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📹 Caught On Camera: Air-Conditioning Repairmen Inflate Fees To Fix Simple Problem
And the sun beats down on Southern California, Investigative Reporter David Goldstein turned up the heat on air-conditioning …
I’m an HVAC tech, and the owner of the company made it clear right off the bat that we are a purely honest business. Being honest feels better and is far easier than to lie. All it takes is one well articulated terrible review to crush a contractor. Especially in a small town. The bad ones get reviewed out of work.
this article hit very close to home b/c we just had the same problem a month ago. AC went out after a power outage and had 2 people come, the first one said need replace will be like 7k, 2nd person said 15K for replacement. wow. i was devastated but thank god, I found paperwork on the original installation 10 yrs ago (only lived here 2 yrs) and called them. He even remembered this address and was super helpful, proffesional and only charged $168…to repair, i know most likely will need replace soon and will call HOT n Cold air conditioning here in Riverside. It should not be a shock when we receive good customer service, but it seems nowadays it is a shock b/c honest people are so rare and is so sad.
A container ship’s engine fails. The ship’s owner brings in expert after expert. No one can figure out what is wrong with the engine. Finally they bring in afrail old man who has been repairing ships his entire life. The man inspects the engine from top to bottom. Then he takes a small hammer from his tool bag and taps something. The engine roars to life. A week later the ship’s owner receives an invoice for $10,000. “WHAT?” he exclaims. How can this be. He barely did anything. The owner demand the man send him an itemized bill. The man sends a new bill. It reads: Tapping with a hammer……$2.00 Knowing where to tap………$9,998.00
i seen that happen once. my grandmother had new ac put into her house and once day her ac was working, found out someone cut the wires or untie the wires. i went out there to check it out and it started up. they already screwed her out of lots of money and now they wanted more. i made sure that it never comes apart again and told them if i ever catch them doing that again, i’m reporting them
First you have a service charge to show up and diagnose the problem, $90 where I’m from, that’s a legit charge. Then whatever they charge to fix it. I’d hook that low voltage wire up no charge and give them a refrigerator magnet business card and tell them to call me when they have a real problem and hopefully make a customer for life. I tell people if you are hiring a legit professional it’s $75 if he just slows down in front of the house and $100 if he actually does some work. If you need a capacitor, and yes every tech worth a $1 still checks them, $90 service charge, $40-50 for the capacitor, yes he makes $20 on it but he stocks it on the truck and installs it so you are looking at $140-150. Any good one around here will clean the condensate drain, check the charge and hose down the condenser either no charge or no more than another $20 labor. Anything under $200 for that call is money well spent. A major cleaning with coil cleaner will be extra. The other complaint I hear people say if “It was $200 to put a hard start kit on my a/c!” Then go on to say I can but one on amazon for $10! He showed up, checked the unit out and if he is worth his salt he put a hard start kit on it that is to Factory specs and cost him $75. He installed it and brought that compressor back from the dead! If he was a con artist he would have just said the compressor won’t start and you need a new unit. He goes on to check the charge and hose down the condenser coil too. $200 is money well spent and if it’s a big company it’s probably more.
And who pays for that workers school. We pay doctors thousands of dollars to prescribe us allergy meds. Guess people think air conditioning is a right. I payed a guy 200.00 just to replace a capacitor that costs $20.00 but I didn’t know what that was the problem and my guy came out on a Sunday to make sure the I had ac for my wife and infant son. Thats worth it to me.
I was just charged $1965.00 for coil cleaning from Air Zone. I wish you could catch this company and put them out of business. I’m a 72 year old widow in Florida. They were very rude and intimidating too. Threatened to put a Lean my house if I didn’t pay immediately. I have Choice Home Warranty and I had an appointment with my agent to discuss the problem. The company harassed and intimidated me over waiting 2 days for payment.
I was a master automotive tech for years. Sometimes a whole service dept is corrupt, sometimes it’s just one person who hasn’t been weeded out. Oh the eye openers I could give you! An incompetent tech takes just as much money out of your pocket, as more labor and parts are charged, things misdiagnosed. The arm patch or certification means nothing.
At my company, i won’t start working until i have a signature approval to diagnose the system for $200. You shouldnt work for free and im not going to take time to diagnose for free then risk the customer tell me to leave and theyll fix it themselves. Now i walk away with work performed and no pay. Once i find the disconnected wires ill just attach them at no charge. Simple fix.
