Bad experience with L.V. Benoit.
I called L.V. in September 2008 to see about getting a lake pump installed at my property on Lake Austin. He came out and gave me a price and I asked him to do the work. But it took 2 more calls to
get him out to do the work, since he then said he was retiring from the business so he would send out his son.
Another week past and finally the son came out and installed a pump but it broke only 13 days later and I had to call him out again. He told me that the capacitors had blown, probably from lightning, and it would be $345 additional. I told him there had not been a drop of rain or lightning in 3 weeks. Anyway, I paid him to do the work and it weas fixed (temporarily).
In another 4 to 5 weeks the pump stopped working again. Again, I contacted him, the son came out and checked it out. This time he said the electrical wiring was damaged somehow as the meter he was using was giving a bad reading. I said that it must be under warrantee. He said it cost extra to get a warrantee from the beginning
At that point I knew something fishy was going on so I spoke to a couple of my neighbors who said that Benoit was famous for swindling people - - - especially on call backs for service and repairs. My neighbor on the East side of me said he even installed a used pump in his system but told him it was brand new (he discovered this later when he removed the pump himself and took it directly to the dealer and they investigated the serial no.)
Well, I learned the hard way and now I have paid almost double to get a working pump in the lake since now I am using a company I found on the internet, austin lake pumps or something similar.
I'd say you better beware of Benoit.…
AVOID LV BENOIT AND LAKE HILLS PUMP AT ALL COSTS.
My company purchased several pumps from LV Benoit of Lake Hills Pump over a short period of time. They eventually got around to installing the pumps (our expectations for service were not very high
and he met them).
Our first major negative incident with Mr. Benoit happened when we received our final bill. An additional, second installation charge (above and beyond the actual installation charge) was on our invoice that had not been on the signed bid proposal. Mr. Benoit said that if we did not pay the extra fee then we would be the ?last to receive service if anything went wrong.? I did not appreciate this heavy-handed approach, but paid the extra ?extortion? fee anyway within a week of receiving the bill. Having paid the extra fee, I expected that we would get decent service when we had a problem. What actually happened is that LV Benoit said that he needed to charge us $120/hour for travel time in Austin and then he would bill us for both his time and his son?s time even if it was a minor issue that required only one person?s time. I told LV over the phone what seemed wrong with the pump and he insisted that he needed to come out and ?repair? it. He would not help us otherwise. Fortunately, after this conversation we were able to look up the owner?s manual for the pump on the Internet and quickly determined from the troubleshooting guide in the manual that the pump had simply lost prime. The fix took me 3 minutes. My grandmother could have done it. Mr. Benoit knew exactly what was wrong with the pump when we talked, but he wanted to take advantage of the situation. He also told us that ?during busy times, I can change my prices to whatever I want and pick and choose jobs.? While we do not doubt this, this is not the way to treat customers that purchased (a lot of) equipment from you. LV Benoit is only looking out for himself and his son. DO NOT PURCHASE ANYTHING FROM LAKE HILLS PUMP. MR. BENOIT IS NOT A GOOD GUY.…
