home owners beware..NBC stings HVAC guys

Yoyizit · 07-13-2012, 09:10 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by av-geek

he had never heard of an expansion valve going on those units

the equipment is bugged with is an unusual malfunction

I am an electronics technician by trade, and if I am servicing a piece of malfunctioning equipment, I am going to let my experience guide me first, like my HVAC technician did.

I can definitely attest that I would overlook a loose wire, especially if my experience with the equipment led me to a different source of the malfunction.

One book on troubleshooting I read said, Go with your instincts just once and then systematically do the Sherlock Holmes thing if your instincts fail you.

I believe I try to keep instincts out of the troubleshooting process. But it is seductive.

NitroNate · 07-13-2012, 10:43 AM

funny, i read that article too and had a suspicion someone would post it on here. like other said, stings are never really random, i'm sure most of those companies had less than stellar reviews. still, there is a good point behind the article and that is that you can never trust a contractor blindly (any contractor, not just hvac) and you really must do some research and educate yourself before shelling out money for something. this goes for car dealerships and their technicians as well.

the other point that is often missed is that the honest, fair contractors get lost in the sea of crappy ones. the bad ones hurt the good ones, because we lose our trust in the industry. i'll be the first to admit that when a contractor comes to my home, i'm asking questions and fishing for answers that suggest b.s. i hate to have to do that, but it is necessary. i've been had once under a home warranty and it will never happen again.

Yoyizit · 07-13-2012, 12:13 PM

The US is rated #16 in non-corruption. Possibly Norway is the least corrupt out of 180 or so nations.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transparency_International

The only thing preventing US crooks from robbing everyone blind is that there would a public uproar that even politicians couldn't ignore. It has little to do with the law.

av-geek · 07-13-2012, 01:32 PM

Quote:

One book on troubleshooting I read said, Go with your instincts just once and then systematically do the Sherlock Holmes thing if your instincts fail you.

I believe I try to keep instincts out of the troubleshooting process. But it is seductive.

While I cannot say your thought is not good practice, I do this out of courtesy to my customers generally. If I have walked onto hundreds of job sites and seen the same fault with the same piece of equipment, when I walk onto subsequent job sites with the same piece of equipment, exibiting the same malfunction, instead of charging those customers with several hours of labor for troubleshooting, I can only charge them with an hour or so of labor to go for the most common failure first. While yes, I do not make as much money on that initial job ticket not charging that labor, I do in the long run, as I have now have a more satisfied customer because their bill is more reasonable.

wheelsup · 07-13-2012, 01:42 PM

I always like to do stuff myself because I have a hard time trusting folks. Just my nature. I was duped big time in high school buying a stereo from a store who gladly took $1,000 cash from me and "ordered" my stuff. They went bankrupt. Fortunately somehow I recovered my money. No idea how but a lawyer got involved and no fees I got a check.

Anyway, I don't believe for a second this was random. It really pisses me off when a media outlet passing themselves off as a major news network (NBC is) does a story like this. It does no one any good whatsoever except a rating spike.

I'm not in the HVAC trade but I can tell you when the media does stories on my industry I get a ton of customers saying stupid **** to me.