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Search and
you will find.
This
page has ruffled more feathers than a fox in a hen
house.
Point 6 is particularly hard hitting. To summarize that
point: Maintenance agreements are designed to benefit the
contractor first and the homeowner... I don't know... tenth?
While I do my best to wax eloquent on the subject, Google
has managed to illustrate that truth better than I ever
could.
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A
search for "HVAC service agreement" brought back
some interesting results. At the top was an Atlanta based
contractor that appears to be a master in the way of the
consolidator. (That was not a compliment.) Number two was the feather ruffling page.
Number three was the premier marketing firm that caters to
HVAC. Google's excerpt read as follows:
"HVAC
Maintenance Agreements are the simple,
automatic way to put hundreds of thousands of dollars in..."
Naturally curious I clicked the link and kept on reading:
"A good HVAC Maintenance Agreement program is a
cash-producing 'system' that you throttle up and down as
needed to keep your workflow healthy all year long."
If you keep reading you will find some alleged homeowner
benefits. However, those benefits are highly questionable
and they're clearly not the point. It's all about the coin,
period. I'm not opposed to making said coin. But I am
opposed to selling a one size fits all program that
sacrifices the homeowner's true needs on the alter of
profitability. |
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Turning $49
into $4,900
Ads like the one
to the left are ubiquitous. Whether it's duct cleaning,
carpet cleaning or something else they all promise the moon
and the stars for an absurdly low fee. |
This particular ad promises to clean "Unlimited Vents to a
Single Furnace" as well as "FREE" dryer vent cleaning,
deodorizer and system checkup. All that for a scant $49! Who
wouldn't call? Anyone who knows if it's too good to be true, that's who. Think about it. Fifty bucks
isn't even enough to pay for travel time and gas to your
home, much less several hours of work there.
I normally take no pity on those
who respond to such ads. Those who throw out their thinking
caps deserve what they get. However, in the winter of
2010 an elderly lady I later met responded to that very ad.
She can't be blamed for the effects of aging. The duct
cleaners on the other hand most certainly can be
blamed for, if you'll excuse the pun, taking her to the
cleaners. By the time they
were done with her she had purchased a brand new duct system for five grand.
A relative found out about
it after the fact. She had me check the new duct system to
make sure it was installed right. Then she went after the
duct cleaners. Apparently the duct cleaners did not pull a building
permit. Nor do they have a signed contract. From what I
understand of the law, those two facts give her a very good
chance of getting her mom's money back. I hope she does! |
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A lie told
often enough...
It was the
mid-nineties when I heard my first and last "Tech Talk
Tape". The tapes were the brainchild of
Contractor
Success
Group, one of the
trailblazers in turning this trade towards corruption.
In those tapes repairmen were taught to sell new furnaces
and air conditioners when a homeowner's existing equipment
was as little as ten years old. It was for the
customer's benefit that we do so.
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My then coworkers and I didn't
believe it for a second, but the propagandists persisted. If you're to believe
The News, it appears that the propagandists have won the
argument. Apparently even equipment manufacturers are
now admitting they make such lousy products that you should
replace it all after just ten years:
"...many (contractors) have typically followed
manufacturer recommendations to replace equipment that
is over 10 years old."
(emphasis added)
First, I find it interesting that the article writer seems
to think it's the contractor that gets to decide what to do
with your money. Second, there is no such boilerplate recommendation
from manufacturers, only corrupt contractors. No
manufacturer is dumb enough to sell you on the quality of
their equipment and then turn right around and tell you to
replace it a short ten years later. This is just another
case of a
lie told often enough.
Michael Moore has no direct connection to any of this, but
he is a kindred spirit. As I wonder about Mike, I
also wonder if
the HVAC propagandists that promote this drivel actually believe
their own press. Or are they self-aware enough to know they're doing it for the coin? Or are they just nuts? ;^)
The answer is probably a little bit of all three. :-) |
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An F5
tornado on wheels?
At about the
1:40 mark Greg from McAfee Heating & Air Conditioning
informs us that their truck mounted duct cleaning vacuum
creates wind in excess of 300 miles per hour inside the duct
work. Any long time resident of
tornado alley will tell you that 300 mile per hour winds
cause involuntary
relocation of car and home.
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Of course it never occurs to the
talking heads at
WDTN to
question such outlandish claims. If they'd put the hair
spray down long enough to do some real journalism, they'd
find out that the vacuum needed to create a 300 MPH wind would
damage the
flex duct found in many homes. They'd also realize that
the "blizzard of dust" at the 2:00 mark is a sales gimmick.
And more importantly, they might even learn that duct
cleaning is a scam
no matter who does it. |
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Three Kinds
of Lies
They're not sure who came up with the famed phrase, but
it's timeless. Whether it's your local politician or your
local HVAC contractor, most spout statistics with glee in
hopes that you'll believe.
