Poor Training or Much Worse?
Posted by WPapanek on 08/30/2011
AC not working, service guy said it was either the Capacitor (relatively cheap) or the entire outside unit would have to be replaced for $2000 to $3000. Capacitor did not fix it so he called in another guy who turned out to be the Sales guy. Sales guy said unit was about 10 years old so we may as well replace the entire system for $6000 to $8000.
I thought it was not that old and still under warranty so my wife showed him a receipt left by the previous home owner that showed the unit was only 7 years old. Sales guy told her that receipt was for something else and proceeded to sell us an $8000 unit.
I got home from work and verified that it was the receipt and that it was under warranty (all it does is take a call to the manufacturer with the serial number that was on the receipt as well as the back of the unit). Then they tried to tell me the warranty would be only for the person who bought the unit but that is not correct either.
I called in another company to do the warranty repair but within 5 minutes they had diagnosed it as a bad fan motor that cost $275 to repair. Just looking into the top of the unit you could see the grease leaking out of the fan motor, they didn't even have to take anything apart.
Not sure: 1) why they missed that easy diagnosis 2) why they said the receipt was not for the unit 3) why they didn't know to call the manufacturer with the serial number from the back of the unit to find out if it was under warranty (you don't even need a receipt and Amana is not an uncommon brand) 4) not sure why they said the warranty would only apply to the original purchaser. I called in to find out some answers and someone was supposed to call me back but its been over a week and still nothing.
more