Viking HVAC

I had some work done by Viking and they sent me a text asking for a review. I’m a little surprised that they actually want a review from me, but sure, why not. We wanted to get a swamp cooler put on our house and we called 3 different companies to get a quote. We told each company the same thing; we weren’t sure what exactly we needed to get it done. We have 2 AC units; one that mostly covers the front of the house and one that mostly covers the back. We weren’t sure if we would need 1 swamp cooler connecting to both sets of duct work, or 2 swamp coolers, one for each set of duct work, or 1 cooler with new duct work separate from the AC duct work. One company wanted to charge thousands of dollars to install a swamp cooler on the roof that just came straight down into one vent for the whole house. We rejected that plan because it’s stupid; we can get a 5100CFM cooler from Home Depot for $650 and just put it right outside our back door and get the same thing. Viking said they’d put in a 5500 CFM cooler attached to the AC ducts in the back of the house; he said there would be some loss of power and it would feel like 4500 CFM. I was concerned that the front of the house wouldn’t cool down without any air going through the front ducts; the manager assured me that if we crack the windows to force the air to flow that way it would be sufficient – this is important for later. We paid almost $9000 for Viking to install our cooler to our AC ducts, and it would not cool off any of the house at all – not even the back where it was installed.. It felt like 1000 CFM. Doing some research online, it sounds like any competent technician should have known this wouldn’t work; AC duct work is much smaller than duct work for a swamp cooler. When I called to complain the manager implied more than once I should have to pay extra to fix the duct issues – the issues they were supposed to think through before giving the original quote. When I reminded him he said it would be sufficient for our house he said, “Well the cooler is sufficient,” trying to gas light me into thinking he had never made any claims about the sufficiency of the duct work, despite the fact that I explicitly asked about that and the whole point of the initial consultation was to get a quote to get a working system, not a decoration on the roof. He said more than once he should have “managed expectations” better. So let me help manage expectations: Viking will lie about what they will deliver and then try to get more money out of you to fix their mistakes. They finally removed the cooler from the AC duct work and just have it coming out of one vent – the stupid plan we had rejected from another company; the same thing we could accomplish with a cooler from Home Depot for $650. I just want to make sure you appropriately manage your expectations if you have Viking do any work for you.