"And Why Does Yours Cost So Much Less?"
Late last Thursday afternoon I got a phone call from a Newcastle resident. Kelly J. was calling some local HVAC contractors, frantically checking on the price to replace a failed combustion blower assembly. She was in a hurry, she told me, because there was a technician attempting to disassemble her furnace as we spoke. He had quoted her $826.00 to do the job. She didn’t hesitate to tell me that if she could find a price that she deemed more reasonable, she would stop the tech, pay him for his time, and send him away. Once I gave her my price (approximately four hundred bucks less than she was quoted by the gentleman currently disemboweling her furnace), she questioned me for throwing out such a lowball figure, telling me that other Auburn-area heating companies were nearly two hundred bucks more than my price. “Well,” I said. “I don’t think that I’ve left anything out from my phone estimate. Knowing that unit like I do, I’m familiar with the cost of the assembly, and putting it in is a walk in the park, so yeah. That’s the cost.”
Kelly let me know she’d be calling me back later… after dispatching the tech currently tearing that furnace apart in her back yard.
So I go out to her house next morning to have a look-see. After meeting my new customer, I grabbed my tool bag and proceeded to verify the assessment made yesterday by a LARGE Sacramento-area HVAC service company whose name is just like my own company name, only BIGger. You may have heard their radio spots on a few of the AM stations within range of Auburn and Newcastle.
After unzipping the controls area and by-passing the thermostat to ask the unit for some heat, I observed the same failure that the other tech had seen yesterday. But through my eyes, I couldn’t be convinced to make the same diagnosis. So I continued to test, and trace circuits, and dig a little deeper.
Finally I found the culprit after going back to the schematic several times, because these symptoms simply didn’t jive with this unit’s failure history. And it made complete sense to me once I found it. Quite simply, some preventive maintenance to the AIR CONDITIONER was entirely responsible for the failure of the HEATER. Well… not entirely responsible.
It turns out that the same BIG company with the name like Mountain Air that was toying with the unit yesterday had been here to Kelly’s house in early June to do some A/C tune up work. Not un-typically, the maintenance technician suggested to Miss Kelly that her air conditioner was at risk of failure due to a worn, pitted contactor. “I should replace that while I’m here before it fails and possibly ruins your expensive air conditioner!” is what I was trained to tell my customers back in the day. Next, a “Would you like me to show you the problem, or should I just go ahead and make it right?” was what I was next trained to ask, because allowing the customer to make that choice would give the control back to them. Selling contactors and other doo-dads is a good way for a commission-paid tech to earn a bigger paycheck, whether or not the equipment might benefit from those parts commensurate with their installed costs.
Now bear in mind that we technicians with a conscience don’t employ those tactics on our customers. And in his defense, that contactor in Kelly’s air conditioner may have genuinely needed to be replaced by the technician, so don’t get me wrong… I’m just sayin’. Nevertheless, the NEW contactor put in by that technician in June was the WRONG ONE. He put in a two-pole contactor instead of the manufacturer’s required one-pole contactor, and that’s exactly the reason for the furnace’s inability to function normally.
Okay. A simple mistake in itself, right? Just put in the one-pole contactor and be done with it. But the issue is this: That tech was in the process of putting in $826.00 worth of unnecessary repairs. When the old combustion assembly was trashed in the removal process, and the new one was in and the heater STILL not operable… do you think the tech would come clean with Kelly? Or, more likely, would he do some quiet cussing for a few minutes, scratch his head, perform another battery of tests and digging and circuit-tracing, and then quietly retrieve a fifteen-dollar one-pole contactor from his truck and go put it into Kelly’s unit?
Yeah… that’s what I think, too. Because that tech doesn’t want to eat the cost of the combustion assembly. And Kelly’s already agreed to pay the eight hundred bucks to get her heater operating again anyway, right?
There used to be an HVAC wholesaler down in Sac where, while being served at the counter, I once witnessed techs boasting during the trade of their horror stories similar to this situation. Licensed contractors and/or their employees. Raised my eyebrows. So my jaundiced view of the integrity of some peers is not without warrant.
I fetched Kelly and brought her to the back yard to show her what I found. Understandbly she was pissed. I offered to perform the minor repair, but yesterday’s tech had already done some damage to the combustion blower wheel’s balance, so the nasty little vibration now present would sooner or later ruin the motor bearings. I suggested that Kelly talk to the owner of the BIG company, and using my written diagnosis, request that everything be brought back to proper function and reliability on THEIR dime. After all… them’s that’s responsible, right?
I collected my $85.00 service fee for the trip charge and diagnosis, leaving Kelly to fight for her rights as a consumer using the ammunition that I left her. She was happy to write the check to me, and promised that in the future, she’ll call me at the little Mountain Air Heating & Cooling before anyone else. And that’s all I can hope for.
