnace-rental-contracts-can-be-registered-against-your-home/

There are some other authoritative figures we can use to let our voice be heard
1. CBC marketplace
Email: marketplace@cbc.ca
Mailing Address:
CBC News: Marketplace
P.O.Box500
Toronto, Ontario
M5W 1E6
Fax: [protected]

2.Office of consumer affair
This is the place you must go. The link of its home page is:
http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/oca-bc.nsf/eng/home

one thing you can rely on is that reliance will not look after you. back in 1998 i had an energy audit done on my home by a incompetent company during the air blower test, that is when they put a fan onto the front door and suck air out of your home to determine the rate of air leakage you have, the tech did not turn off all the appliances that run on gas as they are supposed to do. as a result my boiler caught fire and was damaged this i found out after the test had been done the next day i called reliance because my boiler was not working properly they came and inspected the boiler and told me that it was damaged beyond repair because of the fire during the test, and that i needed a new one. Since it was January i needed heat immediately so i purchased a new boiler from Reliance at a cost of $13, 000.00, when i contacted the company that had done the test they came took pictures and said that i did not need a new boiler and that i could have had it repaired for a few hundred dollars. i told them that Reliance had inspected the boiler and that they said it had to be replaced so i asked the company what they were going to do about compensating me for the damage they did to my boiler their answer was nothing so i proceeded to take them to small claims court now this is where the wonderful people at Reliance come into the picture. when i asked Reliance to send me a copy of the service report that the tech had that stated the boiler was damaged and that i needed a new one i could not get anyone that knew anything about it. i spoke with every person including the service department head and explained that i need the report for the court case showing that i needed to purchase a new boiler because of the damage that was done by the testing company, but every one at Reliance had amnesia and could not remember the techs name or any report. i gave them the techs badge number and the date and time of the service call, but again no help. Reliance lied to me about the boiler needing to be replaced and as a result i lost the case and purchased a boiler i did not need, when i confronted Reliance about the fact they had lied to me they denied it i asked them to prove to me that i needed a new boiler as was told to me by their technician they responded that their technician would only give me a recommendation as to replacing the boiler, but that the decision to replace it would be mine, of course i explained to the wonderful people at Reliance that confronted with the option of repairing the boiler for a few hundred dollars or replacing it for several thousands of dollars i would be stupid enough to choose the latter. the only thing you can rely on is that Reliance is a crooked company that lies and does not care about its customers i will never purchase anything from them and will never recommend anyone use them, beware when dealing with Reliance and never ever trust what they say its only to get you to buy their products.

Our first daughter was six days old, in the beginning of March 2010 and someone you had contracted work out to put in a new hot water tank. The current tank at the time was rusting and giving us dirty water, which we obviously didn't want for our baby. The contractors had to turn the gas off and not caring about the job they had done, did not do something right before they left. Because our hot water tank is also a boiler for our furnace, we discovered the furnace wasn't working that evening and we called Reliance only to be told it wasn't their problem. We KNEW that it was because the contractors had to do something while they were working on the hot water tank. Your solution - you would come the next day, leaving us and a 6 day old baby with no heat on a cold winter's night. Needless to say it was unacceptable to be left in the cold with a newborn and you FINALLY agreed to have someone come out. It was an easy solution and the person that came to fix it was nice, but the fact that we basically had to fight with a company to fix their mistake when it meant we were freezing was unacceptable.

Sunday, we noticed the hot water tank was leaking. My husband called Reliance and they said someone would call us back within three hours. We were called back approximately 45 minutes later. We were told by the contractor from Brunet that work is on a voluntary basis on the weekend and none of his guys are volunteering. Coincidentally we again have a newborn in the house. My husband explained this and he didn't care. When my husband said he would get someone else to fix the problem, the representative stated he couldn't do that because it is not our property. His suggestion was to turn off the hot water tank and hope that 60 gallons of water didn't continue leaking in to our basement. He said someone would be out to our house on Monday between 9 and 10:30am. This is VERY inconvenient with two small children, especially when washing hands is critical to a newborn's health.

Monday, I had to call back to Reliance at 11am, as the contractor had not come. The woman called the contractor and confirmed they would be here within 5-10 min. They showed up shortly after this, but were still 40 min late when we were already given a 1.5 hour window. The two men that showed up were not very professional, they did not put a mat down and walked on our off white berber carpeting once before deciding to go back to the truck and get the mat. They then walked on the floor again to put the mat down. The mat should have been put down the first time, and in a way which prevented them from having to walk on the floor at all! The problem was fixed within 15 min but the situation did not end there.

