Roth Heating & Cooling

We had been with Roth for more than 7 years. In summer of 2017, a Roth crew of two men installed a new furnace/AC combination unit in our Wilsonville home. Since then, we’ve had a “Peace of Mind” maintenance contract with Roth which began at $26.50/mo, until Dec 2022 when it was $31.45/mo. This Plan included priority scheduling, and automatic scheduling of “furnace check-ups” every spring and “air-conditioning check-ups” every fall—including a filter replacement twice yearly. “Automatic scheduling” ceased in 2020 during the pandemic, which meant we must call to make each appointment. In early Oct 2021, when I called, their “next available appointment to check the furnace” was JANUARY 12, halfway thru the winter(!!). I asked then, WHY were we paying $26-$31 each month for supposedly “priority scheduling?”
Around 7 pm on that very cold Thurs, Dec 22, 2022—our furnace stopped working. I telephoned and was told by the woman answering the phone “a repairman would be contacted and should be out there by 9 pm.” This was reassuring to us (senior citizens, in our mid-80s), because the weather had been “lows around 20°F, highs less than 30°F with freezing rain” for several days.
At 9 pm, I telephoned Roth and a different woman said “Sorry, but all technicians have gone home for the night.” But we would be “high on the list for Fri morning at 7 am.” On the internet, it says Roth phones are “open 24 hrs a day,” but— between 9:15 pm & 7 am—I heard only music, during this emergency ice storm.
At 7 am Fri, Dec 23—I was told by a third woman at Roth that “no trucks would be going out before 11 am, due to inclement weather.” Around 1 pm Fri Dec 23, the fourth woman (this time, the “official scheduler”) told me that we “have been scheduled for an ‘emergency appointment’ next Tues afternoon, Dec 27th.” [We’ve been paying $31+ per month for emergency coverage and, on the coldest spell of the winter, and over Christmas, we were asked to “get by without a furnace” for 5 days?]
Fortunately, we found another furnace repair company; two technicians promptly arrived and repaired the furnace (it took one hour) on the evening of the 23rd. We learned that the cause of our 5-year-old Roth-installed furnace to stop working was “shoddy, incomplete installment of the furnace in the first place.” For the condensation water drain in a house like ours with ample crawl space—a PCV pipe is supposed to run from the heating unit to an outside rainwater drain; the water runs downhill by gravity, this should never freeze, and no pump is needed. Instead, Roth chose to use a short piece of polyethylene tubing to drip the water under the house directly beneath the furnace, and they installed a pump to drain this water. In 20-30°F cold weather for more than a day, the water in the plastic tubing froze, shutting down the pump, which stopped the furnace.
We requested (but never received any reply) that Roth reimburse us for the $400 emergency visit by the other company, plus $428 for the installation of PVC pipe to the outside drain—which should have been done in the first place. [Needless to say, we immediately cancelled the Roth “Peace of Mind” monthly plan and changed furnace-repair companies.]