Yesterday, I called the co-president of "Comfort Energy", Yuka Abbot, at
408-263-3100.She was good enough to listen to what I had to say, which was mostly that neither my fan nor my compressor was working, but it had 24 volts as the contactor was working fine and the capacitor appeared undamaged. I explained the experience tracking down the wrong diagnosis cost me a couple hundred dollars and ten days and that I didn't want a little old lady to have the same problem in the future.
She said she'd have her husband, the VP, Harry Abbott, a former cop, call me, but, instead, they directed E.J. Hansen, the manager of the technicians to talk to me by phone. To his credit, he almost immediately did so.
He was personable, understanding, and said he'd call me on Wednesday to let me know the resolution.
I'm out two hundred dollars plus my compressor is (self) damaged as I was all this time trying to figure out what was wrong with it since they expressly told me it was the bad part. In doing so, I removed the lower heating thermoswitch, which turned out to not have any bearing on the problem (of course, since the entire AC system was working in the first place ... it just didn't have power).
I had taken that part to Marcone (who had never seen one before), and to APED (who likewise had never seen them) and to Appliance Parts on the Alameda in San Jose, who also had never seen it. However, John at Appliance parts kindly referred me to Northaire in northern San Jose who knew right away what it was. (Remember, it was Greg at Northaire who patiently explained to me there was no way a bad fan and bad compressor would be anything other than the capacitor, contactor, or bad power). When I explained the power readings I obtained both before and after the Comfort Energy visit, Greg stopped right there, and said "it's clear as day", you have only one leg of power.
A customer, Jim, a licensed electrician and A/C guy, offered to stop by to help me, and we exchanged calls and set up an appointment because he too said a lot of companies aren't truthful when dealing with air conditioners (which requires licensed technicians).
At that point, I finally realized that this is a 'special' case because we are FORCED to trust the LICENSED people to work on our A/C. Remember, I've talked to a dozen companies by now, and they all clam up when they realize that I'm not a licensed technician. They won't even tell me the price of a compressor! They certainly won't sell it to me. In fact, some expressed surprise that they'd sell me the contactor and/or capacitor!
Anyway, after all this, the problem embarrassingly, was simply that the circuit breaker was bad. There was only 120v at the A/C unit fuses instead of 240 volts. But they CLEARLY (and REPEATEDLY) told me the compressor was bad. They couldn't explain why the fan wasn' working which made no sense to me but I had to trust them as they're the experts, not me. And they're the only ones LICENSED to work on this A/C unit, not me!
Proving that point, unfortunately, I broke the plastic surrounds around that thermoswitch in the process. This bottom plug in simply warms the compressor oil, but now my compressor is likely to fail sooner simply because of the mis-diagnosis of a compressor failure by Comfort Energy.
The end result is that it cost me a compressor component, ten days, and two hundred dollars.
Yet, that's cheap compared to the $4000 they were desperately trying to sell me.
After talking to Yuka Abbott, and to E.J Hansen, I'm not sure which of the three possibilities (well, actually two) are correct:
- I'm wrong and the technician did a good job