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.