HVAC Service Technicians and the Sales Spiff

This is a very common practice among HVAC contractors.  I don’t have a statistic to quantify this, but my own personal experience of dealing with HVAC contractors for over a decade, gives thought that perhaps more then 75% of HVAC contractors participate in this sales tactic.

Here is how it works.  The contractor sends the service technician to your home to perform a necessary repair.  For example, you have called for service because your air conditioner is not cooling as much as usual or has shut down.  The service technician shows up and diagnoses the problem.  You are told that it appears that a ???? has overheated and this has caused the ???? to fail.  He informs you that a repair will “probably” (leaving you to wonder if it will cost more) cost you $$$$ and will take possibly three days to get the parts and to come back to repair your unit.

You are now left with the thought that it will be DAYS!! without air conditioning.  Your spouse will not be happy.  Your kids will not be happy. And the cost of that repair was really high!!

The service tech offers an alternative solution.  He reminds you that your unit is starting to show signs of age and this decision will need to be made sooner then later, but he thinks that his company has a replacement unit at the shop that if everything works as planned, he could have the new unit installed today.

So you are thinking “The new unit is very expensive, but this nightmare will be over as soon as it is installed.”   Your answer - “DO IT!”

Now, what you don’t know is that the service technician actually received a $100 “Spiff” over and above his regular pay for leading you to purchase the new unit as opposed to the repair.  After the process is complete, the tech sits down with the owners of the  HVAC business and they do a debriefing that shows that the repair was an option, but that the tech created an atmosphere that lead the homeowner (YOU!) to make a decision that resulted in the contractor actually making a sale instead of a repair.

Now here comes the really bad news.  The burned out ??? that caused the ??? to fail was probably a capacitor that costs the contractor $6.00 and the compressor that failed is fine.  Fail does not mean destroyed, just not working.