HRV NZ rant!!!

Forums › Home Workshop DIY › HRV NZ rant!!!

stone2

120 posts

Master Geek

#177262 28-Jul-2015 11:04

Hi all, just wanted to vent my frustration and see if anyone else feels like HRV NZ are nothing but money grubbing, hard selling scam artists.
I had my HRV system installed about 4 yrs ago at a cost of several thousand dollars for a small 3 bedroom house. The sales person was quite aggressive but we had done our research and decided to go with HRV anyway. As it turns out he over sold us and according to him we needed two fan units for a 3 bedroom house of 152m square.
It took two installers about 3 hrs and the equipment they install is really very basic. (air ducting which is super-cheap to buy, two fan units which is only a fan and motor inside a tin box, a control panel and some ceiling ducts and some electrical cabling. Items purchased separately would cost less than $800. But to be fair, cudo's to HRV for their business idea. Just hard to swallow the cost of such an overpriced system. However it fixed my condensation problem right up and I was very happy. But it wasn't long before they were calling to pressure me to have the filters changed. I did some research and found replacement filters online for about half the price of HRV's. I replaced them myself as it’s a very easy job as long as you can manoeuvre in the ceiling space. They kept calling over the space of a couple of months with a very aggressive approach. I can't remember how the conversations went but I was left with a feeling of being hassled rather than being helped. From then on I refused to buy their replacement filters even though they continue to call me about it.

NOW though I received an email from them stating that they are now discontinuing their current HRV systems and are no longer able to support their existing customers who have older HRV systems installed....wait for it......UNLESS we take advantage of their generous offer to upgrade our current HRV to their new model for a discounted rate as we are existing customers. The price of the upgrade?...$2399.00 Takes 2. hours only.
They state in their email that the next generation system costs about $5000-$6000 for non existing customers. WHAT A SCAM!!!

Suffice to say I will not be upgrading.

Thank you for reading this if you got this far.

1 | 2 | 3

Geek @ Coastguard NZ
13769 posts

Uber Geek

Retired Mod

ID Verified

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#1353228 28-Jul-2015 11:16

We had them visit once at our old house, and yeah they were pushy but got rid of them by saying we didnt have money right there and then anyway and were just seeing what was out there. Then had one of their competitors turn up for a quote, was cheaper, friendlier, and they were happy for you to sort out own filtering if you wanted.

We didnt bother in the end with either.

Gavin / xpd / FastRaccoon / Geek of Coastguard New Zealand

LinkTree

wasabi2k

2096 posts

Uber Geek

#1353229 28-Jul-2015 11:17

Yep, we had a similar experience - salespeople are super aggressive about the whole thing.

Put us off completely and didn't go ahead. The filter thing is a common complaint too.

bullpup

15 posts

Geek

#1353235 28-Jul-2015 11:23

We have HRV in a house we purchased,   the motor in the fan unit started making a noise, so we got in touch with them to replace 800 bucks later....

Then the phone calls started with the "you need to replace your filters"   I told them not to call me again after their sales person decided to argue with me about using the filters brought cheaply from trademe.

Now and again they call and I tell them never to call me again I am not interested in their service.   doesnt faze them they just apologise and do it all over again in the next few months.

If I could replace the ceiling tile where the vents are (older house) I would rip it out and bin it. but even that wouldnt stop the calls.

NZSpides

155 posts

Master Geek

#1353249 28-Jul-2015 11:32

The last house I owned we had an HRV style ventilation system installed just after we bought it (we had been renting it previously).
This made a large difference to the condensation, and we were very happy with it.
Just before we sold the place I noticed that the condensation was back, so on investigation I found that the fan box had died - motor is dead (or the driver for it).

We got a tech in to fix it, and found that the house actually needed 2 of these fans to cover the size of the house (we had been undersold).
So we got the new one fitted, fixed the problem and sold the house.

The new place is much bigger, but I knew more about the systems available and I decided to install one myself.
I went with Smart Vent. The system I installed was a little more expensive than the HRV system, but offered heat recovery.
On instillation I noticed that the product was far superior to the old HRV and the newer one that was installed in my old place.
It took me two days to install, but the change was miraculous.

This system takes fresh air in and exchanges it with the old air while recovering most of the heat while moving the air from remote parts of the house.
Seriously thinking of adding the bypass feature this summer to push more cool air in from outside without keeping the heat.

timmmay

20589 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#1353267 28-Jul-2015 11:41

I found them aggressive and made claims they couldn't substantiate. I complained to them about their salesman.

andrew027

1286 posts

Uber Geek

#1353302 28-Jul-2015 12:14

We do get a bit of condensation in our current home, so were happy to have HRV come out to to see if they could help. Unfortunately our house is quite unusual. It has two unconnected areas of steep pitched coloursteel roof with a decent amount of space between the roof and ceiling, and two sections of flat roof with no real space (except insulation) above the ceiling. It also has three levels, and some rooms have no ceiling space where a vent could be installed due to the layout of the floor above. The salesman looked around and came up with a really complex solution that involved two fan units in the different parts of the roof space, modification to the roofline to run ducting through the roof to the outside of the house, running ducting through wardobes and the pantry to reach lower floors, and building a bulkhead in one bedroom to feed ducting to another bedroom under the flat roof, with the vents in the bulkhead.

How I laughed...

They still phone us every year to see if we want someone to come around. We don't.

Hoofhaarted

103 posts

Master Geek

#1353305 28-Jul-2015 12:20

Could not agree more on how much their sales techniques etc are off putting.

At the home show we gave our details to all of the companies offering deals on home ventilation.

Signed up with Smart Vent in the end.