Late last Thursday afternoon I got a phone call from a Newcastle resident. Kelly J. was calling some local HVAC contractors, frantically checking on the price to replace a failed combustion blower assembly. She was in a hurry, she told me, because there was a technician attempting to disassemble her furnace as we spoke. He had quoted her $826.00 to do the job. She didn’t hesitate to tell me that if she could find a price that she deemed more reasonable, she would stop the tech, pay him for his time, and send him away. Once I gave her my price (approximately four hundred bucks less than she was quoted by the gentleman currently disemboweling her furnace), she questioned me for throwing out such a lowball figure, telling me that other Auburn-area heating companies were nearly two hundred bucks more than my price. “Well,” I said. “I don’t think that I’ve left anything out from my phone estimate. Knowing that unit like I do, I’m familiar with the cost of the assembly, and putting it in is a walk in the park, so yeah. That’s the cost.”
Kelly let me know she’d be calling me back later… after dispatching the tech currently tearing that furnace apart in her back yard.
So I go out to her house next morning to have a look-see. After meeting my new customer, I grabbed my tool bag and proceeded to verify the assessment made yesterday by a LARGE Sacramento-area HVAC service company whose name is just like my own company name, only BIGger. You may have heard their radio spots on a few of the AM stations within range of Auburn and Newcastle.
After unzipping the controls area and by-passing the thermostat to ask the unit for some heat, I observed the same failure that the other tech had seen yesterday. But through my eyes, I couldn’t be convinced to make the same diagnosis. So I continued to test, and trace circuits, and dig a little deeper.
Finally I found the culprit after going back to the schematic several times, because these symptoms simply didn’t jive with this unit’s failure history. And it made complete sense to me once I found it. Quite simply, some preventive maintenance to the AIR CONDITIONER was entirely responsible for the failure of the HEATER. Well… not entirely responsible.
It turns out that the same BIG company with the name like Mountain Air that was toying with the unit yesterday had been here to Kelly’s house in early June to do some A/C tune up work. Not un-typically, the maintenance technician suggested to Miss Kelly that her air conditioner was at risk of failure due to a worn, pitted contactor. “I should replace that while I’m here before it fails and possibly ruins your expensive air conditioner!” is what I was trained to tell my customers back in the day. Next, a “Would you like me to show you the problem, or should I just go ahead and make it right?” was what I was next trained to ask, because allowing the customer to make that choice would give the control back to them. Selling contactors and other doo-dads is a good way for a commission-paid tech to earn a bigger paycheck, whether or not the equipment might benefit from those parts commensurate with their installed costs.
Now bear in mind that we technicians with a conscience don’t employ those tactics on our customers. And in his defense, that contactor in Kelly’s air conditioner may have genuinely needed to be replaced by the technician, so don’t get me wrong… I’m just sayin’. Nevertheless, the NEW contactor put in by that technician in June was the WRONG ONE. He put in a two-pole contactor instead of the manufacturer’s required one-pole contactor, and that’s exactly the reason for the furnace’s inability to function normally.
Okay. A simple mistake in itself, right? Just put in the one-pole contactor and be done with it. But the issue is this: That tech was in the process of putting in $826.00 worth of unnecessary repairs. When the old combustion assembly was trashed in the removal process, and the new one was in and the heater STILL not operable… do you think the tech would come clean with Kelly? Or, more likely, would he do some quiet cussing for a few minutes, scratch his head, perform another battery of tests and digging and circuit-tracing, and then quietly retrieve a fifteen-dollar one-pole contactor from his truck and go put it into Kelly’s unit?
Yeah… that’s what I think, too. Because that tech doesn’t want to eat the cost of the combustion assembly. And Kelly’s already agreed to pay the eight hundred bucks to get her heater operating again anyway, right?
There used to be an HVAC wholesaler down in Sac where, while being served at the counter, I once witnessed techs boasting during the trade of their horror stories similar to this situation. Licensed contractors and/or their employees. Raised my eyebrows. So my jaundiced view of the integrity of some peers is not without warrant.
I fetched Kelly and brought her to the back yard to show her what I found. Understandbly she was pissed. I offered to perform the minor repair, but yesterday’s tech had already done some damage to the combustion blower wheel’s balance, so the nasty little vibration now present would sooner or later ruin the motor bearings. I suggested that Kelly talk to the owner of the BIG company, and using my written diagnosis, request that everything be brought back to proper function and reliability on THEIR dime. After all… them’s that’s responsible, right?
I collected my $85.00 service fee for the trip charge and diagnosis, leaving Kelly to fight for her rights as a consumer using the ammunition that I left her. She was happy to write the check to me, and promised that in the future, she’ll call me at the little Mountain Air Heating & Cooling before anyone else. And that’s all I can hope for.