COOL AGAIN ~ at about 12:30 yesterday I got a call from the gate from someone with a heavy Mexican accent. It was my A/C guy who could not get through the gate and could not understand my instructions when I told him how. It took him another 20 minutes but he got in somehow. I won’t bore you with the dialogue we went through getting him started on the job. He knew enough key words and phrases about his work to get it done, but anything else and he didn’t speak the English. He did make darn sure right off the bat, by pointing at the figure on his work order and saying you pay-you pay, that I understood he had to leave with my money. He seemed to know his way around my air conditioner and I left him alone to do his work. He started about 1:00 p.m. and was finished and had the A/C running by 4:30 p.m. and stayed around another half hour to make sure it was running right. I wrote him a check and sent him on his way. Then I closed up the house and set the thermostat on LOW and waited. It started cooling down right away, but it took until about 1:30 a.m. before it was down to 72 degrees as confirmed on one of my pee breaks. My wife the forgiving soul that she is, when the work was done, started bugging me about not getting them into trouble with my complaint letter. She said they were probably a mom and pop business and just trying to get by. Well mom and pop have been in business here for 15 years, have a nice advertisement in the phone book and a very nice website. I think mom and pop are getting by alright by hiring bubble-gummers to run the office and Mexican labor to do the grunt work. When the A/C guy checked my ID before accepting my check I was thinking, “This guy probably doesn’t even have a green card”. Well, in the category of “All’s well that ends well” I’m not sure what to do next. The cost of staying cool for ten days cost about $500.00. We spent money on fans, extra gas for driving around in our air conditioned car, cool treats at various shopping malls, two movies and 4 sessions of Bingo. Not to mention eating out in food courts and buffets because it was too hot to cook at home. The water heater guys socked us for $605.00 out of pocket charges for things that were not covered by our warranty and the A/C guys got us for $450.00 in out of pocket expenses. It seems the fine print in my warranty contract that says “some expenses may not be covered” this give the contractors carte blanche to tack on any extra charges they feel that they can get away with. Having said that, we did pay a lot less than we would have without the warranty, but I still don’t like the idea that the warranty people allow this price gouging to go on and that they assign companies like the one that repaired my A/C who have no concern for the well being of their clients and that they would neglect them and put them through ten days of hot hell waiting for their A/C to be repaired. So, I guess my beef is mostly with the warranty company. When my head clears enough to finish writing my letter, I will take the fight to them. Thank you all for your concern during the past ten days. You are good friends. I hope you all have a great weekend. Your cool friend Chuck
Posted on: Sat, 27 Jul 2013 14:24:51 +0000
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