Abacus Plumbing, Air Conditioning & Electrical

Great service all around. Great communication around scheduling. Plumber was on time and did a great job. Would definitely use them again for other plumbing services.

Rory from Abacus came to fix one of the mini splits in my home (or should I say, help me with it, it actually wasn’t broken). I’ve had Abacus service people at my house for various things the last 2 years. Always on time, professional and reliable. I got quotes from 4 a/c companies (even Goettl which my family used to own and operate) and went with Abacus. Very happy with my decision.

Had Abacus technician, Ethan, came out for a 2nd opinion. Very honest appraisal and inspection. Will only recommend service that’s needed. I will use them again in the future for repairs.

Not an easy review for me. On a scheduled service time of 11-2 the Electrician finally contacted me and let me know that it would be 3pm before he arrived. I’ve been waiting since 10:30. He was pleasant and professional. There were significant differences in what I was told by the office and the Electrician. He quoted an outrageous price ($568) to change a circuit breaker and I asked him to leave. I have history as a home builder. In conversation he told me what he paid for the circuit breaker ($70) and I told him I thought that was price gouging. We ended up at $386 rather than $550+ and it was still very high. I do not trust this company to act fairly.

We called Abacus to come out and try and find what might have been a leak as we were using a lot of water every month. We were told on the phone that there will be no charge to come out and check it and that if we decided to have the work done the service call charge would be included in the work. The man came out and after checking all the toilets told us that the one in the half bathroom was running constantly and that's why there was so much water usage. He said it needed to do a minor rebuild. He also told us the other two toilets needed a minor rebuild and that they had all the original parts in them. The problem with that was that the other two toilets had already been rebuilt just a year before, so he did not tell the truth about that. He then went outside and looked at the pressure valve and the shut off valve and told us both needed to be replaced. We ended up allowing him to do the partial rebuild on the half bathroom toilet. He gave us a total and I paid him over the phone as my wife was there and I was not. He said he would send a copy of the invoice. He also told us that he would send over information on getting some financing asked to replace the shut off valve and the pressure valve or whatever it is, would be an additional $1400. The bill ended up being $628. The next day we decide to get another plumber out to the house to check out the pressure valve and the shut off valve because the man the day before had been less than truthful with us. He did tell us the pressure valve needed to be replaced but the shutoff valve was perfectly fine, and he just cleaned it off. The price for him doing this was less than half of the $1400 quoted by Abacus. I ended up calling up Abacus and telling them I wanted to talk to a manager, and I wanted a copy of my receipt. I got the receipt but did not get a call back from a manager for almost two days. But there were problems with the receipt. First in the over $600 they had charged us they had charged us a diagnostic fee which they said would be waived if they did the work. That was $215. The rest of the bill was over $468 for one hour's worth of work for what it said was a minor rebuild of the toilet. They did not break up how much the parts were or what their hourly rate was. I priced out the parts for a minor rebuild of the toilet and it came out to around $30. It included the chain, the handle with the float ball inside and the stopper at the bottom of the tank. Abacus charged us over $400 for one hour's worth of work. I finally got a call back from a manager this morning and explained to him what happened about the overpricing and about the fact that their technician had tried to oversell us on things we did not need. He said he would check with another manager and get back to me. 5 minutes later he called back saying that they weren't required by IRS law to tell us their hourly rate. They just do it per job. And they were not willing to do anything about it even though I did say that on the phone the woman told us that the service call would be waived if they did the work which they did. He said because I was not there that she had agreed to it. But the problem with agreeing to it was he never showed her an invoice. If the technician had had his way we would have been charged over $2500 for what he claimed need to be done. I picked Abacus because of their reviews online. But I've come to realize lately that a lot of the reviews that are written and the stars they get, especially on google where you don't even have to leave a comment and just give them stars, that obviously they have hired some company to boost their online reputation. But what I would say is their reputation is horrible and I would strongly advise anyone not to have anything to do with them!

