Sabre Plumbing, Heating & Air Conditioning

I see Sabre vans coming in and out of my neighborhood all of the time. So we thought we would use them when we wanted to get estimates on heating our garage.
We called three times. Left messages all three times. No call backs. Called one more time and we got an appointment for today at 12pm. Guess what? He is a no show. Sigh. Please do not use them. Find someone else. They are not responsive and have poor customer service.

Yeah, not a good company to do business with. Called to get some heating work done. Bad customer service. System stopped working immediately. Called back and didn't hear back for two weeks. Still haven't received a refund for the shoddy work.

Contracted Sabre to install a garage heater which involved installing vent, running gas line from mechanical room, and installing the heater and thermostat.  Top notch and did everything they said they would.  Communication from both the office staff and field team was phenomenal and exceeded my expectations.   I'd disregard older reviews.  I can't speak to their service back then, maybe they made changes.  They were prompt, on-time, and did exactly what they said they would.  Thank you!

Everyone makes mistakes and accidents happen. It's part of life.

However, when a company repeatedly makes blunders which cost you money and then refuses to make it right, that's just bad business. Personally, I had to take vacation time over six days and spend an additional $700 too because of their errors.

My wife and I built a new home last year with Sabre as the HVAC and plumbing contractor, and we've had an incredible amount of trouble with their quality, craftsmanship and customer service.

Here's is a quick rundown of the trouble we've had with Sabre:

-The technicians at Sabre installed our HVAC system wrongly causing cold winter air to be forced into the house instead of passing through the furnace. This caused our winter heating bill to be $100-$150 more than the average for the winter months.  It was eventually fixed, but in the end, their mistakes cost me money.

-Because of the issues with the HVAC system would couldn't use our lower level during the winter. The temperature rarely crept above 60 degrees.  At night, the temperature rarely got above 55 degrees, despite our thermostat set at 70 degrees. The problem was eventually resolved, but it took over three months and six service visits to get it done.

-Our 2 Zone HVAC system and thermostats were wired backward. The heat control on the thermostat was wired to the AC system, meaning the AC would turn on when the heat was supposed to. This meant we were greeted by a blast of cold air when the heat was supposed to turn on. This should have been found during inspection but was not. Again, Sabre had to send someone out.

-Technicians had to come to our home six times over two months to fix the problems above. Yes, you read that correctly SIX TIMES. This forced me to take unnecessary time off and lose even more money.  You know it's ridiculous when you are on a first name basis with the technicians.

-Finally, we had a natural gas line installed during the building process. I spoke with a rep from Sabre and was quoted over the phone $292 for the job. To my surprise, I received a bill for $550 after it was installed. This price was never agreed upon at any point. I would have paid the bill without much thought, but because we had so much trouble, I was extremely annoyed. I paid the bill, but the company should have compensated us.

Save yourself the trouble and take your business elsewhere.

Brand new air condition at our new house doesn't work. Waiting for a week now to get it fixed - not even receiving a call back.

Hmm....what does that say about their creditability and customer service??

Sabre is an exceptional contractor who did great work for me.  After dealing with several contractors upon moving into a new home, Sabre ranks near the top for quality, timeliness, and customer service.  They came to finish a job after another contractor had several employees quite and became non-communicative.  

I recommend Sabre if you are seeking a reliable contractor to work with.

Before I begin, I want to say that I have a unique situation. When my house was built (far before I bought it) they decided not to make room for a furnace inside the house. Instead, they opted to go with a furnace/air conditioner combo unit on the outside of the house.

My existing combo unit died in 2013. I hired Sabre Heating & Plumbing to install a new unit. On the installation day (Friday, December 20, 2013), I should have realized that Sabre was not the company I should have gone with. I was at work when they installed it. When I returned home, I tried to turn on the furnace but it would not turn on. I decided to look around the new unit to see if there was a power switch or button. I couldn't find one but instead found a pair of fuses just sitting on top of the unit and two wires coming out of the ground, neither attached to anything (see included images). I told them what I saw and the next day they came out and fixed it. Strangely, I did not see the fuses or wires poking out of the ground later.

To protect my investment, I signed up for their Sabre Blue Maintenance Plan. For $300/year, a technician would come out twice a year to make sure the unit was running correctly. For the first few years, everything seemed to be working just fine. I believed that when they came out for the biannual checkup that they were doing a thorough inspection of the unit. Also, since there were different technicians who came out over the years, if one technician missed something then the next one would probably catch it (or so I thought).

Things started to go wrong in the summer of 2018. At the beginning of August 2018, the air conditioner was not cooling my house so I had them come out. I looked back in my email and all I could find was a charge for $106.25. I don't delete emails so I was surprised to find no work order. On 8/16/2018, there was another charge for $108.00 to replace an ARMOD. On 10/11/2018, again my combo unit was having issues and I was charged another $125.00 for a trip fee. Next year on 8/22/2019, I again needed them to come out and repair my unit. This time at $234.00 and again with no work order so that I could not trace back what they did. One month later on 9/20/2019 they had to come out again. This time to replace the TXV at $433.89. The sheer number of issues with my unit should lead me to believe that these $300/year biannual checkups were either not being done or being done by untrained technicians.

This leads to the most recent issue. On 2/4/2020, I noticed my furnace making a loud whirring noise. On the following day, it stopped producing heat. The technician who came out replaced the inducer motor. I asked what I could do to prevent this going forward and he told me that sometimes they just seize up. He got the furnace working but I noticed that there was barely any air pressure coming out of the vents. I was happy the furnace was working so I just let it run for the night. I woke up cold at 3:00 am and saw that the temperature in my house was 56 degrees. I called Sabre again the next day and informed them that the furnace would run for 20 minutes and then shut off. They sent a different technician the following day. After working on it for a number of hours the technician told me that furnace was overheating and that a safety switch was turning it off. I asked him what could be causing it to overheat and he replied: I don't know. He told me that he would increase the high limit so that the overheating would not shut off the furnace. I didn't like this answer so, for the first time, I decided to call another HVAC company, Blue Ox. Within 20 minutes the Blue Ox technician discovered that the evaporator coil was completely blocked by dirt and dust. The reason why it was overheating was that no air was coming through the intake and the motor was trying extra hard to suck in air. In addition to this, the Blue Ox technician noticed that the exhaust vent was still taped inside the furnace where the evaporator coil was. The Sabre technicians who installed the furnace didn't know or even bother to inspect the unit after they had installed it (hence the random fuses and bare wires). Since this exhaust vent had been in there since the installation, it meant that no Sabre technicians had bothered to look at the evaporator coil, not on the numerous times they came out to fix the unit or on the many biannual checkups. In addition, these experts rarely offered solutions and were not even curious as to what the underlying issues were. This makes me believe that they are either severely under-trained, extremely lazy, or unethical. Any way you cut it, it is a good reason to go with someone besides Sabre.

Full disclosure Sabre advertises on our podcast and that's one of the reasons we started using them.  Our previous hvac co couldn't figure out what was wrong with our furnace and kept wanting to put in s new system. Sabre fixed our furnace and we didn't have to install a new system!   They do a great job and come out promptly.     Highly recommend.