An 81-year-old Edmonton woman is speaking out after paying for a chlorine filter that never functioned.
Beverly Duncan says that more than seven years ago, a door-to-door salesman convinced her to rent a chlorine filter.
“He didn’t tell me what he was going to do. He certainly didn’t tell me what to watch for on this machine after he put it in,” said Duncan, who has lived in her house for nearly 30 years.
The filter costs around $75 a month. It’s supposed to clean the water and make it safer to drink. Duncan also pays $100 a month for a rental furnace.
Duncan says she became even more upset after she tried to cancel and received a hefty bill.
Duncan says a technician from Reliance Home Comfort visited her home at least once a year to check on the rental furnace. However, that wasn’t the case for her other product.
“After I had the furnace checked, a couple of weeks after, I thought, ‘Why have they never ever checked my chlorine filter?'”
Duncan then asked Reliance to send someone to her home for a service call.
She said a technician came to look at it January.
“The technician went down, then he came back, he wasn’t down there for very long. He came quickly back up the stairs, talking as he was coming up, he said, ‘It’s not working and it has never worked since day one because it’s got a part missing,'” said Duncan.
Duncan says she has paid more than $8,000 for something that never worked. For a few months after the technician visited, she was still paying that fee.
She says when she contacted Reliance about cancelling the plan, it wasn’t that simple. “I would have to pay more than $4,000,” she said she was told.
Reliance Home Comfort told Global News it takes these concerns seriously.
“We are aware of the situation and our team has been in active discussions with the customer to resolve the matter,” said the company.
“We can confirm that on June 1, the customer was offered a free cancellation of the chlorine filter and a significantly reduced buyout for the furnace at $100.”
The company also offered to pay some of the total bill back.
For Duncan, she hopes that by sharing what happened, she can help someone else avoid a similar issue.
“I’m furious and I feel like I’ve been taken advantage of,” she said.