I am a member of their HVAC maintenance program, cancelling tomorrow. One of my AC units stopped working. We called to get priority service that comes with the membership, they came next day, this was great. The woman that booked it on the phone stated explicitly there would be no charge for them to come out and assess what was wrong. The repairman showed up and checked things out but immediately kept telling me that I had an expensive system and "this would not be cheap". Red flag #1. He went up to check the unit in the attic and within about 2 minutes came down and said the coils were leaking and they needed to be replaced. This took him almost no time at all.. Red flag #2. I told him that the coils had been replaced 2.5 years ago and they were probably under warranty.. he called immediately back to the shop to check. After the call he reported they were not under warranty and "he didnt expect them to be anyways". He came back with a quote for $6300+ to replace the coils and a bunch of other things attached to the big unit in the attic. It was at this time he said that I needed to pay the service fee before he could leave. Red flag #3 and the trust was broken here. I told him that the woman on the phone told me that didnt apply ( I assumed because I was a member of their program). He said no, if he had to "pull any tools out at all during the diagnostic that it did then apply". The only tool he pulled out was a voltage machine to check the power to the condenser, which I already told him I did myself.. so what other tools call for a $100 service fee? This was the exact moment I thought something was up. They would have gotten away with the $6300 charge if it wasnt for this. I reluctantly paid the service fee because I had to get back to work. I knew something was up with this rep so later that day I called another AC repair service to get a second opinion. They came the same day and confirmed it was the coils that failed and were leaking.. BUT they informed that the coils were STILL UNDER WARRANTY like I thought they were. All of the other things the Abacus rep said needed to be replaced was also false, per this company. The new quote from new company.. $1600. New company was Elite Air Conditioning and Plumbing. They came the very next day with the warranty coils, replaced them, cleaned everything in their path and on the way out and were way more trustworthy. They didnt try to upsell me anything like the abacus guy did AND didnt charge a service fee when I accepted their quote. Abacus has lost my trust. Cancelling my membership with them.

Don't use Abacus! I don't know if it's the entire company or just the service technician who is the scam artist, but he tried to scam my 92 yr. old mother out of $1,000 for an unnecessary repair. The handle on her toilet would not pop back up after flushing unless it was manually lifted and if you didn't, the tank wouldn't fill back up and would continuously "run". Abacus' technician said that the apparatus, which I now know was the flush valve and the ballcock were bad and he had no idea where to get the parts, because he couldn't tell who manufacturered the toilet, and they probably didn't even make the parts anymore and etc, etc, etc... and that the toilet needed to be replaced. This sounded strange because the toilet wasn't that old. But he gave my mother an estimate of between $800 and $1,000, depending on whether the toilet had a round seat or an oval shaped seat. He also showed us pictures on his cell phone of what was supposed to be the inside of her toilet tank, and said that there were two large cracks in it. He left to get the toilet, but then called and said that it wouldn't be available for a day or two. When I went into the bathroom, I saw that he had left the top off of the tank. Low and behold! I could see that right there inside the tank, were the model numbers for the two parts and the telephone number of the manufacturer printed in large black letters. Well, well, well. I called the number and it was Ferguson's Plumbing Supply and they actually have a location about 10 minutes away from my mom's home. And guess what? They had the replacement parts in stock! Also, I realized that the picture the technician showed me of the cracks in the tank had a piece of red plastic on the flush valve. The plastic on my mother's is actually blue! I called Abacus and canceled the order. I also asked for a supervisor to call me. That never happened. My mother called Johnny Rooter and the technician replaced the flush valve and ballcock for a total of $230. The toilet didn't need to be replaced and there were no cracks in the tank. Abacus' technician walked into my mother's home and saw two old black women and thought it appropriate to cheat her out a $1,000. People, don't let your elderly parents contact Abacus for ANY type of service.

