Dive Brief:
- The seven major U.S. HVAC manufacturers are facing a second lawsuit alleging they conspired to raise their products’ prices and keep them high after the pandemic.
- “Beginning no later than January 1, 2020, Defendants entered into an agreement to fix, raise, and stabilize the prices of HVAC Equipment sold in the United States,” a lawsuit filed in Michigan federal court last month states. “The conspiracy generated unprecedented profit margins for Defendants.”
- Richard Isom, owner of HVAC contracting company Air Tech Services in Manatee County, Florida, brought the lawsuit, which seeks class action status on behalf of others who operate as middlemen between the manufacturers and end users of the systems. “As a result of Defendants’ conspiracy, Plaintiff paid artificially inflated prices for the equipment needed to operate his business,” the lawsuit says.
Dive Insight:
The seven companies — Bosch, Carrier, Trane, Daikin, Lennox, Rheem and AAON — face similar price-fixing accusations from a consumer who sued them in March. That lawsuit, filed in the same court, also seeks class status.
“We deny the baseless allegations in this lawsuit and will fight it vigorously,” Carrier told Facilities Dive in an email. “Carrier embraces competition and operates lawfully and with integrity.”
Another manufacturer contacted didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment, but in an email to Facilities Dive in March, Trane denied the earlier accusation. “We strongly dispute the allegations made in this lawsuit and intend to vigorously defend ourselves against these baseless claims,” it said last month in an email. “Trane remains committed to operating with integrity, complying with applicable laws and regulations, and providing value to our customers through our sustainable, reliable solutions.”
Both lawsuits allege that the manufacturers — which, together with their subsidiaries, control 90% of the U.S. HVAC market — launched a series of price increases that, over six years, has made commercial and residential systems 8% more costly than they would have been in a competitive market.
“That overcharge represents billions of dollars extracted from direct purchasers,” the Isom lawsuit says.
Like the earlier lawsuit, Isom alleges that company executives signaled to one another their pricing intentions in public statements, remarks at industry meetings and in articles published by ACHR News, an industry trade publication.
“Defendants used [ACHR News] to announce price increases to the market,” the lawsuit says. “Those announcements followed a distinct and revealing pattern. Defendants used ACHR News not merely to announce price increases but to communicate with each other. The pattern was consistent throughout the Class Period: a Defendant would publish the precise percentage of an upcoming price increase, the specific product lines affected, and the exact effective date, typically weeks before implementation.”
Company executives also shared information through a data exchange operated by the Air-Conditioning, Heating, and Refrigeration Institute, a trade organization whose leadership consists primarily of representatives from the manufacturers.
“AHRI operated a give-to-get data exchange,” the lawsuit says. “To receive competitive intelligence about the industry, a manufacturer had to hand over its own non-public, confidential, and proprietary information.”
The manufacturers raised prices or kept prices steady in concert with one another in 40 instances, the lawsuit says.
“That pattern — repeated, specific, advance disclosure met with consistent follow-on rather than competitive exploitation — is not how rivals behave in a competitive market,” the lawsuit says. “It is how co-conspirators confirm adherence to an agreement.”
The lawsuit quotes remarks by Lennox CFO Michael Quenzer at a July 2025 conference that, it says, illustrate the way the companies monitored each other’s pricing strategies.
“The next [pricing] level will be early next year when we all come out and announce our next full round of price increases,” the lawsuit quotes Quenzer as saying. “For the balance of the year, I think we’re pretty well set from a price perspective. Next year, we’ll do our annual price increase, and just like we always do, we expect similar results by others.”
