If You Can't Stand the Heat, Don't Come to My House

I don't want to be a whiner, but it is REALLY hot outside.  Why today--the hottest day of the summer so far--did my air conditioner have to break?  Is it some cruel cosmic joke?  Of course, I understand there are many, many worse things going on in the world and I am infinitely blessed, but I just hate being hot.  I don't know that I could have survived before air conditioning came along.  I probably would have been one of those women who always got the vapors and needed my fainting couch.

I digress.  I write this post to vent my frustration with companies who choose to be so greedy at the time people are in worst need of their services and to say that I'm thankful that in this instance I wasn't at their mercy. We happen to have a family connection who will be doing the work for us, but he couldn't get to us until tonight. To find out what was wrong and get the parts, we put in a service call with a national chain.  Said chain quoted $1000.  We thanked them kindly for their diagnosis and sent them on their way.  

The parts necessary to complete the repair as they quoted (I won't get into the fact that we probably don't even need everything they quoted) cost a total of $220. Our family connection has told us these types of repairs take 2 hours or less.  Assuming the national chain can get the parts at a similar price, that leaves roughly $800 for the 2 hours of labor--$400/hour!?!  Even if you calculate in the technician's wages (he probably only gets $15/hour), benefits, workers compensation, liability insurance, etc., I can't imagine it would be anywhere close to $400/hour.  Ridiculous!

I feel better to have vented, and I will close by saying that I am SO grateful we weren't at the mercy of this company.  Thank you Josh!