For those of you who said you would stick the wire back on and no charge; What if you had 5 calls all the same way? So you drive 100 miles and repair 5 systems all day for free? That’s foolish on two accounts. 1. You’re business runs on money/profit. If you feel you don’t need the money, then work for free and then file bankruptcy, then you can have all the free time you need because your out of work. That does your customer no good. 2. If all you do is stick that wire back on and leave, you have done the customer a great disservice! You are already there- check the refrigerant, wash the condenser, check and treat the drain, test the other controls and ask if there are any other problems as an example. Then charge for your time. The customer will be happy to pay because they see that you actually cared enough to see that their system is operating as it should! Are you a service company or just a quick money collector.? Oh, and for petes sake; Wear nicer clothes! This is a respectable technical trade! Honestly- Old T-shirts, baggy pants? Have some respect for the business! You are going into peoples homes! You represent the company! I wouldn’t have let any of you in my house looking like a homeless person! I’ve been at this trade for 46 years- todays so called technicians are an embarrassment!
Real Canadian AC mechanics (the ones who are refrigeration technicians, not plumbers with ability to buy and install, who are here as well) go through 4 or 5 years of apprenticeship to be a journeyman, typically don’t do this. But when they do they get a bad name in the area SO FAST. since we don’t have inspectors for refrigeration apart from building codes and mechanical codes we are self policing. VLAD would be blacklisted. Same with those rip off service companies. In many supplier warehouses we have a WALL OF SHAME. Where you can show pictures and even copies of a past invoice seen as a huge rip off. It keeps a lot of young apprentices out of rip off companies and keeps them on a path to a good career.
I know this by experience one way to cut back on some of that is to follow them out hang around where they’re working because it slows them down on really messing with things or like that first not doing anything because they’re being watched and I always do it and I always look up just enough information where I can talk just enough for they think I know enough to know if there playing me or not
I noticed most of them were middle eastern or Russian/ former USSR States. When I still lived in L.A. a Russian refrigerator repair guy tried to charge my parents $300 for a new part he never installed. I told him i’m only paying for the service call. He threatened us with the cops. When I called his bluff he got upset and decided not to even charge for the call. I came to find out that he had a history of ripping people off and constantly changing his business name. During his visit, he had 5 different names between his invoice, business cards and the magnetic signs on his van.
The industry has gd honest wrkrs & bad dishonest ones too! Just like any other job!!! Unfortunately some companies are bad & training their people/techs to screw customers over too!! I have worked for several companies & the last 2 were devils!!! Home warranty customers were getting spare parts to repair their systems! (Hidden fee in cleanings/maintenance!!)! And had to pay a deductible to have new equipment replace old! If u find a gd company reasonable in pricing & prompt?! You better stick with them!!
Not A/C but one time my my wife called me while I was at work and said the well pump quit pumping water. so I picked up a new pressure switch as they had gone bad in years past. Replaced the switch, plenty of water, then I noticed something weird. A chinese stink bug had somehow gotten onto one of the contacts of the old switch and was cooked in place. Didn’t see the cooked delicacy when the switch was still mounted on the pump. Another anomaly on the farm!
So, the honest contractor is supposed to charge $80 that includes gas, insurance, travel time, licensing fees,taxes etc, but a bungalow in California can cost $1 million. The problem I saw is awful lack of moral and qualification/knowledge. The first guys definitely didn’t have a clue about HVAC and were a pure scam artists.
As a senior service technician for more than 22 years I always train on honesty, the issues I am seeing is poor training of basic operation’s. On any service call the first thing to do is talk with the home owner listen and understand the issues. Number 2 go to the thermostat turn it to cool and Waite for the blower to come on, if indoor blower is working that tells you there is an electrical issue outside. Go to the outdoor unit and open electrical compartment for the unit and low and behold there is the issue. on a simple basic repair i would have charged the diagnostic fee and nothing more. honesty is always the best polacey.
My furnace would try to start up but, would not stay running. The inducer fan was making a lot of noise. I called the warranty company that I have through my mortgage. They sent our a technician from a local company. To make a very long story short the technician said that I need a new furnace. He said the insurance company would be in touch with me. I did some minor research. Turns out all my furnace needed was a new inducer fan. I ordered it and installed it myself. It’s so sad that you basically can not anyone these days because all they care about is making sale.
It is shit like this that makes me sick. I always wantes to be a mechanic or some other servicing repairman. But I couldn’t take the BS of other techs. A friend of mine’s dad is a mechanic and he has to work out of his garage now. All the repair shops and dealerships around here fire him after a few years because he refuses to ril off customers. Also why I learned to repair everything myself.