At 1pm I went down to see even more water than the original problem on our floor and the valve at the bottom was clearly leaking. After another call to Reliance, Brunet called us and asked, "are you sure it's your hot water tank leaking?". We really hate to be questioned when we can SEE the water dripping from the tank and have to put something underneath to prevent more water damage. I explained that the valve clearly hadn't been tightened enough. The same woman called back again at 2:40pm. She said that she spoke with the guys and they hadn't cleaned up the water after they were done the job. I said, "no, I'm telling you it's new water that I can see because they did not tighten the valve, you need to send them out because we aren't allowed to touch this." To be questioned twice when the guys you have sent did not do their job properly is extremely aggravating. One of the original guys showed up at 3:10pm to take a look, and sure enough he hadn't tightened the valve all the way. If I can figure out what was wrong within a minute of looking at this tank, obviously there was extremely poor work done on your behalf.

You claim to have "Excellent Service, 24/7, Guaranteed". Yet you neglect to tell your customers that this is on a voluntary basis. Interestingly enough the two times we have needed service, it has been declined. None of that statement is true - you contract the work out to people who are unprofessional, late and do inferior work. A guarantee that work will even be done when you need it would be nice, nevermind "excellent service". These are the people you have representing your company? Needless to say, we are extremely disappointed and we will be sure our next house does not come with ANY service that Reliance provides. We will be telling others about our negative experience to ensure this does not happen to our friends and family.

Very bad experience with Reliance Home Comfort. I was leasing hot water tank for my old house. I sold my house and before moving out I called Reliance and provided my lawyers contact info. Reliance faxed the assignment of lease document to my lawyer. My lawyer then faxed the same document back to buyers lawyer. All this was done before the closing date Oct 31 2011. Couple of months back we found that Reliance is still collecting money from my account. We then contacted customer care and they said they will look into this and they will make sure no more money will be taken from my account and I would receive a mail in 2 weeks regarding the over payment amount. They have stopped collecting rental charge for old house since April. I still have not received the over payment money. When I contacted the customer care again couple of days back, they said the old account is not closed yet. They asked for new owners name and once I gave them they said they will now close and refund my money that was collected since January's 2012 and not from 2011 November. Why? This means Reliance for no reason is penalising me and collecting 2 months payment (November and December 2011). Why should I be penalised? Again it is almost 2 months since I noticed this and I have not received anything back. Every time i call customer care, I have to start explaining from beginning and each time I get different answer.

neighbour had new furnace and central air put in.just last week... first time turned it on.. did not cool and outside unit noisy as hell.. so glad I found out before we replaced ours. stay away from Reliance!

Reliance forces their employees on the front line to abide by their policies but upper management and retentions cave in at the slightest malodour of an escalated complaint and give away the store to make the problem disappear. The management does not want to fix the problems that develop. Assigning months of free rental fees seems to be the preferred manner of operation. I got 9 months free rental and never asked for it. That was after being offered 6 months after I insisted on an apology for my issues. I never got the apology just the upgraded rental fee holiday. Not a good company to deal with. I feel bad for their technicians who seemed stressed and somewhat embarrassed to have to toe the line. They are very good and I have no complaints with them . Reliance has a management problem and I suspect a customer focus problem as well . I took their bait but I still don't like the organization.

I have been paying for 12 years for this insurance and now that my furnace stoppd working they send 2 kids to look at it and when they saw my furnace they said that they did not know how to fix that type of furnace. The day after I called again so they can send someone that knows how to fix and they told me that no, that they can not fix because it is burned out. So I told them that that is not true because the technicians that came did not know about this type of furnace and they had to send some one that knows. After all they never fix the problem, I had to go buy a new furnace. I would never recomend this company, it is a scam, they send kids that dont know what they are doing and than say that since it doesn't work they cant fix just by looking at it. Worst insurance ever, I paid for nothing.

Dear rachelb79,

I am glad to read that everything has been resolved. If you would like to provide me with your address, I will be happy to look into the billing situation. Please do not hesitate to contact me with that information by phone or email at [protected], kallen@reliancecomfort.com. Sincerely, Kim.

The matter has been, for the most part, resolved to my satisfaction. My only wish would be that my landlord didnt have to pay for all of the new piping that was needed because it wasnt up to the latest regulations. I have good relations with my landlord, she wants to sell the house to us but we arent in a position to do so, and would hate to have to go looking for another house to hold a family of 7.
Things got fixed eventually in a timely fashion considering all the phone calls we had to make, the stress it caused, and the rude reps I dealt with, and the errors that were made on their end with scheduling.
In the end, it worked out. A new water heater to rent, and new piping to be par with regulations. But it goes billed to the landlord, who is away right now, and I will have to deal with her when she gets back *sigh* I dont want to be house hunting.
The higher uppers that I dealt with in the company were very kind. In the end, this company came through for us...they could one up it by knocking 50-75% off the bill, but maybe I'm dreaming.

