When we made an offer on our house five years ago the guy who did the inspection told us that we should get a maintenance plan for the furnace because of its age. So, I did the easiest thing possible. I called the number of the HVAC company whose sticker was placed on our furnace since I figured they must know about our specific furnace.
Until last year we have had a maintenance contract with this heating and air conditioning company. The company is essentially the owner of the company and one or two associates as far as I can tell. I say until last year because we did not renew our contract this year. The guy who owns the company and who typically does the maintenance work did not mesh well with Golden, and since she has to handle a lot of this stuff while I am at work, how she feels is kind of important.
I stayed with the guy for a while because I like to have some loyalty to whoever I am doing business with. I wanted to believe that the issues we had with this guy were just due to it being a bad day when the furnace was being maintained. Since her opinion did not change, and since she is usually tolerant of different personalities, I finally got the hint.
On Monday our furnace started making noise, so we called a different heating company to fix it. Given the cost of repair, we are planning to go ahead and replace the furnace. Since the cost of replacing a furnace is relatively high I cannot help but consider that our old furnace guy just lost out on significant business due to something as simple as a personality weakness. It just shows that having a friendly personality can really pay off.
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6 comments:
Did you last week's "King of the Hill"? Hank was going to the same car salesman for years because he wanted to be loyal to the salesman. Turns out the salesman had been taking advantage of that loyality by always charging Hank the sticker price of the car. Hank, of course, didn't know any better.
I don't know why I thought of that episode when I read your blog. I guess it's because sometimes loyality in sales isn't always a good thing for the consumer.
Yeah, I actually was thinking about that episode when I was typing this post.
Hank as the naive guy who didn't realize that you usually don't pay sticker price was hilarious.
His loss!
I argued with the guy about being under a contract and he didn't think we were in a maintenance contract. I ended up being right--he lost the paperwork and I had the paperwork. He always complained about the furnace/laundry room being dirty/dusty. He had poor customer service skills.
Glad you lost that guy. Anyone who offends BB or I doesn't get our business.
Tough luck about the furnace. How bad are they to replace, for future reference?
We are replacing the furnace and the air conditioner, actually, because both are quite old. The furnace is about $1,600 all told. We are replacing the A/C with a heat pump, and that is quite a bit more expensive.
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