A thing happened to me, seemed worth sharing. What Happened A few weeks ago, the in-wall air conditioner in our bedroom ceased to function. Troy Barnes was unavailable, so instead we talked to the super, he recommended a company called Amhac, we ignored normative determinism (e.g. “Am a hack”) and called them. They charged a rather large amount simply to come out and take a look, with a diagnostic fee and also a noticeably generous per-hour fee.
Air conditioning is very specifically incredibly regulated. Starting with the ozone crisis from Freon, the profession has required stringent licensing to obtain refill refrigerant, despite relatively cheap and easy to acquire tooling. Up until the middle of the Obama administration, it was easy to just buy a can of R410A (the modern refrigerant that doesn’t damage the environment), so for $100 in gauges and hoses and $100 in a can of refrigerant you could refill your own equipment. Subsequently that has become illegal to acquire without the professional licenses, though lots of places don’t check that stringently. This is standard over regulation, but it has some fun, dumb twists. 1) R410A was approved because it’s environmentally safe, was generally available, and then became generally unavailable by EPA regulation, reversing their previous ruling that allowed it to begin with. 2) cars use another refrigerant (R134A), which is largely unregulated, so it’s much more widely available. Meaningfully, it is no different from R410A, though I wouldn’t rush using the cans of recharge you can get at every auto parts and super market to fix my brand new central air unit.
A chargeback is very appropriate here. They tried to scam you, you asked for a refund and got the run around, your credit card company will likey side with you. I once had awful (really fraudulent) plumbing work done and threatening a charger back got me a full refund.
We just finished doing some major work on our house and I made the same observations. "Manual work" I think often is looked down upon in the elitist circles. But to me it seems very satisfying to be doing things in the real world to make peoples lives/homes better, figuring out puzzles, never having the same exact job, and making good money. It actually motivated me to learn new skills on youtube (where you can learn literally anything of that sort), and do some things around the house on my own. ...definitely underrated use of free time vs twitter etc.
It’s not infrequently where I lament (only somewhat tongue-in-cheek) that “I could’ve just been a damn electrician”.
As someone familiar with the building trades, the level of scammery mixed with incompetence in residential contractors (in particular) is quite bad. Their biggest sales tool really is the social discomfort and awkwardness of folks not wanting to argue. Much like vampires, once you’ve invited them in the door it’s sometimes too late, but there isn’t a great “in advance” heuristic that I’ve found yet.
The HVAC company I used to work for (one of the biggest names locally, and not obviously sleazy in my experience) would charge a "diagnostic fee" in the form of a one-hour minimum. That always struck me as reasonable, given travel times.
Sorry to hear about the problem, and glad to hear about the resolution.
We had a similar problem with our AC about 5 years ago. Fortunately my wife has zero discomfort in negotiating with people and we had around 15 people come in to diagnose the problem. We received quotes from 24,000$ for a whole new heating and cooling system to 500$ to replace the fan and maybe a capacitor. Part of the issue was that it was an older system with the pre R410A refrigerant, so guys who couldn't fix big parts and just replaced them couldn't do just the outside unit.
During this time I spent a half dozen hours on youtube and found out how to replace the likely culprits in the system myself. ~250$ at Grainger and a few hours more I had the system working perfectly. To be fair, that probably was in line with the 500$ quote all told, though I switched out three parts instead of one or two.
Long story short, most "repairmen" are just salesmen for new equipment. A few are the real deal, in our experience mostly the guys whose family owns the business, Dave and Sons where the sons actually show up with Dave sort of deal. The larger lesson we have learned is that if you are pretty clever and careful, about 90% of home repair work can be done yourself with some research, and even if you screw up and do it twice you are likely to come out way ahead of hiring contractors. At this point I have replaced every appliance in a house except for the heat exchanger/furnace myself, and it isn't that bad if you don't mind learning how and buying the tools.
My own scarier (to me) version of this involved lawyers. I think needing to pay to even ask questions makes it even worse. Having to pay (and a LOT) up-front also makes it hard to NOT think they're out to get you, at least on some level.
I was also shocked by how un-professionally incompetent my 'data sample subjects' were.