I regret using ABACUS for the replacement of my HVAC system. We hired ABACUS to replace our HVAC system in March. In April, we started noticing high humidity levels in our home. We've been in our home over 10 years at this point and have never had issues with ventilation and moisture accumulation. In May, we started noticing mold growth in areas of the home where the humidity was the worst. We then had an ABACUS tech come out to see what was causing the high humidity in our home, and he noticed a couple of things. First, a sensor that was no longer used by their techs was causing an error that turned our HVAC off a few times per day. That tech explained that this issue of the HVAC turning off on so often causes humidity build up. Second, the installers replaced the HVAC in my attic but did not install a new duct box. The new HVAC system was smaller than our old one, so the HVAC was blowing air into a larger duct box, that tech explained that this causes a vacuum amd can pull in moist air. The techs came out a 2nd time to make a new duct box that fit the new HVAC. After that, the techs came out and determined that air was not getting out of the ducts and decided a new return air duct was needed so they came out again to cut a hole in my ceiling to make a new return. I inquired about mold remediation since I believed it was caused by poor ventilation from the poor workmanship completed by the HVAC techs. The HVAC manager agreed but was inconsistent and not good with communication. It took about a month for ABACUS to have a mold remediation company come out and assess the damage. ABACUS finally determined that they are not covering damages caused by poor workmanship. We could've continued to repair our old HVAC, but because of the history we have with ABACUS (water heater and water softener) we decided to go with paying $19k thinking that we could rely on ABACUS to ensure their techs would perform well. I'm very disappointed and am trying to ensure everyone thinks twice about choosing ABACUS for HVAC replacement. Now, I'm looking to find a lawyer to see if that's a better route to take with ABACUS. This has been such a headache.

We had very good past experiences with Abacus: they handled an AC install and a electrical rewiring very well. Now we had a smaller job: our shower drain wasn't draining. Right up front: the technicians are excellent and Ruby on the phone service is super friendly. Dispatch? Absolute catastrophe. Managers? Rude, entitled, and worst customer service in years. First technician tried to rout the drain. That didn't work and he immediately dropped all charges. Great! He told us a camera crew would be out later that day, confirmed by dispatch. Nobody showed. That can happen. Called the next day. New technician came out. Didn't use a camera, but cut into drywall and saw no leaking pipes and that pipe was intact. Diagnosed it as a clogged T piece. Somebody to fix the drywall would come out Friday, the guy to rout from the bottom pipe would be out same day. Nobody showed up. Next day, they "guaranteed" a technician would be there by noon. Nobody came. Called. Were told that they didn't have a camera technician. Many apologies later, they left a note that camera wasn't necessary. This repeated FOUR more times. Each time one of us sat at home waiting on a technician who kept getting cancelled because somebody in dispatch was checking the wrong note. Called today. Managers totally unhelpful. One talked over me and hung up - young woman, who clearly needs an attitude adjustment. Next manager couldn't see the appointment from Wednesday and claimed we didn't pay the bill - funny, I had an AmEx receipt. Suddenly she saw it. Maybe her side business is fraud? Then had to call three times to make sure appointment tomorrow would be for routing, not a camera. I'm another failed attempt away to simply declare the paid bill fraudulent as no service was completed and get my money back from AmEx. For a customer who has spent a lot of money with Abacus and is a "VIP" (lol), that's about as bad as it gets. Not sure what happened to them. Maybe new management, new dispatch, but currently everything that could go wrong at HQ is going wrong. Would love to recommend them again some day. Currently I cannot recommend them.

