Expensive capacitor

This morning my heat pump outside unit was not running. Not having any parts and the parts stores closed I called an Air condition service company. Fellow came out and found the trouble as soon as he took off the cover plate. A bad dual section capacitor.

While talking to him I mentioned I knew a lot about electrical work being an electrician in a large company. He asked me to guess the cost of the capacitor. I guessed about $ 50 thinking I was allowing for a good a markup.

Turned out it was $ 369. The call to just come out was $ 89. He did check the refrigerant pressures and temperatures after he go the unit running. That made the call around $ 468. Everything was OK.

His explination for the high cost of the capacitor is that most people don't know about parts cost and they use the cost of parts to offset the service call. Beats charging $ 200 to come out in most peoples thinking.

He did give me a few hints about some things on the unit and said I may want to get online and order a capacitor and contactor so I will have them as that is what fails the most.

I did not mind that charge too much as he had to drive about an hour to get here. I did let him talk me into an extra $ 100 cleaning of the coils and checking out of the unit as I had not cleaned the coils . I put in the system about 9 years ago. Altogether he spent about 3 hours here and probably 2 hours driving, so I don't feel ripped off and have some education on the unit also.

Reply to
Ralph Mowery
Loading thread data ...

Here it's $17.50

formatting link

Reply to
bob_villa

I'm sure that you know that saying, YMMV (Your Mileage May Vary)? A month or so back I had to have our Central AC serviced as it would not start up.

Owner of the company came out - same people that installed the now 10 yr old Lennox system. Removed access plates in the air handler unit checked relays there and finally traced the problem to my wife's incessant dusting and cleaning. Seems she had accidentally, slightly displaced the thermostat unit with timer, etc. from the mounting plate. (really weird since it continued to properly control the heating side). A hand removal and replacement of the thermostat and we were back in business.

As long as he'd come out I asked if he'd give the system a check. He did and measured the refrigerant level and found it within specs as I figured it would be. While inside the unit he spied the capacitor of which you speak. "Looks kinda grungy, let me check it." Out comes the test equipment and "It's on its last legs. Might as well replace it and save a service call later this summer or beginning of next year."

Go for it.

He was out at the house for about an hour all told. The total bill was $98.00

Reply to
Unquestionably Confused

Almost four years ago I had a local HVAC company check out our furnace. The only thing he could find wrong was that the run capacitor's capacitance was down somewhat: 3.6uF instead of 5uF. I asked how much a replacement was: "$80 if it comes off the truck, but if you go to our office you can probably get one for less." Since I had replaced a dual capacitor on the A/C for only about $20 a couple of years previously, I declined to have the capacitor replaced. The new one I bought online cost $6 + $3 shipping.

Perce

Reply to
Percival P. Cassidy

No problem marking up parts a bit but $369 for the capacitor is absurd.

OTOH: If the guy did not itemize the bill and got it running and just told me "parts and labor" $468...I'd probably say "fine".

Assuming the $89 was both travel and labor though...that on the other hand is on the low side.

I know that when I used to repair industrial equipment...no matter what...if the bill came out to less than $500 no one much cared... just so long as I got them up and running ASAP.

Reply to
philo

The problem though is the people who do know the cost of the capacitor, which is inflated 10X+, are going to go nuts. I would have told him no way I'm paying it. And it's also kind of interesting that he freely admits he's taking advantage of people's ignorance. Does this guy change the prices on the fly? Or does he have all the prices on all the parts jacked up 10X? If the latter, what would have happened if you needed

3 parts? It would be a $1000 call that should have been $300? Sorry, but I don't like this guy's business practices. And I'm not swayed by the fact that he had to drive an hour. How do you know where he was? He could have been at another customer 15 mins away and/or the next customer could be 10 mins away. Some customers will be around the corner, some far away. If he chooses to take the call and serve that area, then it should be factored in to the min service charge.

Amazing that could take 3 hours. It does support what I was saying in the thread I posted, that fixing a leak could quickly get very expensive. What would a guy like this do in that case? And IDK how the typical customer can protect themselves from service guys just jacking up prices 10x on all kinds of random parts and screwing them.

Also, you told him you were an electrician up front. I suspect the results here could have been far worse if you were a little old lady.

Reply to
trader_4

Goodness, gracious. I've got to raise my prices, if people really pay this. Thanks for the head up.

Reply to
Stormin Mormon

When you find someone like that, yo keep them. If you ever need a new unit, I know who you will call.

Reply to
Ed Pawlowski

This was not just a one man company,but part of a larger company that does heating and air servicing. They seem to have a standard of 5 levels of repair charges from what he said and on the billing paper. Each one goes to a higher price. They list the 5 levels and what is included on the bill but not the prices. He did what they call a level 2 . That would include the capacitor, contactor, or transformer. That is the 2 nd lowest charge range. It would have interisting to see what the breakdown of charges would have been if he replaced the capacitor and contactor.

He did tell me that the company thinks that they should have a billing charge of around $ 200 per hour to make the kind of money they should after expensives.

While talking with him, he told me the area he lived in and I know that is over an hour to my house, but he probably did not come from home. I asked him what roads he was comming down so I could give him good directions.

This is one of the things that happens at the worse times. Found out about the air not working about 9 oclock on a Friday night. Too dark to look at the outside unit that was not running. No parts places open that I know of on Saturday. Temperature in the low 90's. Wife complaining about being hot and did not want to wait 2 days.