And, like you, I wasn't sure what to do, if anything, along the lines of even reporting their bad behavior. I ended-up leaving a very critical, but still fair, review online for one. I definitely considered reporting another to the relevant 'bar association' organization. I decided not to mostly because the expected value seemed so low. Suing a lawyer for unprofessional conduct just seemed like an almost certain waste of money (and time, and energy, etc.).
Having looked into the details of professional legal practice, I was dismayed to discover that it's almost (as if it was) deliberately organized/regulated badly, e.g. restrictions on how legal services can be supported/operated in corporate/company structures/organizations. That kind of thing does seem to explain the dysfunction I've observed, and, sadly, at least for individual lawyers or law firms, excuse it, if only in a practical sense. (What's the point of even being mad/angry at mostly indifferent professionals because they're mostly just following their economic incentives?)
While I agree that aircon repair is relatively safe from automation in the medium term, what it might be less safe from is increasingly efficient supply chains and industrial manufacturing. More and more things are made so efficiently in places with relatively cheap labor and massive manufacturing capacity, like China, that they are not worth repairing in places with expensive labor and lots of red tape, like America. At some point, even an expensive product like an aircon unit might be cheaper to replace than repair. I suppose you will still need someone to install it, though.
Write an email to the first company. Write it like a buisness email, and demonstrate that you are the scariest type of adversary - the kind that takes meticulous notes and will keep to a schedule. "Hello, this email is in reference to service call XXX-XX on yy/yy/yyyy. As you know, $Name and $Name were dispatched to do stuff. They diagnosed the issue as X and attempted to charge me $LargeNumber. They were incorrect. Further investigation demonstrated Y was the case and it was repaired by a competitor for $MuchSmallerNumber.
Your diagnosis demonstrates that either $Name and $Name are incompitent or attempted to faudulently lie about the diagnosis and overcharge me. I require refund of $WhateverIPaid due to the fact the either incompetent or faudulent diagnostic work is not what I agreed to. If I do not hear from you by $SevenDaysFromNow, I will be forced to begin a chargeback."
You likely won't hear back from then, and then you've demonstrated to your credit card company that you did everything you could to get a refund. Which they will require. (You did pay with a credit card, right?)
This feels weird to write, but despite being someone who "came for the Abstract Reference Posts, stayed for the Covid Reporting" - I actually really enjoy these little slice-of-rational-life style posts. Sometimes it's nice to be reminded that even community juggernauts are, at the end of the day, going through most of the same everyday travails as everyone else. And that rationalism doesn't necessarily improve outcomes during The Game Itself, although it makes for a fascinating post-play breakdown. System 2 takes time to engage!
Speaking of Abstract Reference Posts, I often find myself wanting to link to a non-existent one that might be summed up as "Mild Social Awkwardness: The Most Powerful Force in Human Interactions". There are ones that gesture in that direction, like Something Was Wrong, but not in a fully general way.
As for the dilemma at hand - seems useful to break down desired outcomes into two categories: A) securing personal financial remuneration; B) ensuring others don't Get Got in this way, or at least as easily. Which matters more for solution-optimization purposes? I haven't had much run-in with contractors myself, but of that small set, almost all feared the knock-on effects of potential reputation trashing more than enough to (eventually, with griping) entertain fairly generous refund proposals. Knowing e.g. realtors helps make this threat more credible. Caveat: small town experiences, YMMV in NYC.
"What am I supposed to do now? Chargeback? Report to better business bureau?"
Both. And a Yelp review.
If it is an honest mistake and you trust their explanation you can resolve the issue with BBB and delete the Yelp review. If it is an honest mistake they won't have any (or at least many) chargebacks and their business won't be impacted.
If it is a series of scams not reporting just creates more suckers down the road to get taken.
This is a common occurrence in my experience. Over the course of three houses, I’ve been told several times that our A/C’s were shot and needed to be replaced. On second opinions, a minor repair was able to rectify each situation. I’ve never had to replace one. Friends have had similar experience. The economic incentive is to sell you a multi-$10k new install over a $20 part and a $200 service charge.
I second everything here. The average level of competence and honesty in any form of contracting is absurdly low. I've always attributed it to us a a society spending decades actively discouraging anyone who seems competent and capable of learning skills effectively as a kid from going into anything resembling a trade as an adult.