We picked Abacus to help with plumbing, AC and electric after hearing great reviews and seeing how big of a presence they had in Austin. We completely remodeled our house and there were a few areas that needed new electrical work. Abacus recommended we rewire the entire home because it would easier. They ended up spending 5 months troubleshooting. - At least once a week, they wouldn't show up and we had to reach out to reschedule - When they did finally show up, they rarely had the right team or materials and would have to leave to get what they needed - The holes they cut for switches and outlets were sideways and too big, leaving holes around the faceplates that they didn't offer to patch - One employee fell through our ceiling leaving a huge hole -- we decided to patch it ourselves because, at this point, we did not trust that they would do it properly and they were going to charge us for it. - The electrical to our AC and pool pump was working before they rewired the house and stopped working after. They told us it wasn't their fault and we'd have to pay for them to fix it. - After their last day, we realized our entryway switches turned on lights for rooms around the corner and some outlets didn't work. - The new AC ducts started leaking and when someone came out to check it, they told us it was a problem with our roof. I went up into the attic myself and immediately found where the AC was leaking. I came back down to show them a video I took and instead of fixing it, they said they'd send the video to their team and left. They did eventually come back and fix it a few days later. We reached out to customer service multiple times and were told we'd be contacted by management. It's been three months and we've heard nothing. The employees were always very kind and all the plumbing work went smoothly. I do believe they were all trying, they just never seemed to have the right tools, team or information to get the job done and it ended up costing us a lot of extra time and money. Needless to say, we could not count on them and will not be using them in the future.

My first bad review, what a disaster, nothing went well. We chose Abacus because they could start the work soon, and they were reassuring that their above average price was due to their quality of work, with a satisfaction guarantee. A master electrician performed the estimate, but it was obvious that much less experienced electricians performed the work. They were asked to replace 2 can lights with newer LEDs, and 2 ceiling lights, one with exhaust and the other with both exhaust and heater (bathroom). When they started the work, they informed us that the LED lights they brought were too small. The individual who made the initial estimate had not actually measured, and only guessed at the size of the existing can lights. Ok, not that big of a deal, but then the 2 other fixtures installed were not working. The electrician informed us that one was not working, and must be defective. We had to point out that the second one was only partially functioning. They returned and rewired them correctly, as nothing was defective. We then noticed that the tile floor directly under the central light fixture had a quarter size chip in it. The old fixture or maybe a tool had fallen from the ceiling and damaged the tile directly underneath. The tile was patched. A huge mistake we made was agreeing to have them supply the equipment. We assumed that they would provide average fixtures with a mark up for delivery. We are not happy with what was installed, very cheap and poor quality. Their response was that they had told us that they only provide "the most basic" fixtures from home depot. We would have NEVER agreed with using "the most basic" equipment. It turns out the mark up or delivery fee was anything but modest. The heater only blows luke warm air and fails to warm the room. They returned, we got on a ladder, felt the air coming out, but they had the total opposite opinion, "it was working well". That was so totally unbelievable and frustrating, I then understood their character and goals. Never never again.

After a terrible experience with Apex Plumbing ATX not putting us on the schedule for the appt we waited 2 days for and asking if we could wait an additional 4 days for service because they forgot to add us to their schedule. When I said we couldn't wait, they sent someone out that without looking at anything told me that I have a slab leak. Then tells me he's not a plumber he's special forces and he's just out here "doing this", then said I don't seem to have any foundation slippage so maybe it's the main line, then the mainline pipe is broken and filled with roots and he can't get a snake that looked like a home depot special down it, and ended with sorry I can't help you at all and leaving what he called a snake behind. Thank goodness for Abacus and Reese Amaro for coming to the rescue this morning and getting us functional! Reese was polite and professional and told us he would not leave until we could function. Within 15 minutes Reese had the line clear enough for us to be able to use water until we can get a camera down there and see what the issue is. Then, he tested by having us turn on every water source in the house, and then flush paper and we clogged again. He snaked twice more and we are good until they can get back with a camera. Now, this is far above and beyond what I would have expected to hear, Reese told us if we clog again to call him and he will come right out and take care of us again. Mind you this on a $50 special for a main line clearance and INCLUDES the camera they're going to run into the pipe to determine the real cause, which they think is the neighbor's oak tree's root. Run far and fast from Apex Plumbing if you're in the Austin area and call Abacus. I can't say enough nice things about their service, or Reese's kindness and professionalism. I'd give them 10 stars if I could!!! The photos speak for themselves, and Abacus is a business that will take proper care of you.

