Let me give you a little background. A situation occurred at the beginning of the year that I may talk about later which has caused my husband and I to need to sell our house, as soon as humanly possible. We were about 50% done with a fixer-upper, and have needed to complete the other 50% by the end of the year. Much of the process has been like crawling through broken glass. No... make that crawling through broken glass while having a seizure, while having someone jump up and down on your back so the glass is imbedded really deep.
While trying to complete the house... many, many things have interrupted the flow of getting things done. This is just one of many.
I would say about a month ago, our really old dinosauric heater died. My husband and I debated whether to just replace the unit. Normally, that is what we would have done. The hitch is that if we replaced the unit, we would have to add AC. If we don't, likely the new owners would have to - due to the heat in our area. Or wonder why if we spent the money for a brand spanking new heater, we just didn't spend an extra few grand to add AC. Adding AC to this house has always presented a problem because of the location of the furnace. Perhaps new owners would be okay with an AC unit on top of the house. I personally have never liked the idea. Let them figure out what they want to do. AC doesn't add that much to resale value anyway.
So after trying to diagnose the problem, we threw in the towel and started calling HVAC techs to come out. Since our pilot light stayed lit, the net was almost useless to us. The usual route went "blowers wont ignite". Resolution "check your pilot light". Thanks a f'ing lot.
The first company couldn't get to us for a few days. No problem. I called on a Monday, and had an appointment for Thursday. They called back later that day to move my appointment from the morning to the afternoon. I am fine with this. It isn't cold yet, but I am watching the news everyday and getting a little jittery. 70 bucks just to knock on the door. Still no problem. On Wednesday, the company called to reschedule for the following Monday. I was kind but firm and told them no way, my furnace is broken. The receptionist actually told me" Well, we thought it was warm outside". I of course was speechless. In my head I am thinking "are you people insane!?!", but I can't actually even say anything.
First, my repair doesn't hinge on your feeling that it was warm enough to put me off for a full week. Second, why would we trust a company that conducts business like this? The weather turns on a dime around here. Often, like flipping a light switch. After I balked, she actually started dialing the time back.
Her, "how about Saturday".
Me, no.
Her, "well what about Friday".
Me, "speechless".
Her, " maybe we can get you in Thursday afternoon".
The same day in fact the appointment originally was. At this point I want to be really sarcastic, but I just can't bring myself to do it. I call my husband who is more level headed and have him tell them we are going with another company.
So we call the next company.
Discovery Quality Service Inc. 3393 Clayton Rd. Concord California. 925-687-9860. They can come that day, but my husband isn't home, so I schedule for the next morning. 45 bucks just to knock on the door. Again... no problem. The house call seems pretty cheap compared to the other company. The techs actually arrive. I am super happy. It hasn't been easy to get workers to even show up. The economy can't be that bad because contractors don't seem to be hurting for work.
Then the trouble begins. They spend about a half an hour on our fuse box. To this day, I really can't figure out what they were trying to do, but the end result was they broke the box, and wound up wedging it out of the wall. The fuse was unrecognizable. They diagnose the problem as a bad fan center. $395.00. The estimate is $687.00 including $85.00 to replace the fusebox that they themselves broke. Not counting the $45.00 just to come out. At this point we are still in HVAC illiteracy. We weren't that happy about them ripping the fuse box out of the wall, but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. So we weren't pissed. It is an old machine after all.
I take the fuse box to a lighting store who had a lot of retro parts. This is when we started to figure out just what fuck-ups these guys were. The lighting store guy wedges out the remaining piece of the fuse, and is able to give me a replacement. 3 bucks. BTW, the fuse screwed out like any other fuse of the type. The box is still broken, but he says if we can't find a new box, in a pinch we can just superglue it back together. Not happy about that...we start looking on the net to find the part they were going to charge us 85 bucks for, was $10.00 retail. Still not upset at this point. We get markup. My husbands dad knows people in the HVAC trade in a far away state, so I figure he can find a new compatible fan center. My logic is that they are at least charging 100% markup on the part, so with shipping we would still come out ahead.
Come to find out, the part is under 30 bucks. Now that we know what we are looking for, we again look on the net and are able to buy the part retail for about 50 bucks. Getting a little irritated, and shocked considering they were going to charge us almost $400.00 for just the part. Not even labor.
We wire in the new fuse box, and the new fan center, still dead. My husband (who is not an HVAC tech) started tracing back the electricity and finds our fan motor is blowing the fuse. My husband pulls the housing, and we take it into a parts shop, who opens it up. Low and behold.. the
motor has fully fried. I feel relief. Yeah.... we are going to have heat. No mistaking the fan motor is bad. New fan.. 150 bucks. At this point, we have spent roughly 200 bucks. No big deal. We are irritated they didn't diagnose the motor, but shit happens. Well.. maybe that is not the honest truth. I am getting more irritated, because for the first part that cost 50 bucks they were going to charge $400, so I start to wonder how much they were going to charge for a part which cost us 150 bucks.
So we clean up the housing, put the new motor in. It spins beautifully. We're gonna have heat. We're gonna have heat. Wire it up, we are still dead. The blowers don't fire. Which they did before the HVAC techs came out. I'm going to slit my wrists, and start talking about just bringing a tech back to the house.
At the last minute we decide to wire the old fan center back into the furnace. We get it back in, fire the pilot light. Turn the thermostat up, and whoosh... the blowers ignite. I stand there looking at them like someone walking the desert for days who happens upon a lake. We are gonna be saved after all. We aren't going to die!
Well... all that is a lot dramatic, but this has been a long horrible, trying situation. Getting information has been incredibly difficult.
So let us recap.
Discovery Quality Service Inc. 3393 Clayton Rd. Concord California. 925-687-9860 were going to charge us practically 700.00 for a part that was perfectly good. <
insert heavy sarcasm> When it didn't fix the problem, they would simply tell us our motor had fried and take the other part out.
Unless specifically requested, I bet they wouldn't even have tested the old part to make sure it was bad. Plus.. I think most people would have just been so excited to have it fixed, they wouldn't have even questioned it.
Now, I don't mind paying a guy to come out to diagnose my problem (which right now is trying not to go ballistic), but what I do mind is paying for them to come out and railroad me into paying for a few unnecessary parts. I also mind that they have you bent over fully lubed because they charge for a house visit, and they count on you not wanting to pay for more than 1 or 2 house calls. Who wants to pay a couple hundred dollars to comparison shop? I also fucking mind paying 1000% markup. I mind paying $165.00 in labor for a part they broke, and to replace a part that would have taken an experienced tech 15 minutes to replace. (It took us less than an hour, and we have no experience at all.)
Don't get me wrong, the first time we put in the fan center it was a bitch, but mostly because we wanted to make sure we were careful with the wiring. The second time it took us about 10 minutes. Yes.. I know they charge an hourly rate, but 165.00 an hour is fucking excessive. I really fucking mind that the reason they do this is so they can sell you a new set-up. And don't give me that bullshit about energy efficiency. Apparently just putting in a new motor makes it quite a bit more efficient.