Edit to add: local laws (licensing, permitting, inspection processes, and so on) also make a huge difference, and in my experience there's a tremendous amount of value locked up in professionals knowing how to navigate the local bureaucracy because they know what the local officials think the written rules *really* mean.
Air conditioning is very specifically incredibly regulated. Starting with the ozone crisis from Freon, the profession has required stringent licensing to obtain refill refrigerant, despite relatively cheap and easy to acquire tooling. Up until the middle of the Obama administration, it was easy to just buy a can of R410A (the modern refrigerant that doesn’t damage the environment), so for $100 in gauges and hoses and $100 in a can of refrigerant you could refill your own equipment. Subsequently that has become illegal to acquire without the professional licenses, though lots of places don’t check that stringently. This is standard over regulation, but it has some fun, dumb twists. 1) R410A was approved because it’s environmentally safe, was generally available, and then became generally unavailable by EPA regulation, reversing their previous ruling that allowed it to begin with. 2) cars use another refrigerant (R134A), which is largely unregulated, so it’s much more widely available. Meaningfully, it is no different from R410A, though I wouldn’t rush using the cans of recharge you can get at every auto parts and super market to fix my brand new central air unit.
A chargeback is very appropriate here. They tried to scam you, you asked for a refund and got the run around, your credit card company will likey side with you. I once had awful (really fraudulent) plumbing work done and threatening a charger back got me a full refund.
We just finished doing some major work on our house and I made the same observations. "Manual work" I think often is looked down upon in the elitist circles. But to me it seems very satisfying to be doing things in the real world to make peoples lives/homes better, figuring out puzzles, never having the same exact job, and making good money. It actually motivated me to learn new skills on youtube (where you can learn literally anything of that sort), and do some things around the house on my own. ...definitely underrated use of free time vs twitter etc.
It’s not infrequently where I lament (only somewhat tongue-in-cheek) that “I could’ve just been a damn electrician”.
As someone familiar with the building trades, the level of scammery mixed with incompetence in residential contractors (in particular) is quite bad. Their biggest sales tool really is the social discomfort and awkwardness of folks not wanting to argue. Much like vampires, once you’ve invited them in the door it’s sometimes too late, but there isn’t a great “in advance” heuristic that I’ve found yet.
The HVAC company I used to work for (one of the biggest names locally, and not obviously sleazy in my experience) would charge a "diagnostic fee" in the form of a one-hour minimum. That always struck me as reasonable, given travel times.
Enjoy your work. Don't you mean nominative determinism?
Sorry to hear about the problem, and glad to hear about the resolution.
We had a similar problem with our AC about 5 years ago. Fortunately my wife has zero discomfort in negotiating with people and we had around 15 people come in to diagnose the problem. We received quotes from 24,000$ for a whole new heating and cooling system to 500$ to replace the fan and maybe a capacitor. Part of the issue was that it was an older system with the pre R410A refrigerant, so guys who couldn't fix big parts and just replaced them couldn't do just the outside unit.
During this time I spent a half dozen hours on youtube and found out how to replace the likely culprits in the system myself. ~250$ at Grainger and a few hours more I had the system working perfectly. To be fair, that probably was in line with the 500$ quote all told, though I switched out three parts instead of one or two.
Long story short, most "repairmen" are just salesmen for new equipment. A few are the real deal, in our experience mostly the guys whose family owns the business, Dave and Sons where the sons actually show up with Dave sort of deal. The larger lesson we have learned is that if you are pretty clever and careful, about 90% of home repair work can be done yourself with some research, and even if you screw up and do it twice you are likely to come out way ahead of hiring contractors. At this point I have replaced every appliance in a house except for the heat exchanger/furnace myself, and it isn't that bad if you don't mind learning how and buying the tools.
My own scarier (to me) version of this involved lawyers. I think needing to pay to even ask questions makes it even worse. Having to pay (and a LOT) up-front also makes it hard to NOT think they're out to get you, at least on some level.
I was also shocked by how un-professionally incompetent my 'data sample subjects' were.
And, like you, I wasn't sure what to do, if anything, along the lines of even reporting their bad behavior. I ended-up leaving a very critical, but still fair, review online for one. I definitely considered reporting another to the relevant 'bar association' organization. I decided not to mostly because the expected value seemed so low. Suing a lawyer for unprofessional conduct just seemed like an almost certain waste of money (and time, and energy, etc.).
