Rant....

[andrewb70]

As some of you know I recently moved to Alabama. You may have also heard that its hot here and you would have heard correctly.

At some point last night the A/C stopped working. The home air handler was running and it appeared that the compressor outside was running as well, but no cool air. So we called a local HVAC company and they said that someone would come by in the afternoon, and around 2:00pm the guy shows up.

I take him out back and show him the A/C uni, and Immediately he says, your compressor is not running. I believe him because it did sound much quieter than usual. So he pull the breaker, takes off the cover, gets a meter and starts checking stuff. I am looking over his shoulder, mostly because I am curious about how this stuff works. Two minutes later, after testing what looked like a silver cylinder about the size of a pop can, he tells me that the capacitor is bad. Great! I ask him if he has it on the truck and he says probably.

While he is out there, I quickly Google A/C capacitor and a bunch come up ranging from 20-50 bucks. So he comes back and says that it will be 420 dollars to fix. I ask if he can give me a break out of parts and labor and he says "we don't do it like that." Clearly this was going to be a 30 minute job TOTAL from the time he walked into my door and a 20 dollar part.

Ultimately I wrote him a check for $50 for the call and told him to leave. I call the local HVAC supplier, tell them what I need, they have it in stock. I go there and the counter guy can tell I am mad....I tell him my experience and he doesn't flinch. I imagine he deals with these shysters all the time. I get the capacitor, 18 bucks, go home install it, have cool air in 30 minutes, including drive time and installation.

Rant over.

Andrew

[raustinss]

rant yes ...i would too ....but you definitely got the last laugh , almost worth calling up and rubbing it in his face

[csouth]

Talk about shady!

[parsonsj]

I keep spare capacitors at the house. I learned that lesson too...

[TheJDMan]

What John said!

[OLDFLM]

Andrew I just went through the exact same thing with our rental home in GA on Saturday... and I'm in Orlando.
So guess what... $250 for a $20 part. Still better than your $420 (Hey! Wait a minute...)
But when you're a 6 hour drive away you have to pay.

JP good idea about keeping extras on hand! I know what I'll be getting from the big box store this weekend!

[dhutton]

Those capacitors are real money makers. I always keep spares too.

Don

[thumper877]

They just take advantage of people that don't know and have no mechanical skills good for u

[andrewb70]

I get that these people run a business and they have to make money. I would have gladly paid the initial $50 service call fee, along with a generous mark-up on the parts (say 50%, so $30), and a generous hourly rate (say $150 her hour). So 50 + 30 + $75 = $155...Hell, I may have even paid $200....but for him to stand there with a straight face, give me some BS about not breaking out parts and labor, and then tell me it was going to be $420....How do these people sleep at night??!!?

Andrew

[Build-It-Break-It]

I had a plumber quote me $450 bucks to change a water heater thermostat that was brand new and under warranty for less then an hours work/drive time.

He told me I couldn't get the parts from the locally supplier under warranty because I'm the home owner and he had to do it.

I took the part off and took it in ,filled out the requested warranty information and what do you know, they handed me the replacement part under warranty.

I installed it and 20 min later I had hot water again for free. Some people just pray on anyone that'll believe it. It's sad.

I've learned to try my best to do things myself just for the exact reasons you listed.

[andrewb70]

I also just remembered something else that was odd. I saw him pull up in the truck, but he didn't come inside for about 15 minutes. Maybe he was doing paperwork from the previous job... Maybe he was on the phone with dispatch...or maybe he was padding his work log.

My wife wrote a pretty nasty Yelp review. She is a Yelp Elite...lol

Andrew

[shmoov69]

Ok, that is certainly excessive, no question. However I think $250-300 would have been fair. I know you know this and probably wouldn't have said anything otherwise.... But, he did have to tell you what was wrong with it since you didn't know, that experience does cost money needless to say. His rig, his equipment in that rig, his overhead, his experience, his time and then factor in some profit for the company=LOTS more than what you or I can do it for.
I get aggravated when people complain about our charges for repairing a roof. Them: "he was only there for 45 minutes" and such. Me: "well if you could have found and made the repair, then you shouldn't have called me in the first place". However I DO tell people what our minimum charge is UP FRONT and what the hourly charge is for T&M after it goes past that. It seems that there are many more complaints from the average public about "blue collar" work charges than there are from "white collar" work charges.

Experience costs money.... But that was excessive.


My rebuttal rant is over. LoL!

[SSLance]

My first thought was along the line of Jimmy's as well. When I had the retail store I had people all of the time come to me to pick my brain for my expertise so they could then go back and do the job themselves to save money. It is aggravating to say the least.

