Hotter than Hades…our A/C experience

There is nothing quite like receiving a call at work from the Mr. to inform me that our A/C unit has quit working. As we are a stone’s throw from summer and the temperature just keeps on rising day by day, you go through three initial phases when you hear the words: our A/C is out.

1. Denial. It’s not pretty, as in…you find yourself begging your unit to turn back on, bribing it with nonsensical luxuries an inanimate object could never use since they’re not …you know, alive? And then you realize you’re flattering it, encouraging it, telling it what a wonderful unit it’s been and come on lad, don’t you have at least a few more years in you?
2. Anger. There is no ‘frustration period’, not in the South with these temperatures and this humidity. So you go from pleading and flattering to threats, just like that. Once more, inanimate object…not alive…it has no conscious presence but it doesn’t matter, you find yourself managing not to break your foot kicking the thing as the realization of pending costs, inconvenience, etc kick in. Now it isn’t regret you feel, but as I said, anger. You may find yourself repeating, ‘We’ve only lived here two months. C’mon man!’ …it’s real.
3. Ingenuity. At this point you realize that all of the moping about and frustration doesn’t accomplish anything. It felt good at the time but was essentially useless, wasting energy in a house that’s now 80 degrees inside…and rising. So this is the point where you channel your inner MacGyver, roll up your sleeves and start making phone calls to find a solution to the problem.

And that…that is where our story begins…

During the closing process, we did elect to have a home warranty on the farmhouse that would cover major utilities and appliances for the first year of ownership. While we’ve never needed to use this warranty in the past with previous homes, we knew going into a fixer-upper that it would be foolish not to get it. Lo’ and behold, two months in and our A/C stopped working. Frustrating? Yes. Manageable? Theoretically, yes. That left us with nothing to do but call the home warranty company to alert them to the issue.

At first, things moved quite smoothly. This happened late afternoon on a Wednesday and so they had us call the company they use for heating and air in our area to set up an appointment. Due to the circumstances we’ve undergone, I will actually name them: Bailey’s Heating & Air. A technician was assigned to our unit and scheduled for first thing on Thursday morning. He arrived within his allotted time frame and asked me only two questions: Where is the unit located? Can you turn on the A/C?

Naturally, I showed him where the exterior and interior unit (of which is in our crawl space) were and then stepped inside to turn the A/C back on. I stepped outside and found the crawl space door open and his gloves on the fence but he was skimming through his phone. When I asked what was wrong it was made to sound like nothing serious, an easy fix, he’d just need to retrieve the part from their office. His claim was that the fan motor on the interior unit was shot and needed replacing but as he had other calls to attend first, he couldn’t be back until the following morning to replace the fan motor.

Now you can call me crazy, or spoiled, but I’ve never dealt with a company that comes out to assess your issue and then leaves to go to other calls -before- fixing your problem. This fellow did…but not before requiring a check for our co-pay with our warranty coverage. Once more we endured another day of insanely hot temperatures inside our house…as did our poor dogs. We re-arranged work schedules yet again…because what else can you do?

Yesterday morning he was to be here between 7-8am. The Mr. took the day off to keep the dogs cool and be here to help as needed. At 11:30am I receive a call at work. …the technician never showed. I tried calling him, no answer. We called the home warranty company. Forty-five minutes on hold granted us, ‘There is nothing we can do. We haven’t received his report yet on the issue or your co-pay, so we can’t assign anyone else at this point.”

Fiddlesticks to that!

I immediately had the Mr. call and cancel our check as it seems more and more likely this technician, that did not introduce himself with a name, had no branding on his clothing, on his work truck, or an ID badge, was likely a fraud.

Now as we’ve always had excellent service and success with Freedom Air, I pulled up their number, even though they are not contracted with our home warranty company. When I called them and explained our situation, they changed around a technician’s call order to have someone out within an hour to assess our situation. I went back to work and felt relief, things would be fine now.

Wrong. I’m getting really tired of surprises…

The Mr. calls me at work once more. I was expecting, ‘We have air!’ Instead I received, ‘It’s far far worse than we anticipated.’ It seems as though the technician from Bailey’s Heating & Air never actually did anything to check or look over our unit because when Freedom Air’s technician arrived, the moment he undid just one screw on the side panel, to look inside, water spouted out with a fury. When the side panel was removed entirely he found -four inches- of standing water inside the unit. Every single electrical anything had been fried.

Considering the terrifying cost of putting in a new unit, we opted to try and replace/repair what we knew to be utterly shot. Nearly a grand and five hours later, it still wasn’t working…additional parts would need replacement and potentially the entire unit. So we had two choices, take the gamble and keep replacing things at the risk of still having to shuck it and replace the unit whilst knowing we were spending more on parts/labor than the unit was worth or…just replace it and have air again.

Financially…though painful… and logically, a new unit simply made the most sense.

So we went ahead and ordered our new unit which I am told is being loaded right now downtown and en route shortly to be delivered. Four to six more hours without A/C? If it means I won’t have this problem again, we will sweat it out a bit longer.

Now the real fun begins…haggling with the home warranty company, discovering if Bailey’s Heating & Air is even a legitimate licensed company, and trying to figure out where in the budget I’m slashing to make up for the new $12,000 expense.

Exhausted but hopeful,

Cheers!