On Monday night, my air conditioning stopped working. The indoor unit was still cycling air, but the condenser (the loud box thing outside the house) wasn't doing anything. It's in the 90s in Florida right now, so A/C is pretty necessary. I called my friend, who used to be an HVAC tech. He said it was likely either the fan motor or the capacitor, and he recommended that I call a technician to come look at it, since they have tools that they can use to diagnose the issue.

When the tech showed up, I tried to direct him outside, since I knew that it was the condenser that wasn't working. But he insisted that he has to check everything. He spent an hour looking at every nook and cranny of the system, and finding something "wrong" with just about everything. He said that the UV light (kills bacteria) needs to be replaced in the indoor unit, and as a result, bacteria was growing. He insisted that I replace the UV light and have the unit cleaned. Ok, fine, but that's not why I called you. Obviously that's not what is causing me to not have A/C.

When he finally got to the outdoor unit, he pointed out that the capacitor was bad, which was easy to identify because the top was bubbled (similar to when a battery "explodes" when it goes bad). No tools required; you can tell it's bad just by looking at it. Ok cool, problem identified. But then he proceeded to say that I needed to change 4 others things as well. He also said that I'm low on refrigerant, but the refrigerant in my unit is now banned by the EPA, so he would have to completely replace it.

When all was said and done, he was pushing me to spend over $15,000 on a whole new unit. Keep in mind, my A/C unit is only 6 years old. They last 15-20 years. He justified this by saying that all of the "necessary" repairs would cost $9,800. He said to do the absolute bare minimum to get it operational again would cost $1,800, and this would only be a temporary fix.

I told him I'll think about it and call back tomorrow. I then proceeded to go to Home Depot, bought a new capacitor for $25, and replaced it myself. It took 10 minutes. No special tools required. A/C has been working fine since.

I'm not super knowledgeable about A/C units, but I know when someone is trying to BS me. This had me wondering, though—what about the people that don't know when someone is trying to pull one over on them? The people that blindly trust that others have their best interests in mind? How many people get talked into spending thousands of dollars on unnecessary "repairs" because they are either too trusting or too scared to try to do the repairs themselves? How many times has this guy gotten $1,800 for a $25 repair?

This HVAC tech didn't do anything illegal. If I had paid, he would have performed the services that he said that he was going to perform. But still, he was trying to scam me. None of what he wanted me to pay for was necessary, and the prices that he quoted me were absolutely absurd relative to the cost of the parts and amount of labor involved. How many other legal scams like this exist?

Many. Too many. Way too many.

People still think that you can catch them offguard due to them being totally ignorant in these things, and I'm the first one to admit it sometimes work. I've seen clients of ours which have absolutely no clue about taxes and which could be fooled easily or could be charged three more times as usual without questioning a thing. We're not scammers though, but the potential to be one is so great sometimes that those with feble minds and zero remorse give in to the temptation.

I will say, however, that sometimes the scammer is just a pawn. This technician maybe isn't doing great on finances because there's not that much work to do or even he has spare parts in stock just like you have videogames on your backlog. He tries to do maintenance works that, even if not necessary, should be done for perfect condition of the machine and he can still make a living out of his profession, because if he has to do just the necessary things maybe he has to give up this job and find something else. And while he could be open to accept another part-time job or things like that, I understand that the current society is killing small and single-person enterprises and they're forced to survive with crumbs.

Even if the above is right, the technician should have offered you all the possible options at a fair price. Not sure if all technicians charge the same or similar amounts for that kind of work, if they do then they totally need to double-check the cost of their services. People still forget that the mouth-to-ear spread still gets you work but they don't seem to care about serving many people but rather how much money they can make by serving just the right amount of people. Even if you think you lost the battle to the big corporations and their resources, you need to see the weak points of your enemy and attempt to counter them to succeed instead of replicating their tactics because this is how things work.

I despise stuff like this. It's why my wife and I have spent years finding and keeping tabs on repair guys that are trustworthy.

Our mechanic will do stuff for free because we bring in our 2 cars for oil changes and repairs on a regular basis. My parents used the same guy and I've known him since I started driving. He's great.

We have had plumbers and HVAC repair guys that we've had through over the years to run maintenance stuff or small repairs and they've always been great. If something is an easy fix they don't charge a full hour or anything.

If there is something we can do ourselves to maintain things or fix them ourselves they've told us what/how to do it.

It drives me insane that people will take advantage of someone when they are vulnerable and desperate for a fix in order to "up sell" or something. Do the work required to fix the problem and be honest about it or find something else to do.

Also, anyone who makes phone calls in order to scam people bug me so much! I can't imagine how much waste there going to indian scam call center garbage. Find a legitimate way to make money!