You'd think by
now I'd have heard it all, but this one was new to me. According to the folks at
Lucky Duct LLC, burner
rollout kills more people with carbon monoxide poisoning
than does cracked heat exchangers. As you might have
guessed, that statistic has no credible source. It's not
even loosely plausible. |
The burner rollout in their video is also called delayed ignition. The pilot sits between two of
the
burners. One or two of them are lit directly by the pilot. The
rest are lit by
crossover burners. When one of the crossovers has a problem
the burners beyond that point won't light right away. As a
result gas builds up and finally ignites, creating a split
second rollout of flame. It certainly looks
dangerous. However, it's impossible for the flame
rollout they show you to cause carbon monoxide poisoning. In
fact, at the end of the video it looks like all six burners
are operating normally.
What's worse is the follow-up
video of their solution. Delayed ignition is
usually caused by dirty burners. Sometimes it's caused by
worn or damaged burners. Whatever the cause, you don't fix
it with a duct cleaner's vacuum! That could actually make
things
worse. Watch for
yourself as their vacuum pulls debris across the
burner manifold and, potentially, right into the
burner orifices within. The furnace's automatic
gas valve may not take too kindly to their vacuum either. It has relatively thin membranes that were not
designed to handle that kind of air pressure.
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It's
Hard To Stop A Trane®
wholesaler from reaming you.
Making fun
of Trane's slogan is neither creative nor original, but
it is appropriate. They sell some of the highest priced
equipment and parts out there. What do you get for all
that extra dough? Lots of commercials, a nice
paint job and lousy customer service. In the case
of the part pictured to the left, I got only the latter. |
If you can't quite make
it out, that's $68.77 I paid for a little bit of metal and
overnight shipping. I wasn't supposed to need the part
pictured for the compressor I replaced. Two different parts
specialists said as
much. However, once the compressor arrived I found out
otherwise.
It was hot and my customer had already waited two weeks for
the compressor, four days of which were due to unexpected delays on
Trane's part. Waiting on that part gave my customer yet another night of difficult sleep. You'd think
the wholesaler would be a little apologetic, but no. There was no offer of
free overnight shipping, no concern, nothing.
Poor customer service is par for the course in the wholesale
end of this trade. What galls me about Trane is how they
charge so much more and give so much of the same as everyone
else. Well... except for the attitude. Their air of
superiority is head and shoulders above the competition.
It's definitely hard to stop that.
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With
interrupt this infomercial
with... an infomercial.
After enduring
the
latest edition of thinly veiled press releases
reformatted into "news", I finally stumbled upon
something substantive - or so I thought. But alas, it
was not to be.
An article
titled "Investigating Furnace Failures, The Know-How to
Inspect Heat Exchangers Can Save Lives" certainly sounds
promising. But after reading what is ostensibly an
educational article for the service and maintenance section
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the magazine I
learned: 1) Furnaces can be dangerous. 2) I need to pay
the author big money to take his class. That's ten
minutes of my life I'll never get back.
There's nothing
wrong with selling your wares. I'm sure Ellis puts on a fine
class. But to present over 1,800 words of useless fear
mongering as anything other than an unpaid commercial is
beyond me. It's also business as usual for the so called
news.
Tony up above
has nothing to do with this of course, other than to say he has more
class. At least he paid for his commercials and gave
us something mildly
entertaining in the process.
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Sew the
Seeds I
Few homeowners understand the
importance of good
installation practice. Nor do they realize that the
negative effects of a bad installation can take years
to manifest. When a homeowner's HVAC equipment fails too
soon they most often blame the OEM for making shoddy
products. Many contractors blithely go along with that
belief. The little known truth is that in many if not most
cases the seeds of that failure were sewn the day it was
installed.
The furnace to the left is
one of many examples. It was roughly ten years old when I
came across it in August 2010. It's grossly oversized for
the home. That resulted in overheating which ultimately
cracked the collector box (circled red).
It took ten years to
manifest, but the installing contractor's decision to
install a grossly oversized furnace caused a $500 failure. Many shops would've charged more
than $500. A smaller furnace would have
served the home fine; would have been a littler cheaper; and
wouldn't have needed this repair. |
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The horizontal
furnace to the right is a much more expensive example what a
bad installation can do. It was about 11 years old when I
came across it in March 2009. The installers left the
cooling
coil completely unsupported (silver box). That
eventually caused the furnace to tilt to the
left (beige box). As a result the secondary heat exchanger couldn't
drain properly. It eventually rusted through (circled red).
Manufacturers
cover their heat exchangers for 20 years or more, but not in
the case of improper installation. Without pressuring them
one way or another, I gave the customers the option to
repair or replace. They chose to spend $5,000 to replace.
All that because the installers didn't spend $50 worth of
time strapping up the cooling coil when they installed it. |
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Big brother
invades your thermostat.
Due to public
outcry they've
backed off requiring mandatory
control, but don't
think for a moment that the CEC has given up. Thousands of
PG&E customers have voluntarily given PG&E the
ability to adjust their thermostats during peak usage. I
have no doubt that the day is coming when optional will
indeed be mandatory. |
This is our government at work. They create a crisis and then
demand more control of our lives so that they can supposedly fix it. For decades the state has allowed special
interest groups to stifle the building of new power plants.
Now they want to remotely control your thermostat in an
effort to address the shortage that they created in
the first place.
