From: Chris Pierre <chrispierre1969@gmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, 25 March 2025 7:36 pm
To: Info <info@heatforce.co.nz>
Subject: Disappointed

Today at 374 Keyes road, New Brighton We had one of your service technicians call out to assess our heat pump unit.
I’m in a trade myself in a maintenance and new install role and have taught many apprentices over the years so am familiar with troubleshooting.
I was first alerted to a red flag of you technician requiring my partner to call me to explain how to access the more expansive fault menu on the daiken remote (a product your company services and sells according to the website)
This is basic information available online as well as resetting the unit ( was done several times prior to his arrival)and when to employ a technician
After consulting his phone multiple times , coming inside to ask for fly spray because of mosquitoes and calling several times to other people he said might be a fault with the board , then rings daiken who tell him to check fuses on board …. Surely he should know that ???

My concern is his complete lack of basic knowledge regarding heat pump maintenance and why should we be charged for this
Your google reviews ( why we called your company in the first place) are very positive so what went wrong , is the technician new or undertrained in this field, if so should still be supervised until is competent.

Our son in law has a business installing heat pumps in Gold Coast Australia so he informed us of the basic troubleshooting process and this was not followed.

Looking forward to your response in this matter

Regards Chris Pierre

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

From: Hamish Martin
Sent: Wednesday, 26 March 2025 11:03 am
To: Chris Pierre <chrispierre1969@gmail.com>
Subject: RE: Disappointed

Hi Chris

Thanks for taking the time to email us with your thoughts on what occurred at your heat pump breakdown job yesterday and I can assure you that the technician who attended this job is suitably experienced, qualified, and competent.
He is a trade qualified Refrigeration Mechanic having completed his Trade Certificate over a decade ago. He is also qualified as an Electrical Service Technician, and has been so for nearly 7 years, and is registered accordingly with the EWRB and has a Limited Electrical License which is a requirement for working on and repairing electrical appliances.
We also undertake ongoing internal training and utilise supplier-based training whenever this is made available and this technician has attended specific training for Field Service Technician, fault finding, and diagnostic work for a comprehensive range of major heat pump brands, including Daikin.

I have discussed what occurred yesterday and the breakdown of this is as follows:
When the job was raised it was noted the system had a recorded a U7 fault, so the technician was aware of this note prior to attending the job.
He has subsequently utilised the fault retrieval function on the remote controller to try and retrieve and confirm that a U7 fault had been recorded.
Using the standard fault code retrieval function by holding down the ‘cancel’ button and then scrolling through the full range of codes he did not get confirmation that any specific fault code had been recorded.
The remote controller would typically give a long beep at the ‘00’ code when there are no faults recorded but there was no long beep for the ‘00’ code which would typically indicate a fault has been recorded. However, as no fault code could be retrieved at this point there was a conflict for the normal fault code retrieval process.
The technician was aware that there is an option on the remote to retrieve historical fault codes, but this is very rarely required and not something that he has needed to do with any frequency previously and therefore he simply didn’t recall the exact process on how to access the historical fault code record. He has noted to me that he has only needed to access this particular fault retrieval method once before in his entire career and he has attended literally thousands of other Daikin breakdowns previously so I am sure that you can appreciate that based on this history that it is not common practice to have any need to utilise the historical fault code retrieval option from the remote controller.
However – I do take your point that this is potentially something useful to know but given the very rare requirement to use this option it is not something that we would expect our technicians to commit to memory.
As he was not able to get a fault code with the standard method, and he was aware that there was another option to get additional information from the remote controller, he has simply asked your partner how the U7 fault was identified. This was done to get some further background and try to expedite the diagnostics.
You have also noted that you had previously re-set the heat pump several times prior to our technician coming out and this has the effect of clearing any fault codes from the system’s active faults record, but the previous fault was still held in the longer-term fault record. The longer-term fault record can contain several different fault codes from previous minor issues which you may never have even noticed and there is no way to determine if a fault recorded here is a current fault, or something that occurred last week, last month, or even last year. Therefore, the long-term fault record only gives some history for the system but doesn’t confirm if any faults are recent or currently active. The primary fault record which he has accessed in the first instance is a much better indicator of any current faults with the system and this is why the long-term fault record isn’t typically referred to as it can be misleading due to other older / irrelevant faults being recorded here which can lead a technician down the wrong path for diagnostic work.
Based on there being U7 fault being recorded and this being the only lead for the problems with the heat pump our technician has then followed the procedures for diagnosing this particular fault.
This requires some consultation to the service manual as there are various flow charts and check procedures that need to be followed in a particular sequence to confirm / disprove any diagnosis and our technicians have access to a variety of digital resources via their mobile devices to do this, so it is not surprising to hear that he has spent some time on his phone as part of the process to obtain more information.
For the U7 fault there is only limited detail on the possible origin of this fault and the information available in the service manual points to a possible issue with the outdoor unit printed circuit board (PCB).
With this information he has then conducted a range of tests on the PCB for typical and common faults with this component, but these tests have not shown any fault.
He has also conducted some additional tests on other components for other common issues to ensure that something else in the system was not producing a rouge fault. Again, these tests have not shown a fault.
As he’s not been able to determine any component fault with the testing required by the service manual plus the additional testing work that he as proactively completed, he has then called Daikin Technical Support to see if Daikin can recommend any further additional testing procedures that are not in the service manual or had not been completed already as part of his additional testing process.
Daikin Technical Support have also acknowledged that this particular fault for this model is very unusual and they have subsequently advised to do some further testing on other components and also check the fuses.
Of course, checking the fuses sounds like an obvious check to do but if any fuse was blown then there would be a very clear and obvious issue with the system, and this was not the case. Checking the fuses is therefore not part of the standard test procedures and is not mentioned in the service manual as such. The checking of the fuses was done purely as a confirmation that nothing unexpected was present with the fuses, and this turned out the be the case.