One thing about this fellow is that he seemed honest in what he was saying and not BS ing me.

I do plan on taking his advice and ordering a capacitor and contactor on line . Should be able to get both shipped to me for less than $ 50. That way I will be prepaired if it craps out on me again of a Friday night.

Reply to
Ralph Mowery

Thanks Bob. I plan on getting a capacitor and contactor on line to have around as a spare. The origional capacitor lasted about 9 years, but hard telling how long the replacement will last. Could go 20 years or 2 years.

Reply to
Ralph Mowery

Appliance and HVAC repair ppl can be quite the rip artists.

We had a person sent out from our local Sears mail order center to look at my mom's 5-6 yr old failed Maytag refrigerator. I'd been doing my own appliance repair for yrs, so knew the approx value of many components. This guy wanted to charge $350+ for a evaporator fan motor. He then pitched a deal where we'd only pay $75 for the fan mtr, but slip him a check for another $100.

It was my mom's fridge and repair so I deferredy to her wish to go for the deal. If it had been up to me, Ida had the guy's job! Sounds like the OP stumbled upon yet another douche-bag repairman. 8|

nb

Reply to
notbob

Been there, wore out that t-shirt. It's a major problem in the hi-tech industry.

I usta maintain/operate a lotta hi-tech equipment. One unit had a 10 turn 100K pot go bad. I pulled it and noted it was an insanely heavy-duty component. Bakelite casing, machined brass end-caps, ball bearings, etc. This sucker woulda survived a drop from the space shuttle!

I went to our local emergency electronics outlet (Fry's) and found a similar potentiometer, only made entirely of plastic and about 1/5th the size/wt of the original. IOW, realy cheap ($10). I compared this with the price of of a replacement part from the equip mfr ($110). I decided to go with the OEM part, despite the higher price. What I got a week later from the mfr was the cheapo plastic Fry's pot at 1000% mark-up! I sent it back and bought the same part from Fry's and saved $100. Ripoff dirtbags!

nb

Reply to
notbob

This is in the middle of North Carolina where the average working mans pay might be form $ 10 to $ 20 per hour.

When I called for service, the woman on the phone told me it was $ 89 to come out and check the problem. Any actual repairs would be extra. Most older men like me are not going to argue too much about the price of things if it will keep their wife happy.

From some of you other postings it seems like you have not been charging the going rate in many areas. I remember when you could get a doctor to come to the house for a couple of dollars (which would be about half of a days pay back then. Now I doubt any average person could get a doctor the the house.

Reply to
Ralph Mowery

OK confess. How much to fix an AC window unit that quits running after about being on for 15 minutes?

Reply to
Muggles

Too bad the OEM part was not really the OEM part.

The best rip off story is one that I read in the paper about 20 years ago. A military electronic unit had a bad diode that could be bought for less than $ 1 anywhere and less if looked around for. As the supply depot did not have any , they went to the manufactor of the equipment. Said they did not have any and the maker of the diodes said they did not have any but would have to make some. I don't recall the price, but it cost them over $

50,000 to make as this is abatch type process and they can't make just one, but have to make over 1000 of them. Just as wanting a piece of cake, you can't make just one piece, you have to cook the whole thing.
Reply to
Ralph Mowery

Not necessarily.

formatting link

I still have a brand new OEM pot, the heavy-duty brass/ball-bearing version. It was sent to me, free of charge, from a large electronics parts house. It was pretty much, "Yeah, we got tons of 'em. Here's one for free." I don't recall if they required a min purchase, as I'd already repaired the mass spectrometer with the cheapo pot.

nb

Reply to
notbob

I have seen this before and tried it, Works fine. I did not use the Angle food mix, but think I just use only Devils food mix as I like chocolate cake best.

Reply to
Ralph Mowery

As a follow up, I got on ebay and did a search and found some capacitors and contactors and have them on the way. Total cost was about $ 35 total for both pieces.

If the thing holds out for a week I should be in good shape on that. Now I have spares , I doubt I will ever have to replace either of those.

All this must be part of Murphy's law.

Reply to
Ralph Mowery

I had to tell customers to >turn >off the AC system when the grass was being cut to keep the dirt and grass from being sucked into the >condensing unit. Most people are smart enough to understand the concept once you explain it and the reason >for it. ^_^

Good hint on turning off the unit while mowing. I don't think I have to worry much about that where my unit is. It is under a deck where the grass does not grow even though the deck is about 8 feet off the ground. From the ends it is about 10 to 15 feet each way and about 6 or 8 feet from the grass on the other side.

Reply to
Ralph Mowery

I realize Ebay has gotten a lotta bad press in the last few yrs. I even quit selling cuz of their tightened rules for small sellers. But! ....ebay may be the way to go. My EZGO golf cart charger went belly up. I supected the transformer and my shop manual testing procedure confirmed it. New transformer? Try almost $700!!

No way I could afford that much, so looked on ebay. I found an older model complete charger that claimed it worked for only $125. More amazing, the fellow I bought it from paid the shipping. This sucker weighs about 30-40 lbs! So far, this unit has been working, fine, for the last yr and I saved almost $600. Go ebay! ;)

nb

Reply to
notbob

HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.