Told HRV when they called back, within 10 mins of being told no, and that I had signed elsewhere, people supposedly higher up the chain called telling us to cancel the contract and sign with them. I told them no politely the first time, and 2nd time I just hung up on them mid spiel.

They even called back a couple of months later saying they would rip the new system out and replace it with theirs.

Smart Vent gave us 5 free filters, which we can replace ourselves .

I now tell anyone asking, don't make any contact with HRV at all if you are thinking of putting a system in...

Quic Broadband

Move to New Zealand's best fibre broadband service (affiliate link). Free setup code: R587125ERQ6VE. Note that to use Quic Broadband you must be comfortable with configuring your own router.

richrdh18

210 posts

Master Geek

#1353308 28-Jul-2015 12:23

HRV ring us at least once a week, the number comes up as Anonymous so we don't answer it, on the odd occasion that i do pick up, they go through there whole speale and I tell them that we have a DVS system installed. I've lost count of how many times i've asked to be removed from their database.

FYI, we have a 5 Bedroom house, reasonably large, 1 DVS vent in the hallway and no condensation.

sep11guy

660 posts

Ultimate Geek
Inactive user

#1353320 28-Jul-2015 12:35

i found the sales lady from HRV quite aggressive too.

the whole pitch sounded like a very very well rehearsed scam / plot , and it covers topics like temperatures in auckland, diseases due to the home temp condition, pollen and what not

In the end, the lady almost starts writing down the sales order and asks how did i want to pay CC or cheque , when i havent even decided if i really want it.

and then she accused me ( sort of ) by saying whats stopping you to make the decision, can she speak to the decision maker ( i make all decisions, but i was trying to look for reasons to get out of the sell )

then lastly she said she would give us a $250 countdown gift voucher for sign up.

thats when i realized, this thing probably costs about $200-$300 in parts and said bye bye

i didnt go ahead with the install

cant the commerce commission or a industry body regulate such bad practices in business ?

dclegg

2806 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#1353347 28-Jul-2015 13:09

sep11guy: i found the sales lady from HRV quite aggressive too.

the whole pitch sounded like a very very well rehearsed scam / plot , and it covers topics like temperatures in auckland, diseases due to the home temp condition, pollen and what not

In the end, the lady almost starts writing down the sales order and asks how did i want to pay CC or cheque , when i havent even decided if i really want it.

That's exactly what happened to us too. And when we told the sales rep that we weren't ready to commit, due to the cost being a lot higher than expected, he started to try to guilt us into it with lines such as "Are you really trying to put a dollar value on your children's health?"

He was out the door not long afterwards, and we vowed never to do business with that company again.

xontech

268 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1353355 28-Jul-2015 13:27

The pressure sales tactic that tipped the balance for us was at the end of the appointment, when we said we'd think about it, then came out the "I'll knock $500 off the price if you sign up right now". That really p'd me off so we told him to get lost and complained to his manager. For most people I'd think committing to an approx. $3K spend isn't something you'd happily do just after an hour of being sold to. I prefer to let them do their speil, then go off and do my own research. As above, will never buy an HRV now. Which in some ways I'm kind of glad it happened this way, I think buying one would have been a mistake and now believe there are many better systems on the market to address ventalilation.

Handsomedan

7302 posts

Uber Geek

ID Verified

Trusted

Subscriber

#1353386 28-Jul-2015 14:03

We've had HRV in our house for years.

The initial sales pitch was aggressive, but we'd already done our research and decided to go with it anyway.

Every year we get the call to replace the filters at the cost of $400.00. Every year we say "next year".

Sadly, we are also on the sales call list so we get very regular calls asking us if we'd like a sales person to come around and assess our home for a ventilation system. This question is met with the standard answer of, "If you kept decent records, you'd realise we are already a customer and we don;t need someone to come around and sell us something we already have. Take us off the list!".

Recently, we had the filters changed and the tech came around and installed the new filters...at that point we were told that the old system we have is inadequate forour house (an open-plan 120sqm 3brm home) and we'd need an additional fan and it'll only cost us $2500.
I said no thanks and promptly sent them on their way after having the filters changed.

To say they are pushy is an understatement. To say they're mildly unethical would not be a stretch.

Overall, I'd say have a unit put in, by all means. Just don't have a unit from HRV.

Handsome Dan Has Spoken.
Handsome Dan needs to stop adding three dots to every sentence...

Handsome Dan does not currently have a side hustle as the mascot for Yale

*Gladly accepting donations...

ajw

1932 posts

Uber Geek

#1353405 28-Jul-2015 14:07

xpd: We had them visit once at our old house, and yeah they were pushy but got rid of them by saying we didnt have money right there and then anyway and were just seeing what was out there. Then had one of their competitors turn up for a quote, was cheaper, friendlier, and they were happy for you to sort out own filtering if you wanted.

We didnt bother in the end with either.

Leaving my back door and windows open when I am home achieves the same result.

DarthKermit

5346 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#1353408 28-Jul-2015 14:11

We have a heat pump in the lounge. The house is fairly well insulated now. I still have to insulate the exterior walls in the other bedroom. Also need to put a vapour barrier down to cut down the rising damp.

Our attic would be unsuitable for any of those heat extraction HRV type things, it's open at both ends with louvre vents and quite drafty.

If any of those pushy salesmen come here I'll get rid of them short smart.

mattwnz

20165 posts

Uber Geek

#1353411 28-Jul-2015 14:15

We had one of these companies give us a quote after they cold called offering free quotes. It was disappointing for them when they discovered we didn't have any roof space, just a skill-ion roof. We had a similar system installed in our older house, but it didn't make much difference to condensation. It was a 300sqm house, but only had one fan installed, so was probably underpowered.

1 | 2 | 3