Extremely poor customer service. Abacus originally came out to do what they considered a 1 day electrical job. The job ended up taking longer than they expected b/c one of the electrician had only been on the job for 2 weeks. (At least this is what they told us.) Anyway they said they would be out the following day to finish up the job. Waited around the house the entire day the next day and they were total no shows. Finally called them directly early that afternoon only to find out they were not coming in as they had other scheduled jobs that day that they needed to see to. They then told us they could not come out the next day either b/c they had those scheduled jobs that they need to do. However, they would be there Friday morning to finish the job. Waited until 9:30 a.m. on Friday and still received no call (even though the night before we received a text message that they would be coming) so I called them. The dispatch lady said they were NOT coming now. Also, she mentioned that she had tried to call me. We received no missed calls on any of our phones btw. Her excuse was that some technicians had called in that they would not be working on Friday. She then said but you aren't the only client who had to be rescheduled. Evidently they had to reschedule their Friday clients. Well, I am a Tuesday client technically. I should have received priority based on how long I have been waiting. Back in Dec. of 2023 I was on a river cruise with the guy that started Abacus in Houston but no longer owns the company. He does consult with Abacus in Austin he said. He basically said such good things about the company that is why I decided in the first place to even use them. Well, this company is no better than any other company out there. Very frustrating. Beware when booking.

2 stars because they at least gave me a good deal on a good unit, and the AC and furnace unit was installed correctly but the ductwork installed is poorly done and needs replacement after less than 3 years. They did promptly came back to fix a mistake (installed a return as a supply), which is good service if poor craftsmanship. Abacus installed a new unit and ductwork the day before Thanksgiving 2.5 years ago and I think they really rushed the installation job of the ductwork, and also did not replace all the ducts that they had agreed to. The agreement was to replace all the ductwork that was reachable in the attic, and leave the ductwork in the walls. They missed or neglected to change 2 ducts and one of them is now the source of some water damage due to condensation in the insulation. The installation of ductwork is a total mess. So many separate connections into a too small airbox, with the ductwork just jammed through rafters and piled on top of each other on the ground. It's no surprise that 2 ducts are now full of water in the insulation and need to be replaced. I want to give them the benefit of the doubt that this installation was done badly because it was the day before a holiday, but I still wouldn't recommend this company for duct work. They did fine work on the unit itself but I really wish I hadn't paid them extra to replace ducts, they only made the problems worse in the long run. Update: They reached out, wanting to have someone come take a look so they could decide what to do. I took the morning off work, a tech came and took some photos, and he left saying his boss would decide and reach out. They never did, so I suppose that means they feel no responsibility to fix their work.

Here's my experience: A couple of months ago I called Abacus Electric and was given an appointment a few days away. I was given a four hour window. The day of my appointment I waited until my appointment window had passed. So I called for an update. Somehow, Abacus lost my appointment and did not have it scheduled. After being on hold and given the runaround, they were able to get a technician out since it was their mistake. I was impressed with this so I had them do a home inspection of my electrical system the following day. I bought a 20 thousand dollar upgrade to my electrical system. A couple of months later, I needed warranty work done. I called and made an appointment. I mentioned that I wanted the same technician to perform the warranty work when I made the appointment (Cody LaRue). I even called him by name during the request. They told me it would be a couple of days before he could make it out. The morning of my appointment, I called the Houston number and spoke to a manager that confirmed my appointment and that my technician that I requested would be there at the appointment time. They said he would be at my residence between 12-4. At 4:30, I called and was told that my technician was in League City on another job and that I needed to reschedule for tomorrow. Keep in mind, I had to call them after the appointment time had passed. No phone call from them. That's twice they've screwed up my appointment's. I wish I had not spent the money I did with your company because of your customer service and not keeping appointments.