I am A/C Tech in Tx area we report all those guys to Regulation Dept..even at Houston City they do not do any thing,looks like either One want to do their job, ..I decide to apply for a position to make the Diff but guess what, the License departament and regulations want me work for free….W F.. go the hell
Reviews weather you like to believe it or not are very important. Especially new clients who are looking for an Hvac company. They absolutely read reviews. Google has power. So for those who think reviews aren’t important then your either not even in the field or your a shitty tech with a bad rep! Now about pricing, unfortunately the owners set the prices accordingly. Very competitive with other companies in the area. Now In 2022 as the mom and pop shops are almost non existent (in New Jersey) and Hvac companies are becoming corporate monsters the prices will Continue to rise.
This has got to be fake. No one is going to waste that much time just walking around the unit instead of actually looking at it. It would have been annoying finding the thermostat wire disconnected because that’s basically never the problem, but a basic step by step diagnostic would have found it. You also wouldn’t intentionally sell a part not needed if that’s not going to fix it because as soon as you replace that contactor, it ain’t gonna work. That’s wasted parts, lost labor time, and a customer who ain’t paying you unless you conned them into paying without waiting til it was blowing cold. I’m 100% calling bullshit on the first one. As for the contactor issue, that’s at least plausible. Components inside your condenser can fail in all kinds of strange ways, ants, frogs, or other bugs/animals get in there and get fried between things, pitted contacts, parts melting/burning, etc etc, but again, you wouldn’t sell a part without confirming the problem because it’s not going to run after your repair.
I hate that all they do in these articles is unplug wires. Ask any real tech and he’ll tell you that rarely happens. If it does the wires are usually burnt looking from pulling high amperage. So you can see it when you look into the unit. Wires hardly ever just fall out of a wire nut. I wish they did that would be great, but it’s not like that in the real world. They should get defective parts so they have to actually troubleshoot the unit. Then see who really knows whats up.
I like everyone has seen this before but the one thing you never do in this reports is tell everybody the source, the source of this is the owner of the heating and air conditioning company who has a regular briefings with his employees and tells them to do this most employees do not participate they just look for another job and they leave but there’s always one or two that do and that’s what’s in this article the one or two that said yes. These scams are initiated by the owners of these companies not the employees the problem is the employees have bills to pay and they quit just quit their job today they have to get another job first and then quit and if you check with the IRS the turnover for heating and air conditioning technicians is very high I have worked in places where the turnover per season is over 80% so please put the blame where it belongs.
I’m an HVAC tech and I don’t understand the situation with the first guy. How could they come to a call and not even look at the outdoor unit and then make up a $500 solution to fix the problem? What if the compressor was burnt out and totally dead? What would they do then? That seemed very weird to me… On a side note, I work as a service tech and only fix what needs to be fixed. I may inform the client of something else that should possibly be replaced for future maintenance to save problems down the line, but I’m outright honest on what needs to be done, what should be done, and offer advice on how to keep the unit lasting as long as possible. I’ve been more than busy enough to do my job properly than to find any ways to cheat business’ or residential customers out of money by being a crook.
What people dont know is that working in the HVAC industry, if you dont own your own company you’re at mercy of your bosses. 90% if not 99% of these companies hire on character rather than actual experience of the tech. Company doesnt make money by selling parts, and if they do sell some parts, they have to charge a huge amount due to overhead. Dont forget, if a big company has a shitload of employees, their premium is most likely extremely high due to overhead. Service champs is one of those companies, awesome company but expensive as fuck.
Very true. It’s happening with me now. Two technicians came are saying it’s an old unit HVAC. Has to be replaced. First one said it will cost me 17000dollars and second one said it will cost me 25000follars. I said I will replace it with window units. It’s sad they want to make money as we don’t know a thing about the air conditioner. Very sad.
Something you do not know that I know about these people is this Companies in Austin let me go many times because…I would not rip off customers and sell them things they did not need like the other criminal techs working for them were doing so it ruined their reputation when I went out and explained the last guy misdiagnosed the problems and they did not need a new unit, compressor or, what ever the last tech was trying to rip them off for TDLR knows all about this going on and actually approve of it telling consumers they were just honest mistakes when in fact they were criminals ripping people off and in some cases burned down houses because of their incompetence Do a story on that and I will be glad to name names for you so you can see exactly what I saw at every major HVACR company in Austin Texas even the biggest who tried to rip off GW Bush when he was Governor
When a company is caught on camera, this blatantly line and falsifying, they should immediately have their license revoked. Their business bank account assets frozen Vans confiscated and impounded . In the state register to have a lifetime permanent band from the trade never to receive a commercial license for contracting .
