Fan motor failed in exterior air conditioning unit. It was 100 degrees outside on a Friday morning and we were expecting company on Saturday. I had to go to work so my wife called around and the first place she called, Jon Wayne, said they could send a tech that afternoon. Perfect! Wife advised dispatcher what was wrong, so they would be sure to have a spare motor on the truck.
Tech arrived timely, after a friendly phone call advising that he was around 30 minutes out. (That call gave me a chance to return home from office.) Tech was polite, friendly and knowledgable. I took him right out, pulled off the covers, and showed him the failed fan motor. Showed him that the contactor was providing 220v to fan motor and said, can he replace the motor?
Tech said he needed to check some other things so I gave him a few minutes with the unit then returned. He showed me where the contactor was wearing and suggested that I might need a new contactor. Yes it is an older contactor but I politely declined and asked if he could replace the motor. He said he needed to see the interior unit (furnace with a/c coil above). I could not see why, but said okay.
Tech examined interior unit. It is obviously an older unit. He pointed out rust on furnace heat exchanger, suggesting that using the furnace in this condition might be dangerous. Then he suggested that the fan coils might be dirty. I stopped him from digging deeper and said look, I know this is an older unit. It will have to be replaced at some point. But we have an emergency. We are expecting guests tomorrow and we need a fan motor immediamente. I asked him again, can he change the fan motor? He said that it would not be possible to have a warranty on the motor if my coils are dirty. I told him fine, I would assume the risk on premature failure of a new-in-box motor, and asked how much. He said, $540. I said, I am prepared to go as high as $350 for a new $80 motor and I can get you back on the road before your engine is cool; what do you say? He looked through his pricing guidance and said the best he can do was $480. I asked, how much do we owe for your time so far? He said $29. I paused, hoping that he would propose a reasonable price for the (unwarrantied) motor install. He said nothing further so I said okay, $29. My wife wrote him a check.
Tech was consistently polite and clearly knew his stuff. But he wasn't really very interested in replacing the fan motor, which is what we had called for in the first place. It was obvious that he wanted to sell us upgrades or replacement of the system.
Bought a new motor over the counter at Morrison Supply. It cost $67 and took me less than a hour to install. (Probably more like ten minutes for an expert). It was a bit of a hassle. But, as I had told the Jon Wayne rep, we were having company the next day and needed to get the system back up and running!
They walked away from a $350 sale that probably would have provided a $200 margin, even with tech time,
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