Well, hooray for the little guy! We called out the big, ugly, corporate company that had come earlier in the week to service our air conditioning unit. The same one who said it was beyond repair, and wanted to sell us a big, expensive new unit. I had gotten the name of a local guy who has his own small business from a good friend of mine. He had replaced my friend’s upstairs unit last summer. He came out yesterday, after the big company’s guy had left, and after we told him what it was and wasn’t doing, immediately said “let me get my gauges and tools and see what we can do.”. He found the leak and fixed it. Something the big company didn’t offer and never brought up. It’s a temporary fix, but a very acceptable one to us. This guy was treating us like he would his own home, let’s get these people some air, and then we can look and see if they want to replace their unit. Let’s not make them suffer in this heat and make them think they have no options except to buy an expensive new unit from us. In fact, he gave us a ballpark estimate on a new unit, and he was more than a thousand dollars under the “big company” quote.
So, our air was fixed yesterday in about two hours, even though it took 9 hours to cool the house back down. We were able to sleep in cool comfort last night, and got a great night’s sleep compared to the night before. The man who helped us out said, let’s see how it goes, if it is cooling for the next couple of days. We’ll touch base on Monday, he said, and see what you guys would like to do. We’re probably still going to get a new unit, which will mean another long hot day with no AC, but after that, we’ll have a brand new unit. Right now, though, my A/C is running and blowing cool air. It certainly feels better in here than it did at this time yesterday!
Hoorah for small business owners with brains, heart and compassion!