Ac repair price check

[Cheetah]

Hi Everyone.  

Does anyone on the forum work in the home HVAC business?  I had some work done recently on my AC system and received a very high bill in the mail.  I would like to review and get a second opinion of the charges.

thanks.

[RebelSS]

How much was it, and what did they do, Cheetah?

[Cheetah]

Hey, thanks for the quick reply.  It's a bit to explain, but I'll give it a shot.

Bill is for $725

 

I have four multi-split wall mounted units attached to two exterior condensers.  Two interior units per condenser.   One pair of wall units on the same condenser were both throwing the same error, which I looked up online and indicated to check refrigerant.  This was out of my area of expertise so I called the company that also worked on my heating system in the past.

The repair guy came out on the first day and spent I would say two hours troubleshooting, three max.  After some trial and error he found that the unit was below half on refrigerant and also needed cleaning.  He sprayed off the fins on the unit as well as my other condenser which also had a lot of gunk on the fins.  He found a small leak on the valve that the pressure test kit attaches to, but could not repair that day because he did not have the gear to fully drain it. 

He came back the next day and drained the unit, replaced the valve, and re-filled.  I also asked him to double check the pressure on the other condenser.  This work took about two hours.  

None of this was emergency, outside normal hours or weekend work.  

 

What do you think?   

 

edit with the line-items on the bill.

$130 trip charge and supplies

$205 cleaning and troubleshooting

$310 drain, repair and refill leak.  

Edited August 3, 2016 by Cheetah

[RebelSS]

Hoo boy...split types systems. Those can get very involved....and spendy. I'm a lot more accurate on an exterior compressor system with your typical interior A-coil. But, I do know the going rate from some guys down here is $100-125 an hour, and they wang ya good for refrigerant. Is yours the older R-22? Some places are getting $100 lb and more for it, and it varies widely...the newer systems, too. Ballpark estimates, depending on systems, for leak detection and replenishing of refrigerant can ballpark from $500-1500 bucks, I know that for a fact. If he replaced a valve, plus did all the other work, I guess to me that doesn't sound way out of line...even though I'd flip, too, at that bill.  Bills vary widely from repair places, and where you live, too.  I hope someone has a better answer than mine, but I didn't know what type of systems you have. Let's hope there's a better answer out there, just thought I'd take a crack at it. Just curious, is this a Mitsubishi system?

[jbell1981]

5 hours @ 100+/hour, plus trip charge, plus parts/supplies. It's a lot but I don't think he's over charging. Just about any place would have been around the same. 

[Cheetah]

I have LG units.  It was 410A refrigerant according to the bill.  The unit that measured as he refiled was showing 3.5xx.  I like to learn about things like this so was watching and assisting as much as I could.  I can understand markup because I am in town near Minneapolis, but I would have asked a lot more questions up front if I knew the final bill would be in this price range so as to avoid the sticker shock.  

[rundrave]

sounds pretty accurate to me I had a similar experience on my unit at my home. the stuff in the can that is used to fix the leak is not cheap at that time it was $100 for an 8 oz can. Its held up so far for me and its been 2 years so far I think I even posted about it on here for advice.