Dear rachelb79,

I just read your post and would like to apologize for the poor customer service you experienced during the past 24 hours. I understand the issue has been corrected within 24 hours; however we share in your disappointment with our level of service provided. I'm the Customer Relations Supervisor and I want to ensure that this issue has now been resolved to your complete satisfaction. Please contact me by telephone at [protected] or by email at kallen@reliancecomfort.com if I can be of any further help.
Kim

Extremely unhappy with Reliance. We purchased a furnace and a/c thru rent to own a couple years ago. Had the yearly inspection late last year, and was told they were ordering a part. Never heard anything more about it. The furnace worked until a week ago. We have been without heat for 8+ days now, and keep getting the runaround.

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN,
Hi there! How are you? We Henry and Roselle Timog. We live at 2669-24 Southvale Crescent, Ottawa, Ontario K1B4V2. Our Enbridge account number# [protected] 6. We have to make and file a compliant with this companies, Reliance Home Comfort, Viva Financial, and UtilEbill. Because, we got on scam. we are a victim of fraud. This companies are the door to door seller, that lied to us. they came in to our house, they said, they just want to check our furnace. but then they installed their products into our furnace, they said its free, and its Ontario law. we signed the pappers without cost. but then, all of a sadden they charges into our Enbridge bill. We are shocked! We tried to contact them to cancel their product, since January 2018. but they said, they cannot cancel it. We already file a complaint to the Comsumers Protection, against of these companies. We already advised by the lawyers of PROBONO ONATRIO.( legal adviser of Ontario) That, we have to file a complaint to Enbridge, against of these companies, to stop them/ stop the payments to them, and to remove in our Enbridge Acct. Please help us, Please remove this companies that changes in our Enbridge bill acct. as soon as possible. We really need your help.
THANK YOU, FOR YOUR KIND AND CONSIDERATION!

Respectfully yours,
Henry and Roselle Timog

An article named Lien on me: Furnace rental contracts can be registered against your home which unveiled Reliance’s immoral behaviors was posted on the news paper The Hamilton Spectator. The writer Al MacRury asked anyone who has had a consumer problem to contact him. Call [protected] or email him at amacrury@thespec.com 

In the article, it said: The Ministry of Consumer Services says it's watching the marketplace and will respond if there's any sign of trouble. So let’s all shout it out and let our voices be heard. We need to work together and put them out of business.

You can read the article by opening the link below:
https://www.thespec.com/news-story/5616616-action-line-lien-on-me-furnace-rental-contracts-can-be-registered-against-your-home/

There are some other authoritative figures we can use to let our voice be heard
1. CBC marketplace
Email: marketplace@cbc.ca
Mailing Address:
CBC News: Marketplace
P.O.Box500
Toronto, Ontario
M5W 1E6
Fax: [protected]

2.Office of consumer affair
This is the place you must go. The link of its home page is:
http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/oca-bc.nsf/eng/home

To Whom it may concern:   
  
Hello we are my name is Anne, my husband is Dan how do you do?  we are writing to express our disappointment with the service of reliance, I won't go into the long story of the daily and week to week problems here on e-mail because I know you can check my file on your computer.   Bottom line your company left us without heat for almost 3  weeks in a very cold March weather it averaged minis ten and twenty below c.  I called several  times,  in the end I had your company remove the equipment from my home, because they could not get our heater fixed. We could go out and buy one and have it installed before you would be able to get mine up and running. 
Our disappointment is if they couldn't get the part why not put another space heater in?  But instead your company just left us with no heat and no return phone calls.  Its not like I let them forget about us I called several times letting everyone know there was no heat the only response was call us back when you receive the part. 
It was in the 3rd week when we made the decided to have the heater removed, I mentioned I was going to have to buy our own unit and not one person offered to say to me, something along the line that reliance also sells space heaters and we could purchase from them with a discount for all the inconvience.
But you took my March payment. 
I'm not looking forward to my hydro bill because of the heaters I had to borrow and use.   My gas bill was just as bad because the reliance heater for some time kept trying to come on but would not. 
Liz one of the people I was talking to told me there would be a one hundred and twenty five dollar plus G.S.T. to remove the unit.  I'm sorry, but I was blown away,  she did wave the charge for taking the heater out after I had to complain about that to her.   Thank you for that. 
Liz made arrangements for the unit to be removed the next day, when the service man came he walked in and thought he was there to repair the unit.  I asked him if he had the part.  Of course he said no... so I explained to him your suppose to remove the unit.  The service man had no idea he thought he was there to repair (with no part).  Again he made more calls and finally it was removed. 

I believe our situation should of been a priority since there was no heat for such a long time, but there was no solution on the side of reliance, which made me ask myself why I'm I paying almost $800.00 a year for your service?  What I am going to ask is that I would like my March payment since we won't be using it, if you would so kindly credit my account towards the hot water heater that I still have with reliance.

