Joyce Mathews moved to South Florida to take care of sick father.
“He wanted to remain in this home that he built in 1999,” she told us.
Mathews moved her father's Pompano Beach home to care for him. He required a lot of medical equipment and she wanted to get a generator as backup power for the equipment.
“Without the generator, he faced the possibility that as he got sicker, I would need to have him moved into a nursing home,” Mathews said.
In March, she signed a contract with Assurance Power Systems to install a generator. She paid a $3,300 deposit understanding it would be fully refunded minus permit fees paid by the company if she canceled. She and the company agreed work could begin in August.
“My father at this point and time had turned 94 years old, and he wasn’t getting better. He was getting worse,” Mathews said.
Before the generator could be installed, her father passed away.
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At the end of August, Mathews sent a letter to Assurance Power Systems asking for a refund.
“They sent me a refund check but it wasn’t a full refund of our deposit,” she said.
She says the company told her that permit fees that had been paid to Pompano Beach were subtracted from her deposit. That’s when she took the extra step to call the city to verify the permits had been paid.
“Emailed me documentation indicating the only fee incurred and paid by this company was $150 dollars,” Mathews told us.
Subtracting that amount, Mathews believed the company still owed her $617. After months of calling the company, with no word on if she would receive the rest of her money, she called NBC 6 Responds.
“At a time that was very difficult for me to be going through, I shouldn’t have been having to deal with this type of frustration,” said Mathews.
We emailed Assurance Power Systems and within a week Mathews received a check in the mail.
A representative with Assurance Power Systems told us in a statement:
“Assurance Power Systems is sorry for any confusion on this matter. Our cancellation policy is clear that we refund deposits on projects less any permit fee’s plus a $250 cancellation fee. In this case we actually waived the cancellation fee as well. The refund was calculated based on the posted permit fees from the building department. I’m glad we were able to get these waived for Joyce and that we will be able to refund the difference."
