On Saturday, July 25, 2015 at 11:27:37 PM UTC-4, Ralph Mowery wrote:
This morning my heat pump outside unit was not running. Not having any
parts and the parts stores closed I called an Air condition service company.
Fellow came out and found the trouble as soon as he took off the cover
plate. A bad dual section capacitor.

While talking to him I mentioned I knew a lot about electrical work being an
electrician in a large company. He asked me to guess the cost of the
capacitor. I guessed about $ 50 thinking I was allowing for a good a markup.

Turned out it was $ 369. The call to just come out was $ 89. He did check
the refrigerant pressures and temperatures after he go the unit running.
That made the call around $ 468. Everything was OK.

His explination for the high cost of the capacitor is that most people don't
know about parts cost and they use the cost of parts to offset the service
call. Beats charging $ 200 to come out in most peoples thinking.


The problem though is the people who do know the cost of the capacitor,
which is inflated 10X+, are going to go nuts. I would have told him
no way I'm paying it. And it's also kind of interesting that he freely
admits he's taking advantage of people's ignorance. Does this guy change the
prices on the fly? Or does he have all the prices on all the parts
jacked up 10X? If the latter, what would have happened if you needed
3 parts? It would be a $1000 call that should have been $300? Sorry,
but I don't like this guy's business practices. And I'm not swayed by
the fact that he had to drive an hour. How do you know where he was?
He could have been at another customer 15 mins away and/or the next
customer could be 10 mins away. Some customers will be around the
corner, some far away. If he chooses to take the call and serve that
area, then it should be factored in to the min service charge.



He did give me a few hints about some things on the unit and said I may want
to get online and order a capacitor and contactor so I will have them as
that is what fails the most.

I did not mind that charge too much as he had to drive about an hour to get
here. I did let him talk me into an extra $ 100 cleaning of the coils and
checking out of the unit as I had not cleaned the coils . I put in the
system about 9 years ago. Altogether he spent about 3 hours here and
probably 2 hours driving, so I don't feel ripped off and have some education
on the unit also.

Amazing that could take 3 hours. It does support what I was saying
in the thread I posted, that fixing a leak could quickly get very
expensive. What would a guy like this do in that case? And IDK how
the typical customer can protect themselves
from service guys just jacking up prices 10x on all kinds of random parts
and screwing them.

Also, you told him you were an electrician up front. I suspect the
results here could have been far worse if you were a little old lady.