Sincerely,

Anne & Dan

This is unacceptable customer service in this day and age.I will be talking about a class action law suit against Reliance to my lawyer very soon.
No hot water since this morning, and these [censored]es cant be bothered to pick up the phone.If I hear that recorded message once, Ive heard it a thousand times.
I am placiing a call to the Ministry of Consumer Affairs, and I would suggest that course of action to anyone who has suffered from the incompetence of Reliance Home Comfort.

I have on rent, seven hot water tanks and four space heaters from Reliance. One Hot water tank sprung a leak, my superintendent called Reliance and a technician arrived and confirmed that it is a leak, will take a few days to replace it. With permission from Reliance, we had it replaced by another contractor the very next day. Reliance was charging us $91. a month. The new people is charging me $75. month. The hot water tank was disconnected and left inside the Furnace room on May 29th. 2015, after a few calls and loud complaints from me, Reliance's contractor has promised to remove the tank from my premises. Reliance had also charged the June Rental for this tank. I am now told that the June Rental has been reverted and it will show in my August Bill.
I am contemplating changing all the other rental units to Enercare.
Hey Supervisor, Customer Relations, Reliance Home Comfort, do you want to lose a good customer?
Kail T. Rajah

Regarding my complaint of 26 May 10.

I noticed that most of the complainants never post results of their complaints.

I would like to say thank you to Kim at Reliance Customer Service. Kim called me and reviewed the situation. Once misunderstandings were cleared up, the situation was resolved to my satisfaction. The techs did arrive mid afternoon Friday 28 May and the problem was fixed within 15 minutes.

Hopefully everything will continue to go smoothly.

Thanks again Kim.

MikeKD

I went through a Reliance Home Discomfort abusive billing as well. They called out of the blue a year or 2 ago asking if I was interesting in a home furnace service assurance for a nominal service charge which would be covered by a rebate for the first 6 months. Fine. The bill was so small...at first. It slowly increased the following year and then I was sent multiple bills at different prices. I called them and tried to cancel and was told I had to send them a letter in the mail to cancel. Good enough...after digging through their paperwork there was no apparent address to cancel so I called them back and they told me I could cancel by sending an email. They gave me an email address and I sent off my cancellation.
In a short period I received a MAILER DAEMON indicating the email address did not exist. I called back and became belligerent enough that I was referred to someone that only gave me his first name and when he started going through the same spiel about having to mail them I told him to stop feeding me [censor] and cancel my account and the creative billing.
He then got hold of his supervisor and I finally got a cancellation authorization number.
The following month the bills kept coming with different values that could not be followed so i had to go back to their billing department to stop any collection agency from destroying my good name. I went through 4 levels of being put on hold with the same lying crap and would not get referred to a "supposed" higher person until I started swearing about their criminally insane abusive behavior. When the last guy finally got on the phone after about 15 minutes on hold I had finally figured out that I should be able to go on their website, sign up for my account number, and unsubscribe on their website...THE WEBSITE DOES NOT ALLOW YOU TO MAKE A PASSWORD TO ACCESS YOU ACCOUNT!@%$?.
The last guy on the phone tried to make it go away if I just paid the last bill from the time I made the first complaint and after explaining that the bill was paid in full at the time and I had a bank record to prove it and that I wanted his last name and location of his office so I could sue, he sent me an e-mail verifying the account was cleared and it actually had his full name and a reliance logo.
I think this is what the dragons on Dragon Den call squeezing the customer for more money.
These guys should be in jail.
We consumers need protection from this.
I suggest anyone that has had to deal with this company or any other creative billing ( Rogers perhaps or Bell?) should contact their politicians during this election and have these thievery practices obliterated !

I'm renting my condo in Ottawa, Ontario and Reliance will not bill the Tenant and as per their policy they are billing the owner that's it that's all. This would be the same as if the Hydro or Bell would change you directly and then you have to collect the Tenant.

I hope Reliance read this...I will remove their " hot water tank " from ALL my properties!

I am the client and if my money is not good for them, I'm sure another company will be glad to take it.

Another UNHAPPY custom of Reliance Home Comfort

DO NOT DEAL WITH RELIANCE HOME COMFORT. Only this company will sell you an unefficient ultra high efficient furnace. It was not till the warranty ran out and my thermostat failed that I discovered what they had done. Basically I used $2000 dollars more fuel than I should have because they did not install a 2 Stage Thermostat. THIS COMPANY IS ONLY CONCERNED IN PROFITS >>> SCREW THE CUSTOMER. It cost $200 installed to fix the problem, THE FURNACE GUY was great and I will deal with them from now on. My house stays warm all the time and the furnace just dribbles out heat. Truly Ultra efficient. Thanks to THE FURNACE GUY...