👍 I work in this trade and it is very common there’s so many under qualified and rip off artist in this trade it’s disgusting. The lack of training there’s no more general high school trades training anymore and the owners of HVAC companies get license without the ability to even have the confidence for capability of doing the repairs himself but they could pass a test. The owners of the company’s overhead is so high they intentionally go out and hire the cheapest guys they can fine with the least amount of experience and training them to scam and rip off customers to make a profit because they cannot do it with their own intelligence and skill and craftsmanship. We need more undercover investigations and article recording in all trades including lawyers and including doctors the same thing goes on there not just on the dirty hands blue color trade.
Ok. Who would really look for a disconnected wife immediately. On something that doesn’t move it’s impossible to have them just come apart. So that is t the first thing you do. The guy that wasn’t sure was doing everything right. I would’ve asked them why are they touching things they shouldn’t! Don’t ask for help and then rip on someone for doing their job. You have to follow flow chart and I’m sure in thy chart it doesn’t say to look for a wire disconnected by an idiot!
I just dealt with a local A/C company who deliberately disabled my unit. Called them out for a simple annual service, but it seems they bled refrigerant off the system to make it blow hot so as to encourage me to call them back out. Then, they started pushing expensive parts at me, likely inevitably leading to the recommendation of an all new system…. Thankfully, I saw through their BS pretty quickly, and luckily found an honest A/C man who fixed me right up. Unsettlingly, the company that was scamming me is apparently well respected, with solid Google reviews, and over 30 yrs in business! Just goes to show, you never know.
The lying is one thing but overcharging is another. On a simple (honest) repair they have to charge a lot of money. If they are not making $300 on average per call, they might as well close their doors. They have a state license for AC. A state business license. A county license. A town license. Business insurance and truck insurance all before they even make a dime. They have to compete with the millions of other AC companies and guys doing work without a license. And customers are not loyal so there is no incentive for the contractor to build good relations.
I can’t tell you how many times I have been ripped off, I installed a camera finally, seven actually, and caught an a/c guy that charged me 450 for freeon refil without checking if it had a leak which is illegal. he also charged me to install a tap that was already installed, I sent the article in a usb drive showing he didnt check for leaks or do anything he charged me for, I wrote them a 3 page letter with the codes they violated, they sent me a check for the full refund. I should have sued them.
When a service repair man shows up at your home. Take a walk out to his truck or van. If he doesn’t have his name and license number on the side of his truck in permanent paint or a vinyl wrap. Tell him to go away. And I dont mean a magnetic sticker. Something that he cannot remove at night when he gets home. Paint or a wrap. No name, No work…..
my dad always follows nd hovers around to see what the tech do to fix our problems nd that way he knws parts are replaced nd so forth well the only time me nd him were both working nd my mom didnt want to wait until the weekend for a tech to fix her ac so we could be there a Tech tried to scam us out $300 in a hr of being there he was their to diagnose the problem for $80 he called us said its fixed itll be 300 u best belive we had a problem right there we told him we aint paying jack noone told him to fix we called him to diagnose the problem then u tell us what wrong parts nd what would b to fix it 3days of us negotiating the price at the end we paid 140 he never showed his face we wanted to talk to him in person we even offered to meet him somewhere so he can collect his money made excuses saying we were talking in agresive tone nd what not 😂
I’ve done HVAC service. 200 to tighten a wire nut. There’s very few things to check. Shouldn’t take 20 minutes to figure out a no cool. Only in Cali. The best thing to do. As the homeowner. Stick to the tech like glue. Follow and ask questions. If it sounds like horseshit look it up on you tube yourself. God bless the smartphone.
$322 for a contractor is criminal. They cost $15 to $30 to buy and take 15 minutes to install. At most it should be a one-hour service call at about $96 and they should charge up to about $60 for the part marking it up. Anything over $160 is crooked. If he wants to make more money do more work and clean the coil, check the capacitor(s) to get more hours and maybe more parts. Want to still earn more, check the Refrigerant charge being that stuff sells for about $100 per pound even though the cylinder costs maybe $500 to $600 for 30 pounds. Plenty of honest ways to legitimately diagnose find parts that are going bad, provide preventative maintenance etc.
Unless the customer accepts their cost estimate on the spot, It’s common for the tech to disable the subsystem such as the capacitor and the contactor at the outside condenser making it worst than it is. The worst ones take the capacitor away or even put in a bad one of different values and then scrap off the model to make it harder for the next tech. .
I am a residential HVAC service technician with 6 (almost 7!) years experience. I am the best damn technician I know except my old buddy whose been my mentor. I can’t find anywhere that doesn’t punish me for being honest. my average repair ticket is 110$. the “best” technicians is 770$. we run the same amount of calls, and have the same success rate. I wish judgment day would come.