The day the air stood still

Do you have a service agreement for your home’s heating and cooling system? I didn’t, until about a month ago. I do now.

That’s because our cooling system quietly stopped working on a 92-degree afternoon. It took a while to notice that the temperature in the house was increasing. Although, unlike my fellow occupant, I wouldn’t mind if the AC was set to 80 degrees, it eventually dawned on me that the unit hadn’t clicked on for a while and the house felt warmer. Pretty soon, 80 was sounding appealing.

So I called the HVAC company that had installed and serviced the twin AC units at our previous house. “Do you have a service contract with us?” asked the cordial woman on the phone. Well, no, but I used to, I replied, figuring that would give me some stroke.

Wrong. “Without a contract, we’re booking well into next week,” she said. It was Thursday and the house was now at 83 degrees, with no breaks in the steamy weather in sight.

No worries, I thought, while reaching out on Facebook to ask for HVAC recommendations. Plenty were offered, with most focusing on three companies. Communicating with them brought disheartening results; the earliest availability was Tuesday afternoon. “If you have a contract with us, you get preferred status on all services,” I was told.

That caused me to wonder why I wasn’t better prepared for this. Purchasing those units for the previous house included two annual maintenance visits per year, access to a 24-hour emergency service team, and discounts on HVAC parts. Other than the annual maintenance visits, none of the other services were necessary.

Our current house (freshly built) came with a two-year warranty on just about everything. We sailed through those two years without needing any repairs, and the third year started out to be uneventful. Although I managed to arrange for a termite contract, it never occurred to me that HVAC, appliances, plumbing, electrical, and other systems might not work forever—everything was so perfect!—and totally forgot about the maintenance visits that kept the former house’s HVAC running smoothly.

Then, a couple of months ago, the three-year-old dishwasher (which came with a one-year warranty) needed a new circuit board. That resulted in having to replace the appliance, as the repair cost was nearly as much. And now, the AC demanded attention.

So, back to the HVAC providers. Two of them put me on their schedules for the following Tuesday, and each promised to let me know if a cancellation opened up an earlier opportunity.

All would have been happy to supply emergency service, which cost around $125 for the service call and even more for whatever extra time might be needed. We weren’t that desperate—yet. Regular billing ranged from $75 to $99 for the service call, increasing by the hour thereafter.

On Friday morning, a neighbor mentioned that our AC unit, unlike the dishwasher, was probably still under warranty. I contacted the house’s builder, who said it was (labor wouldn’t be covered, but parts would be) and supplied contact info for yet another HVAC company who could help sort it out.

“Let me know if they give you any grief,” he texted. Then, he asked, “Have you had the AC serviced each year?” Uh, no, I replied. “Might want to start doing that,” he shot back.

No grief was forthcoming, and the referred-to company to seemed to think a technician could be dispatched sometime Friday afternoon.

Now the day became a waiting game. Would one of the companies come through, or would we have to wait until Tuesday for relief? My phone and laptop were under constant surveillance for emails and texts; I even had to answer voice calls (many longtime journalists, having been tethered to telephones for far too long, really hate to answer phones, especially when the caller ID reports the caller is unknown).

Foreboding was replaced with anticipation when one of the companies sent a text that reported “technician on the way,” complete with his name and a photo, around 3 p.m. After herding the dogs into a bedroom and straightening up the kitchen, I anxiously scanned vehicles entering our street so I could bolt out the door and drag the repair person in before he got away.

I waited, and waited, growing more apprehensive by the minute. At 4:20 p.m., I texted the customer service person to report that no one had shown up yet. She responded by sending another text with the same message but a name and photo of another technician.

Panic set in, as the dreaded 5 p.m. start of emergency service time was fast approaching. As I dithered, a call came from yet another service provider. Her technician was free, she said, and could arrive momentarily.

So now, where there were no technicians, there were two. Panic increased. What if they showed up at the same time? What etiquette could work in that situation?

I got ahold of myself, texted the first company whose tech hadn’t shown up yet, and told it another company was on the way. The second guy arrived around 4:45 p.m., and assured me he was still on the regular repair clock, not the emergency repair clock.

After asking a few questions about the AC unit (including one—where’s your furnace?—which I could not answer; turns out it’s in the crawl space above the garage), he poked around some. Within five minutes he diagnosed the problem: a clogged drain. He dragged a shop vac out of his truck and cleared the drain out. The AC was back.

He casually mentioned that a service contract would likely have spotted the buildup in the drain and avoided the AC shutdown, then threw in a few other benefits. Convincing wasn’t needed; I handed him my credit card, and for an extra $179 on my repair bill (above and beyond a $10 fuel surcharge, an $85 service call charge, and $130 to clean and flush the AC drain line) I had a service agreement.

Which I will renew next year; the price is worth not having to relive a day like this one.