I called Stevenson out in the middle of the night after my AC went out in 100 degree heat. They said it would be $80 for the call, but I had a $30 coupon. The tech checked the AC unit and after less than 5 minutes told me it had a bad capacitor. He said he had one out in the truck, but it was $376 total. That means the part would be $326 when you subtract the $50 service call. Well, I told him I only had a little over $300 and I couldn't pay that much. He messed around with his phone and papers for a minute and then told me he could do it for $306 total. That means the part would then cost $256. Since I could now afford the repair, I had no other choice but to either suffer in the extreme heat the next morning and leave my animals in the house to possibly overheat and die, or pay for the repair. It took him literally less than 5 minutes to install the part, and the AC was working again.
The only problem I had with this was discovering that I had literally just been robbed. I took the old capacitor into the house and searched for it on Google. I found that at least 20+ places had this same capacitor for $25 and shipping was less than $10 on all of them. Yes they were brand new parts.
I became livid that this place charged me TEN TIMES the cost of the part, basically taking advantage of me because of the situation I was in. Yes, I was given a discount but this call should have been $150 tops. I wouldn't mind being charged two or even three times what the part costs because I understand they have to make a profit, but TEN TIMES?
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