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Update: PG&E has upped
the ante. Not content with giving away run-of-the-mill
thermostats like the one above, now they're taking our
money (owner, renter and those without central air alike)
and giving select homeowners state-of-the-art touch
screen thermostats. Like most PG&E incentives, this one
takes from those with less and gives to those with more. |
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Two so
called insiders get taken
to the cleaners and like it.
The press may be
free, but it's not necessarily smart. In his
8/1/06 column
titled "Breakdown: Good service saves the day."
Michael Weil, editor-in-chief of
Contracting Business, recounts a friend's story of so
called good service saving the day. His friend is a
supposedly knowledgeable fellow who works in this industry.
And they both applaud a typically sad story of
contractor incompetence and corruption. |
Every summer thousands of air
conditioners breakdown because of bad capacitors. The
capacitor (pictured right) helps the air conditioner's
motors to run. Replacing a bad capacitor is usually a
simple repair that takes less than an hour. But since the
failed capacitor causes the motor to stop working, it's not
hard to convince a customer that the motor itself is to
blame. If that motor happens to be the compressor then the
customer is often persuaded to buy a whole new air
conditioner. That's thousands of dollars flushed down the
drain for a part that costs less than $20 wholesale.
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That's the exact scenario
played out in Weil's column. His friend was having a summer
party when the air conditioner broke down. As with all big
time contractors who know how to put on a good show, their
contractor showed up lightening quick and impressed by
putting on shoe covers to protect the customer's carpet.
Then this same technician took three hours to
diagnose a bad capacitor! What's worse is that their
technician claimed that the part would have to be ordered
and would take a long time to arrive!
You need just a little knowledge
to appreciate my exclamation. Capacitors are as common to
this trade as are feathers to a chicken. I have a couple dozen of
them on my van right now (capacitors that is, not chickens
J). There is no OEM run capacitor
whose function I can't replicate on the fly. And they're
virtually always a snap to diagnose. In other words, I would
have had Weil's friend's air conditioner running long before
the party was over. Instead Weil's friend had a salesman at his
home the next day. The salesman wore shoe covers too. So did
the installers that showed up a week later to install a
completely new system. Three cheers for shoe covers.
The only thing Weil's friend
had going for him was that his air conditioner was old and he
might have replaced it soon anyway. However, big
purchase decisions should made by the customer and not
forced by an incompetent and/or crooked service technician.
Sadly this situation repeats itself thousands of times every
year. That Weil actually published an article
praising it is at once astounding and to be expected.
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Forbes
ranks S.F. as the 15th most expensive place to heat a home.
Even with
relatively mild winters compared to the Midwest, I'm sure
you have no problem believing SF ranks in the top 20. What
you may not believe is their estimated average
heating cost for a typical home of just
$500 annually. Many of you pay two and three times that
much. I certainly do. |
The lesson to take from this is that projections, averages
and estimates are generally suspect and often worthless to
any one individual's situation. Its those same worthless
averages, though decidedly more inflated, that many HVAC salesmen use to convince you how much
a new high end system
will save you. Web pages like
this
one are highly inaccurate at best. They're willfully misleading
sales tools at worst. When an honest salesman looks at
your specific usage and crunches real numbers he
often finds that even with a $1,500
yearly heating bill, that brand new furnace may only save
you two or three hundred a year. That's nice, but in
and of itself it's not a compelling reason to buy a new
system.
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A Special
Breed
That's the
rather euphemistic term that Mark Skaer, senior editor of
the so called news,
gives
duct cleaners. He manages to
admit the truth that the
alleged benefits of duct
cleaning are completely
unproven.
But rather than question their ethics, he marvels
at the industry's attempt to legitimize the hollow practice.
Such thinking is as mixed up, or "special", as our friend to
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Fully stocked
vans?
This picture
illustrates nicely something I've noticed for years.
Some of the most sparsely outfitted vans come from some of
the biggest companies. There's a lot of room in there for that new
furnace you'll be pressured in to. But the parts and tools
needed to provide good service often goes missing, that is...
unless they get a flat. |
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To be fair, we don't know what
this particular van is used for. The point here is not to
lampoon this company or van. We don't
know the facts behind the
picture. However, believe me when
I say that a lot of "fully stocked" service vans from
multi-million dollar companies look nearly as empty as this one.
Update: I've seen CB's
Tools of the Trade page before, but this is the first
time I've seen a contractor
publicly assign a dollar value to their truck stock.
$1,000 worth of parts is, in my opinion at least, pretty
sad. It should be a multiple of that. Fast service means
having the part now, not tomorrow.
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"A free press
(release) is the unsleeping guardian of every other
right
(ful sale) that
free (sales)men prize."
If you think my adulteration
of Churchill's quote is offensive, it's nothing compared to
what BNP Media has done to the word "news". It seems like
there's no worthless product, sham service or corrupt
business practice that they won't rubber stamp. The dearly
departed infomercial king was a paragon of virtue in
comparison. Unsupported
accusations are cowardly at best and malicious at worst. The support will follow on this
page soon enough. If you're impatient then just pick up a
copy
and see for yourself. It's enough to make you think
Mays
went into publishing. |
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