HAMPTON , Va. - A local man wants a big business to pay up.
Jonathan Chapman is blaming Dominion Energy for his air conditioning unit blowing its fuse, but Dominion says that’s not possible.
Chapman’s air conditioner is back up and running today.
However, about two weeks ago he said it shut off.
“I decided I would come out, check the unit itself and see if everything was okay with it when I noticed, as it’s doing right now, it wasn’t spinning,” Chapman told News 3’s Brian Hill.
He said earlier in the day, Dominion Energy was at his Hampton home to change a defective meter.
According to him, during the repair job, the worker blew his central air unit.
“Right when that guy came out to perform the work - from the second on, it was no longer working,” he said.
But Dominion said their worker was not negligent.
“It has never affected an electrical appliance,” Dominion spokeswoman Bonita Billingsley Harris said.
Dominion told us they’ve looked into the homeowner’s claim and there’s no way their worker damaged it.
“That little surge of energy it took to turn it back on may have been what caused it to blow. This air conditioning unit may have already been at end of its life. There are a number of things that could have caused it to break,” Billingsley Harris said.
Chapman said a repairman fixed the air conditioning and agreed with him.
“He came out, did a complete system check, found the problem - which was the fuse was blown - and repaired it and did another system check and came back and told us it was the result of the way it was repaired. The way the power was shut off and on,” Chapman explained.
We reached out to the company but haven’t heard back.
The damage set Chapman and his family back more than $200.
“I’ve been disabled for nearly two years now, so we actually had to borrow money from a family friend just to get the repair bill paid,” he told us.
Dominion Energy said Chapman took the right steps, but whenever they deny a claim you should either hire a repairman or file the issue with your insurance.
Chapman told us if Dominion doesn’t pay up, he will just move on from the situation because going to court would be too expensive.
