Screw You, Furnace Guy

My furnace went out yesterday morning. Its a gas furnace and it would ignite the gas, but it wouldn’t stay lit. I know nothing about furnaces except how to change the filter, and I was certain that wouldn’t help this problem.

So I used local.google.com and found a nearby furnace repair company. It wasn’t a big name company like Carrier or anything- I like to give my money to local businesses, not a national chain. Usually the little guys work harder, have fair prices, and provide a personal level of service that I like. I have had great experiences with local plumbers, for instance.

So this company told me that it would be 139 bucks just to show up and run the diagnostics, which seemed somewhat reasonable to me. They showed up promptly, ran the diagnostics, and then told me that a part was bad. To replace it would be a “level 5” task, and the price of that task was 932 bucks.

Furnace guy was going to charge me 1,071 bucks to replace this.

I told him it was simply too much money to replace an electronic part, and he reluctantly offered me a 200 dollar discount, but that was still too high. I pointed out that a whole new furnace would only be a few thousand dollars more than the price of the part and he gladly tried to sell me a new furnace!

I told him that I would fix it myself. I googled the bad part number, found a supplier that had overnight shipping and ordered the part. With shipping, it was under 240 dollars. So even with the diagnostics I had to pay for, I saved 692 dollars from the price the furnace guy quoted me.

It got down to 60 degrees in the house last night, but it was much warmer in the basement so the family bunked there. The part arrived this morning before I went to work, and it was plug and play. I had to read some really old schematics and troubleshoot some settings, but I had the furnace operating again in under 30 minutes. And my wife thinks I’m a hero. 😀

So screw you, furnace guy. I hope your company chokes on the horrible review of your company and services I posted online.

With the advent of Google, why do people still think they can get away with ripping people off?