I also agree with Jimmy that the price quoted was excessive and I too would have probably sent him packing. I have a HVAC "guy", the AC in my office quit on a Thursday when it was super hot and he couldn't get their until Tuesday. Same deal, capacitor...only he just took it out, cleaned it up real good, we replaced a few connectors on the wires and it fired back up again. He gave me the part number and said to get one to have on hand for when it happens again. $60 service call...

Point being...you need to find a HVAC "guy" in Alabama...

[andrewb70]

I have nothing against "blue collar" work or services. They are vital and important professions that make the world go around...

What I do have a problem with is what seems like totally arbitrary pricing that seems to be based on nothing except "it's 100 degrees out today, it is 93 degrees in this guys house, let's see how much he is willing to pay..." That was exactly what it felt like.

I am also have a MBA and have a pretty good grasp of cost accounting. Every business needs to figure out what they need to charge for their services in order to cover their overhead and make profit over that. I get that! The "experience" part of a service goes into the labor rate. This applies to both labor rate that gets paid to the tech and what the company charges the for the tech's labor (better, more experiences techs get paid more, thus the company charges more for their time, presumably because better techs can do the job faster and/or "better").

This company did inform me that there would be a $50 service call. This actually seemed low to me. When I had my dishwasher serviced (I can rant about that experience too) the service call was $75. To me a service call is for diagnostics (expertise)...They come out, tell you what's wrong with it, and give you an estimate of how much it will cost to fix (I am even ok with an estimate as opposed to a quote). The estimate should include parts, labor rate, and how long the job will take. Any "expert" should know pretty accurately how long any given job takes.

I would have been OK with $100 service call + $30 parts + 30 minutes labor (you guys tell me what a reasonable HVAC labor rate is...) at $150, that's $205. Where is the rest coming from?

Andrew

[silo84]

I've had one replace local to T-town on a holiday it was $150 out the door. SO it can be more reasonable.

[andrewb70]

I've had one replace local to T-town on a holiday it was $150 out the door. SO it can be more reasonable.

I am sure that it isn't necessarily the industry as a whole, but this company in particular, which is why I sent them down the road. I would have gladly paid $150....

Andrew

[raustinss]

So more gto money then !

[shmoov69]

I know that you weren't bashing blue collar Andrew, and I REALLY KNOW that you know how business works, heck you know more about it than most people. So please don't think I was questioning that at all. My whole point was that the experience costs money and it just seems that so many people don't realize that unless there is a bunch of letters behind the name of the person they're paying. LoL!
I know it's apples and oranges here because they DID overcharge you (I think as well). But I've had many customers over the years say something similar (usually after they don't pay) and I tell them that they can call the tech and tell him that his service and time wasn't valuable enough to pay them their wages. Like you said, Usually the repair tech is one of your most experienced guys, and therefore the most valuable. But if he's driving around doing diagnosis only for $50 a pop, it would not be very wise to even be in business for a measly $250 a day (figuring about 5 places on a good day) if everyone said "no thanks but I'll fix it myself, thanks for the diagnosis tho". Considering your "less experienced crew" doing HVAC installs are getting you around $1,000+ a day.
I would guess that the labor rate would be around $75 an hour, but there is travel time to and from the shop (or next job site), which would add approximately an hour to the time that you gotta remember.

I honestly got "slapped" one day (figuratively that is), when I was complaining about what someone was charging to do something. What got me was when I started thinking about the companies business and overhead costs, and then adding what "my time" was worth. When I realized that I wouldn't want to do the job "as a business" and clear only a hundred bucks at the end of the day.

Anyway, $250-300 is where "I" think it should've been considering your information. Theres good companies and bad companies. Sounds like you got a bad one.

[HarleyR]

It sucks that there are predatory companies in many industries.... I guess it would be like welding something for a customer who lacks knowledge, equipment and time.... If they are in a jam you can almost charge whatever you want... Back when I was pitting cars weekly I usually made 700-900 l(250 bucks an hour) a cup race.... 500-600 for a nationwide race..... If they had people back out or some circumstance you could make over a 1000....talent.... Supply and demand..

[OLDFLM]

PERSONAL UPDATE: So as luck would have it, I was out of town on business this week when my wife called... guess what? AC in our home in Orlando quit after I jumped on a plane for DC! So, even though I'd just replied to this thread (post #6) I said you can wait until I get home on Wednesday or call our trusted local guy. Bottom line: $129 out the door and Louis dropped the $59 service fee! That's REASONABLE SERVICE imo! And the house dropped from 93* inside to 76* in about two hours.
But now I'm feeling like I may have gotten ripped off a week ago paying double for the same service... but that was out of state, where I couldn't do it myself (again) and it was on a weekend.
I'm still getting extra capacitors this weekend at Lowe's! Dammit!