Based on all the testing work that was done and the difficulty of getting a confirmed diagnosis for the U7 fault Daikin Technical Support have subsequently recommended that the PCB should be replaced as the first step in resolving this.
Unfortunately, despite our best efforts and the support of Daikin, a conclusive diagnosis for the fault has not been able to be reached, and this can be due to a number of reasons such as an intermittent component fault on the PCB, a component that is failing but still working in some circumstances, or even a microscopic crack in the circuitry of the PCB itself. It is impractical to test every single component on a PCB and identifying a microscopic crack in the circuit board requires specialised equipment and this is simply not viable for consumer electronics such as this.

I hope this helps understand the difficulties that were encountered here despite some very thorough checks and tests being conducted, along with technical support from the manufacturer of the hardware who was also unable to identify the root cause of the fault for their own product.
The statement that the technician has a ‘complete lack of basic knowledge’ is factually incorrect and our standard charges will of course apply for this call out.
I’m not trying to be difficult or confrontational here, and this is simply a matter of fact.

As you have also noted, our Google reviews are very positive, and this is due to the skill of our technicians and installers, and our passion for customer service. The technician from your job has received many positive reviews from other customers, so I am confident that he has done everything by the book here.
I cannot comment on what troubleshooting processes your son in law has suggested for this but as he was not on tools at the machine on the day it is not possible for him to know what issues our technician encountered, and given the same circumstances your son in law would most likely have ended up doing the same work and coming to the same conclusion as our technician. The fact that Daikin have acknowledged that this was a very unusual fault also shows that the standard test procedures and troubleshooting techniques really don’t have any bearing here and no credence can be given to this comment made from someone without direct knowledge of the actual issues on the day.

As for him asking for some fly spray – he advises that while he was working on the heat pump he was getting bitten by multiple mosquitoes and I note that your address is quite close to the Avon River, so it is not surprising that mosquitoes were present outside on the day. I don’t think that it is unreasonable for a technician to ask the householder for something to reduce insect attack if the property has some likelihood of mosquitos being present.
This does however raise an interesting point from a Health and Safety perspective and providing our staff with insect repellent is certainly something we will consider, and this will be tabled at our next Toolbox meeting.

I hope this all helps clarify what occurred yesterday and why things ended up going the way they did.
As I stated initially, the technician who attended this job is suitably trained, qualified, and experienced and he has done everything in his power to get a confirmed fault diagnosis here. Unfortunately, due to the vagaries and complexity of modern electronics it is not always possible to get a conclusive diagnosis for all faults and while this is rare it does happen from time to time for breakdown jobs we attend, but this is not a reflection of the skill or knowledge of our technicians.

I am happy to discuss this further with you directly if need be.

Sincerely,

Hamish Martin
Managing Director
Heat Force Ltd
Mb 027 432 8005
www.heatforce.co.nz