City Mechanical, Inc.

Unethical Business Practices and Overcharging - Taken to Collections Without Resolution I had a very negative experience with City Mechanical, and I want to warn others. In November 2023, I contacted them for an HVAC leak at my home in Berkeley, CA, expecting a simple consultation and estimate. Instead, I was billed $922 after two consultation visits (when I only requested one), for supposed labor and an undisclosed "truck fee"--yet no actual repairs were made, and the leak was never addressed. None of these charges were agreed upon in writing or verbally, and City Mechanical falsely claimed we had consented to them. They even claimed that our contractor agreed to the fees, which our contractor denies. After reaching out to them directly and filing a formal complaint with the Better Business Bureau (BBB), City Mechanical ignored our concerns entirely and, without any effort to resolve the issue, took us to collections. This is beyond unethical. Being sent to collections for unjustified charges, despite repeated attempts to address the situation, shows how little regard City Mechanical has for customer service or fairness. Based on my experience and similar online reviews, this seems to be a pattern of deceptive practices. I strongly advise anyone considering their services to be cautious.

I am a Director of Engineering. I have used City Mechanical at several properties over the past 15 years. Russ is great to deal with. I have consistently used this company because once I call them I no longer have to worry about the problem, they make the repairs on time and correctly every time. Are they the cheapest company out there? No, but do you really want the cheapest HVAC contractor in the book working on your home or business? I certainly do not. I have read some of the negative reviews and find them hard to believe based upon my years of experience with City Mechanical. I strongly recommend them to anyone I know in need of their type of services. I have found their staff to be great to deal with and very easy to communicate with.

This company just charged me over $2600 to change a thermal sensor on a boiler/tank (hydronic heater put in by the previous owner of this house) that cost a few dollars and took a few minutes to install. This is about the same cost as a new unit, uninstalled. I suppose they should have told me that they do not work on residential property or that I would have to pay a technician $450/hr (it was Sunday afternoon) to DRIVE to San Francisco and BACK. Not sure what “City” they are referring to in their business name. I just had a backflow testing company come out for city-mandated testing, and he told me that City Mechanical is known to charge exorbitant prices and gave me a referral to another firm that does higher-end residential at more customary prices--Flow Masters. Perhaps I might not have been so shocked if I received this invoice from my apartment management people, but for a normal home system please go elsewhere. And from other reviews I’ve seen, this predatory invoicing is not an uncommon experience.

I wish I had looked up the ratings on this company before hiring them, their Google rating is 2.9. THERE IS A RECURRENT THEME. They have more bad reviews than positive (& those are from people they have longstanding relationships with) Issues potential customers should be aware of: 1) they provide an initial estimate of work & they say they offer a 30 day warranty. The person providing the estimate is not the same person doing the work 2) when a different person comes out to do the work, the estimate turns out to be inadequate & there are immediate add ons. They were hired for “not working heater”. They fixed this but there was then an immediate add on of $400 to a $1200 estimate, a 33% add-on. This was paid. At the time of this service, they “suggested” additional work for $2100 for prophylaxis against a future problem. We did not do this work. 3) Just 6 days later the heater wasn’t working again. We called them to exercise the warranty. A few days later they returned. The first worker couldn’t figure out what was wrong. Important to note, the problem WAS NOT what they had proposed a $2100 repair for. The repair man left & we were left with no working heat. A few days later a new technician came out & he struggled to fix the problem but ultimately did. He had no logical explanation for what he did or what the problem was. He said that “maybe there was a power surge and we should use surge suppressors” only nothing else in our condo broke or switched off, just the HVAC??? Not logical. Then he suggested that “maybe there was a drop in water pressure in the building and that affected the HVAC”….really??? It only affected our condo in a huge building??? Again not logical & it has never happened before in the 12 year existence of the building. They prey on the lack of technical HVAC knowledge of the consumer with these types of comments. What’s worse, is the 2 technicians demonstrated their own lack of knowledge because they just took a “shotgun” approach to trying to fix the non-working heat. Not very reassuring that they had any idea what they were doing 4) we were then sent a bill for almost $1900! We immediately objected because their invoices & estimates describe a 30 day warranty & their initial work failed within 6 days. We called the company & the billing person said “this was not warranty work, this was a new problem”. What? We hired you for a broken heater. The heater was fixed for 6 days & then it stopped working. Suddenly it’s a “new problem”? Again I want to emphasize that none of this was related to their suggested prophylactic work of $2100 estimate. We had multiple phone calls with them and then they sent the bill to their in-house collections agent. Multiple phone calls with this woman were a waste of time. She is not intelligent and just regurgitates the technical information written on their invoice. She did offer to knock a few hundred dollars off the $1850 bill but it was still around $1300 for work that clearly is a warranty issue. 5) I filed a complaint with the BBB. The BBB made multiple attempts to engage the company but they never replied. Obviously they don’t want to have to explain themselves. I have also submitted a complaint to the state who I am working with. All of this work takes a lot of time on my part which is just an unnecessary burden on my life. Conclusion: this is a dishonest company without integrity. Moreover they are incompetent with the quality of their work. I support small businesses (which I assume they are) but I don’t support business that try to upsell customers on work they don’t need, don’t honor their warranty on their work, and generate new invoices for problems their own workers can’t even work through. If you read the other reviews on Google you will see that this is a RECURRENT THEME with this company. There are many other choices & City Mechanical in Hercules CA should not be one of them. The quality of their work is bad, they are dishonest and their billing honestly borders on a scam. Consider yourself warned.

I had a bad experience with City Mechanical. My HVAC was not functioning. They charged me around $1200 and were barely able to diagnose and fix the issue . I will not recommend.