6 ms·
> often employing fear tactics and sales quotas to incentivize upsells This already happens. The most common AC repair needed is a new capacitor. It's a $20 pa
by heymijo 2y ago
> often employing fear tactics and sales quotas to incentivize upsells
This already happens. The most common AC repair needed is a new capacitor. It's a $20 part.
Call your dad's business, you probably get a quote for $100-ish and it's fixed in ten minutes.
Call a PE owned shop and they are likely to tell you that your entire system needs replaced. Quote $5-$8k.
Reports like this are already common place, and the roll-ups of former small-businesses in industry like HVAC that the PE people celebrate will only make this worse for customers.
- bluedevil2k 2y agoTry $250 for a capacitor here in Texas - they know you can’t afford to take a few days to shop around due to the heat. What I’ve found works over the years: get the phone number of a few HVAC guys as you encounter them and offer them $50 to come when you need them. They’ll never pull the “you should cal l my employer” because most are contractors who need to buy their own equipment.
- gh02t 2y agoI had a bad capacitor this past summer and ended up having to drive over an hour because the only place in town that would sell me a capacitor was Grainger on the opposite end of [moderately large town]. Everywhere else I called declined to sell me one for "safety reasons". Several did offer to send a tech out to do it for me...
- sidewndr46 2y agoThis is why you call a supply house and not an HVAC company. As long as you aren't trying to buy refrigerant they really don't care.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- fshbbdssbbgdd 2y agoWhen my AC broke on the weekend, I got a capacitor from Amazon that arrived next day.
- gh02t 2y agoUnfortunately Amazon in my area at the time had been taking a week or more for any deliveries. It was really annoying.
- mmmlinux 2y agoIf they have techs they don't want to sell you parts, they want to sell you service. Granger sells parts. Would you call up restaurants trying to buy a raw potato?
- gh02t 2y agoI actually mostly called up HVAC supply places but they wouldn't sell me a cap and offered to refer me to one of their "preferred" service providers. Maybe it's some backdoor colluding in my area, who knows, but yeah I was really surprised they wouldn't. I think I called 3-4 before someone told me Grainger sells 'em.
- bigfatkitten 2y agoIt's pretty common for outfits like that to be "trade only" and not do retail sales at all. Electrical wholesalers are often the same.
- lotsofpulp 2y ago> What I’ve found works over the years: Going to Ferguson.com and ordering a replacement capacitor to have on hand for $30 works even better. It’s literally just turning off the power to the compressor, using a screwdriver to open the panel, unplugging the old capacitor, and plugging a new one in.
- cma 2y agoSeems like you skipped the discharge step..
- HeyLaughingBoy 2y agoPoint taken, but pretty good chance that a blown cap isn't too great at holding a charge anymore.
- cma 2y agoAnd if the capacitor wasn't blown but it was instead a seized motor or something?
- HeyLaughingBoy 2y agoThen why are you replacing the cap?
- defrost 2y agoGeneral debugging of hardware might lead to that. Regardless .. discharge the cap, blown or not. Clear the chamber, even if you removed the magazine and checked it yesterday. etc. The general principles of health and safety are intended to be largely overkill and mostly not strictly required, they're in place for that one time that kills or injures.
- lazide 2y agoJust don’t lick it haha
- metaphor 2y agoSome of the things I've personally encountered are attempts to service refrigerant without first weighing tank, and a claim that R-22 systems can no longer be serviced due to EPA refrigerant ban; I suspect these are very common grifts. Still worse, a brazen attempt to service an older R-22 system with R-410A, which would have completely destroyed a heat pump that I ended up getting an additional 5 years of serviceable life out of (after dismissing that clown on the spot). Other ridiculous mistakes I've had to deal with are incorrect wiring of air handler emergency heat source during initial installation that prevented system from cooling; and on that same heat pump system less than a year later, discovering an improperly secured lug within exterior disconnect box that eventually created enough heat to fry ~6 inches of insulation before failing open and killing power to compressor (in retrospect, city inspector not only should have caught this, but should have required the contractor to replace the disconnect box altogether to remain in compliance with prevailing residential building code). The grift has gotten so bad over the years that a few friends---a professional ME and electrician---have gone out of their way to earn § 608 tech certs[1] to legally purchase refrigerant and have sufficiently tooled themselves up to handle common failure modes. [1] https://www.epa.gov/section608/section-608-technician-certification https://www.epa.gov/section608/section-608-technician-certif...
- heavenlyblue 2y agoHere in the UK I think it takes about 10 days to obtain the certification to be able to install AC, plus the cost of approximately 1 AC unit. Installation costs are about 2-3x the unit price, so it's actually massively cheaper to get certified and install your unit than wait for "the professionals"
- nradov 2y agoCould someone ELI5 why AC capacitors are so fragile? I had one fail last year on a unit that was just out of warranty.
- Log_out_ 2y agoYou can control when a capacitor will blow, by placing it at a certain distance to a heat source. They do not like heat and you can thus determine the lifetime of a device on a bell curve around time * times constant average use. Nasty but legal.
- sidewndr46 2y agoThey aren't. The ones you buy nowadays just aren't engineered to last.
- gh02t 2y agoMost are electrolytic for practical reasons including cost and available capacity+voltage rating. Electrolytes in the capacitors dry out in the hot weather as well as other things like other components going bad and drawing too much current, both of which cause further overheating. Overheating makes the electrolyte dry even faster (making the capacitance plummet and resistance increase, i.e. stop capacitoring) and generate gasses (=>swell/pop). Tldr hot weather is hard on them. They have a finite lifetime and suffer most when you need the AC the most.
- trq01758 2y agoFor AC these units use non polarized, oil-filled metallized polypropylene film capacitors. But overheating is a problem for them, as it is for electrolytics.
- Modified3019 2y agoIncidentally, most repairs to an HVAC system are quite self serviceable. The channel https://www.youtube.com/@WordofAdviceTV/videos https://www.youtube.com/@WordofAdviceTV/videos has saved me a lot of money. On a complete tangent on the topic of “home maintenance you should know”, hot water tanks should be purged yearly (to get rid of the debris collecting on the bottom), and have a sacrificial anode rod to stop corrosion and should be replaced every ~3 years (magnesium) or ~5 years (aluminum)
- mordero 2y ago> hot water tanks should be purged yearly (to get rid of the debris collecting on the bottom) Note that this is only the case if you have been doing this already from when it was new. It isn't necessarily a great idea to try to purge on an older water tank since the valve can start to leak if you open it and it hasn't been used in a long time.
- avgDev 2y agoI've had people come out and look at my furnace because it wasn't turning on properly. They looked at it for 5 minutes, told me it's too old and needs to be replaced. It needed a $5 sensor which I replaced myself after doing some basic testing. There are so many grifters in the trades. It is so hard someone honest, that is going to show up on time and do the job. I almost want to start or buy a construction business.
- TheSleeprAwakns 2y agoIf you did that then how would Jira cards move across the board?