Optima vs Cool Control

Summary

With around 15 years’ experience Cool Control are a cost-effective smaller sized business operation that installs, repairs and services most types of heating and cooling solutions, using leading air conditioning brands and quality workmanship. Being a smaller company Cool Control’s director performs both installations and customer service duties. This means customers can speak with a knowledgeable team member from the outset and generally lets them have a consistency of service. Cool Control are confident in their workmanship, offering a lifetime gurantee on it.

Optima have twice as many years of experience compared to Cool Control and currently provide the best value for customers. They offer a large range of products and services, competitive prices, as well as knowledge and experience.

Price

Our review team found that both Optima and Cool Control offer great and comparative prices on the products and services they provide. Cool Control’s pricing on installation is generally on average with standard market price, but is still reasonable and affordable, whereas Optima can sometimes be cheaper than the market average. They were both close in terms of pricing with Optima scoring 5 out of 5 to Cool Control’s 4 out of 5.

However, when looking at Cool Control’s pricing, it’s important to note the brands the company prefer are leading brands of a high quality.

Neither Cool Control nor Optima offer price matching nor do they have a formal financing option. Cool Control staff believes that their competitors’ cheaper quotes may indicate poorer quality of labour or service, which is not equal to their standards. They also require customer accounts to be finalised before work commences. Cool Control can, however, offer volume discounts and advise customers of manufacturer promotions to reduce costs.
While Cool Control does not have the most flexible pricing options, their focus appears to be on installation and unit pricing offering the best pricing available from outset. This is something they have in common with Optima, who prefer to give realistic and competitive quotes from the beginning, to avoid “hidden” costs.

As part of our Cool Control review, the cost effectiveness of the company was investigated, and then compared with our top 5 Melbourne based air conditioning companies. Cool Control was found to have affordable and reasonable pricing which is reflected in their high score for cost effectiveness.

Optima are considered to be the most cost-effective Melbourne installation company overall, offering fair prices without needing to price-match or rely on seasonal discounts.

Customer Service

In our review Cool Control was awarded with a solid, average level of customer service with a score of 3 out of 5. Despite this the Cool Control team were found to be helpful, knowledgeable and easy to understand. They were also clear and genuine in their responses, even on initial inquiry phone calls. Their staff displayed great technical understanding of the air conditioning industry as well as being very confident in their answers.

Unfortunately Cool Control rated lower than our top 5 Melbourne-based air conditioning installation companies in both the phone and email categories of customer service. By phone they received 6.5 out of 10 for their customer service delivery and another 6.5 out of 10 for their response to customer inquiries by email. While this isn’t the lowest score, comparatively Optima were ranked very highly when it comes to customer service. Via phone Optima ranked an impressive 8 out of 10 and scored an even more impressive 9 out of 10 for customer service by email.

The difference in these scores seems to come down to response times. Cool Control’s staff was staff easy to deal with, knowledgeable, polite and professional. They were clearly competent, with their lifetime workmanship guarantee reflecting their own knowledge and skills. While our Cool Control review found the Melbourne-based company had a fast response time to initial customer inquiries they had a lower than average response score of about 2 days when emailing a prepared quote. Optima’s response time was matter of hours. These differences may due to the company size as Cool Control has a much smaller business structure and numerous business roles and duties are thereby undertaken by one or two people.

Both companies were praised in online reviews via Google and other platforms and aspire to assist their customers as much as possible

Expertise

Optima are an experienced air conditioning installation company in Melbourne who have been operating for 30 years. Cool Control are a newer air conditioning installation company with about 15 years behind them. Both companies come across as confident and knowledgeable about their industry.

Each can install air conditioners for all different types of buildings, including commercial, residential and apartments. Optima, however, may decide not to install air con in an apartment building if a building already has a relationship with another company, if they are already familiar with the requirements of a particular building.

Cool Control offer the standard 5 year warranty on installation while Optima offer 6 years. However, Cool Control stands by their workmanship, offering an impressive lifetime guarantee on it. They also offer a 24 hour emergency breakdown repair service.

Both companies also have the ARC tick of approval. With Optima scoring 4.5 out of 5 overall and Cool Control a point lower at 3.5 out of 5, both companies offer good service and pricing with Cool Control taking things a step further with their lifetime workmanship gurantee and 24 hour breakdown service.