Posts by Editor

So I got a call in July 2015 from a local business man who asked me to take a ride with him to look at something that was troubling him.

To this I responded absolutely. I picked him up and he rode over to his friend’s house with me. He had me look at a central air conditioner and asked me if it could be repaired.

So I went through and diagnosed the system and found that all that was wrong with it was the AC thermostat was not calling to the outside unit. In other words it had a bad thermostat.

I replaced the thermostat and the customer’s AC was back on, all within an hour.

I now asked him why he was troubled and he explained to me that the summer previous a local company told his friend that the entire AC unit was bad and needed to be replaced. The cost would be approximately $5000.00. Ouch!! I fixed it for $100.00. He thanked me for my expertise and I dropped him back off at his place of business.

I was left pondering the following issues.

• Did this company really serve its customer’s best interest?
• Were they only interested in cashing in on the misfortune of another by offering to replace something that was perfectly fine?
• To what caliber was the field tech? It is hard to believe that a simple diagnostic procedure was overlooked or not used. In conclusion i can tell you that there are "Big Box" service companies out there that do have technicians who have no field depth. These are the parts re placers who lack the proper field diagnostic training for simple repairs. It also occurs to me that these same companies have policies in place that say anything over x years old will be replaced and not bother to repair.

Got called to job today almost immediately behind another company.

The call was for no AC, upon arrival I was informed that the other company that was there could not find a leak and added dye and leak stop to "fix" the system. It was obvious to us that the evaporator coil was never leak tested, as the customers personal belongings were still stacked in front of the access panel to the coil, and the customer verified that they had not gone near that area.

Moving on, the leak was easily found and repaired in the evaporator area. System pumped down and vacuumed checked for no further leaks. We handed the owner a bill for 2/3 less than the first company that failed to make any lasting repair. They were supposed to be a "PRIORITY" customer ,but still got the shaft for being enrolled in that program anyway.

So glad we were able to help and resolve this issue for our customer.

Matt

Thanks,
Matt Burt
Comstock HVAC, Inc.
http://www.cstock.biz
585-374-8764

We got a call from a customer who was using another company…….

They were called out for no AC on a Sunday. Did not correct the problem, and told the customer that the wrong gas was in his system and had to be replaced. After much confusion it was realized that the company was working on the wrong condensing unit, that’s the compressor side of the AC system and is located remotely. They then sent a $600,00 + bill for the call. We arrived on scene and located the remote portion of the unit inside the condo. Repaired some faulty low voltage wiring and now all is fine.

You can hear what Jeremy Havens has to say on this in the audio file below, start player then advance, by clicking on the bar, to 14:56 in the recording.