Having looked into the details of professional legal practice, I was dismayed to discover that it's almost (as if it was) deliberately organized/regulated badly, e.g. restrictions on how legal services can be supported/operated in corporate/company structures/organizations. That kind of thing does seem to explain the dysfunction I've observed, and, sadly, at least for individual lawyers or law firms, excuse it, if only in a practical sense. (What's the point of even being mad/angry at mostly indifferent professionals because they're mostly just following their economic incentives?)
While I agree that aircon repair is relatively safe from automation in the medium term, what it might be less safe from is increasingly efficient supply chains and industrial manufacturing. More and more things are made so efficiently in places with relatively cheap labor and massive manufacturing capacity, like China, that they are not worth repairing in places with expensive labor and lots of red tape, like America. At some point, even an expensive product like an aircon unit might be cheaper to replace than repair. I suppose you will still need someone to install it, though.
Here is what I would do, if it was me.
Write an email to the first company. Write it like a buisness email, and demonstrate that you are the scariest type of adversary - the kind that takes meticulous notes and will keep to a schedule. "Hello, this email is in reference to service call XXX-XX on yy/yy/yyyy. As you know, $Name and $Name were dispatched to do stuff. They diagnosed the issue as X and attempted to charge me $LargeNumber. They were incorrect. Further investigation demonstrated Y was the case and it was repaired by a competitor for $MuchSmallerNumber.
Your diagnosis demonstrates that either $Name and $Name are incompitent or attempted to faudulently lie about the diagnosis and overcharge me. I require refund of $WhateverIPaid due to the fact the either incompetent or faudulent diagnostic work is not what I agreed to. If I do not hear from you by $SevenDaysFromNow, I will be forced to begin a chargeback."
You likely won't hear back from then, and then you've demonstrated to your credit card company that you did everything you could to get a refund. Which they will require. (You did pay with a credit card, right?)
I wonder about the super; why did they recommend this company if they're so terrible?
This feels weird to write, but despite being someone who "came for the Abstract Reference Posts, stayed for the Covid Reporting" - I actually really enjoy these little slice-of-rational-life style posts. Sometimes it's nice to be reminded that even community juggernauts are, at the end of the day, going through most of the same everyday travails as everyone else. And that rationalism doesn't necessarily improve outcomes during The Game Itself, although it makes for a fascinating post-play breakdown. System 2 takes time to engage!
Speaking of Abstract Reference Posts, I often find myself wanting to link to a non-existent one that might be summed up as "Mild Social Awkwardness: The Most Powerful Force in Human Interactions". There are ones that gesture in that direction, like Something Was Wrong, but not in a fully general way.
As for the dilemma at hand - seems useful to break down desired outcomes into two categories: A) securing personal financial remuneration; B) ensuring others don't Get Got in this way, or at least as easily. Which matters more for solution-optimization purposes? I haven't had much run-in with contractors myself, but of that small set, almost all feared the knock-on effects of potential reputation trashing more than enough to (eventually, with griping) entertain fairly generous refund proposals. Knowing e.g. realtors helps make this threat more credible. Caveat: small town experiences, YMMV in NYC.
"What am I supposed to do now? Chargeback? Report to better business bureau?"
Both. And a Yelp review.
If it is an honest mistake and you trust their explanation you can resolve the issue with BBB and delete the Yelp review. If it is an honest mistake they won't have any (or at least many) chargebacks and their business won't be impacted.
If it is a series of scams not reporting just creates more suckers down the road to get taken.
This is a common occurrence in my experience. Over the course of three houses, I’ve been told several times that our A/C’s were shot and needed to be replaced. On second opinions, a minor repair was able to rectify each situation. I’ve never had to replace one. Friends have had similar experience. The economic incentive is to sell you a multi-$10k new install over a $20 part and a $200 service charge.
I second everything here. The average level of competence and honesty in any form of contracting is absurdly low. I've always attributed it to us a a society spending decades actively discouraging anyone who seems competent and capable of learning skills effectively as a kid from going into anything resembling a trade as an adult.
Edit to add: local laws (licensing, permitting, inspection processes, and so on) also make a huge difference, and in my experience there's a tremendous amount of value locked up in professionals knowing how to navigate the local bureaucracy because they know what the local officials think the written rules *really* mean.