Hello,

Today (Sunday, 4/24/16) I was in an emergency situation where some guests renting our house were about to land and come to our house in Phoenix, Az. where temps are starting to rise.

We were doing last minute details when we noticed my 5 year old A/C wasn't blowing very cool and was only cooling down to about 80+ degrees.

Even if it cooled down a few degrees, those temps are WAY too high for me to sleep in, so I could not expect my renters to sleep in it either so I thus felt pressured to get it fixed before they arrived.

Since the A/C was blowing air I next looked at the compressor and sure enough, it was ice'd over which from past issues, usually turned out to be low on Freon.

I always feel anxious about having to making repairs under pressure and especially on a Sunday. The last Freon charge was $385 but they also had to replace something too...about 2 years ago.

Silly me got stressed even at the thought of "It shouldn't be more than a couple of hundred to fix, but what will I do if they try to charge me that much again?"

I did a quick internet scan and saw people complaining about being charged $100 /lb. which worried me. Then just before the tech got there, I saw sale prices for around $20 /lb. and felt more comfortable but didn't make note of details of the source.

The tech, looked at the unit and determined I was indeed needing a Freon charge and if he couldn't find the leak, he could put sealant+dye and it would find the leak plus seal it.

Now i'm feeling better, thinking this can't be more than $100-$200 plus labor.

Then, he came back with a work order that said he would have to replace a capacitor for $302, sealant+dye, $320 and 12 lbs of Freon for $848. Ugh! "Really?!?!...that is way too high" I protested.

Although I balked at it, I didn't feel confident in pressing the issue because I wasn't sure of prices and we had to get it done before the renters arrived and then my wife did an internet search and ran across similar blogs

I saw of people being charged $75-$100 and suggested that it seemed we were actually getting a good deal. I mentioned I saw prices better online and she asked "where? I can't find any", but I didn't pay attention and

now i'm feeling very pressured and frustrated and more than anything, I don't want to have our customer come into our uncomfortable house...they're supposed to show any minute!

With that I relented and decided I would take it up with the company if I can become convinced their prices were way out of line.

Now that I have had time to search, I found this and came to these (erroneous?) conclusions:

Amazon has the R22 freon priced staring at $480 ($16/lb) which I would imagine would be no worse than the price the a/c company pays.

With that, I'm thinking even if the gave us a 100% markup, that would be 12 lbs * $32 = $384

Amazon has capacitors that look like the one he replaced for about $15..the very highest price capacitor I found was about $35...so I would think we should not have been charged more than about $70.

The dye seems to be around $60 max, so about $120 with 100% markup. They stated $89/hour labor, so my estimate is about:

$384 + $70 + $120 + $89 = $663 (which I think is still way too high)...however, we were charged $1150 after they gave us a "25% discount".

Can anyone with HVAC experience give advice on this?

I would like to talk to the owner before just putting out a bad review, but in any case, I would like to be armed with more facts...maybe my assessment is distorted or unfair.

Thanks in advance for any clarity you can give me!

Doug

ps, the customer advised the house is nice and cool now, so at least they were shielded from that problem.