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View Full Version : Is repairman ripping me off on my central air conditioning?


patrick650
Jul 4, 2014, 10:56 AM
My central ac wasn't blowing enough cold air to cool 3-room apartment. I live in Brooklyn NY. When the tech ( hate to call him that) first came he said the system was 40% low on Freon so he would add more to get it within specs. Which he did. He also told me that my unit was 10 years old and I should replace the contactor, which I did. The cost $400.00 for both. The unit worked fine for two days and than the cooling stopped again. I called him back and now he did a leak test finding a leak in the coil. I had the coil replaced. The cost $1290.00. This time the cooling lasted one week. I called him back because he gave me a guarantee on the coil and all the connections. This time he told me that my compresser was bad and needed to be replaced, and since it would cost almost as much as a new unit it would be more efficient to replace the whole unit since this one is 10 years old. So again I did what he suggested replaced the whole unit at the cost of $1800.00. The cooling lasted 3 days. I again called him back because now I had a guarantee on the new unit. NOW he's telling me I have a clog in my supply/return lines and that they would have to be removed and replace with new tubing plus he would have to take down part of my basement ceiling to get at the lines. The cost $750.00 plus what ever it cost to repair the ceiling sheetrock. I told him no way I'm calling someone else. Some of the people I've spoken to said they never heard of the lines getting clogged. Also I found on the internet a solution that is suppose to be able to clean out these lines. Can anyone tell me if they ever had to have the supply/return lines replaced?

Fr_Chuck
Jul 4, 2014, 07:53 PM
10 year old system, it is possible you had all of it wrong. My issue, was why he did not do leak test, first, and just added feon.

And why he did not test lines, when we were putting in new unit.

My unit in Georgia was about 12 year old... and my service man, suggested a new unit, on his first call... I said no, and had about the same run of luck,,

But often fix one issue, another happens on older units