[kwlug-disc] (off topic) Water heater recommendation

[Doug Moen]

Reliance is an evil sleazeball company.

My water softener (that we owned) broke down, so I tried to get quotes from a few companies for a replacement. One of the numbers I called was Reliance. I was told I can't talk about to anybody about water softeners on the phone, they had to send a saleman to my house. Ok fine. The sales guy was a total manipulative sleazeball. Although Reliance does sell water softeners (according to their web site), he refused to talk about a sale, other than to warn me against it, using various lies to back up his story. His goal was to sell me the most expensive monthly rental available from the company. We have 2 people in the house. There was a model sized for a 4 person family, he insisted that this was too small, and that I needed the 6 person model.

I did not sign a contract during the visit. Told him I'd think about it and got him out of the house. I looked up their BBB record, and found a massive number of complaints against them. The web site showed 20 complaints for the last week, but that was just a subset, as the web site was filtering most of the complaints out due to volume. I checked cbc.ca and found multiple investigative reports against Reliance based on malpractice. The contract you sign gives them the right to take out a lien on your house if you don't pay them whatever they decide you owe, and the CBC investigations involved Reliance attempting to extract money that wasn't owed to them long after a contract had terminated. I'd be concerned about the process of getting out of one of their contracts.

Doug.

On Mon, Mar 2, 2026, at 6:22 PM, Chris Frey wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 02, 2026 at 05:01:25PM +0000, CrankyOldBugger wrote:
>> I agree with your last line in particular:  Don't rent water heaters.
>> Reliance Electric, in particular, is a horrible company to deal with.
>
> I've heard rumours of this from others, and I'm curious.  What was
> your experience?
>
> I've been a Reliance Home Comfort customer for about 20 years
> and every interaction with them (about 3 tanks replaced by now I
> think) has been nothing short of stellar.
>
> - Chris
>
>
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