Thursday, June 15, 2006

The last AC man

Last night we got our last estimate on a replacement Air Conditioner. Luckily the guy called when he was on his way because I had completely forgotten. My friend, Liz, even asked "don't you have an AC guy coming today", and I said that we had a window guy coming and he was already done. Completely forgot, and of course I got stuck at work late, which meant more traffic.

I was 45 minutes late, but luckily Eric heard the message so he stuck around to meet with the guy. Eric really liked and trusted him and wanted us to show him our previous estimates to see if he could match them. This guy wanted to change out the whole system, so I immediately didn't like or trust him. He said that with their current special, the new furnace would only be $1000 more. (Right because I have an extra $1k in cash just lying about! I need SHOES man!) It was obvious he had already sold Eric on the idea but Eric didn't realize how low our current estimates were and it became obvious that I was going to be a force to be reckoned with. I knew the new HVAC laws and the codes, and after me giving him the stink eye for about 30 minutes, he proved to me that he knew what he was talking about, but I still didn't want to shell out $5200 when all I want is a new AC unit for $2k (our lowest bid). This guy struggled to get his only AC price to match, but couldn't really come close. He called his boss, and they agreed to knocked off some of their warranties that I didn't care about since we WILL be moving in 1-2 years, and they had an available crew TODAY so they would knock off more if we were ready to sign.

It all seemed more and more tempting, and it was 9pm by this time, and I had to get all big and fluffy (cat reference) and say that really we can't sign anything tonight. When we look at each bid, and if they were all selling the same components, all of the bids come close enough that we need to think about it (about $300 difference across the board). It would come down to who we trusted and who was just trying to make a sale. After the VERY nice and knowledgeable man left, Eric and I decided we would go with our lowest bid. I'm going to call them today to ask some final questions and then set up the installation.

PHEW! It better end up being a killer hot summer this year with all the money and pain we are going through to keep that place cool.

2 comments:

J said...

Is it ok if it's hot and hot hot hot where you are, but not so much over here? Because we haven't gotten around to ceiling fans, and new windows, and a more efficient A/C, and really, it's not going to happen for us.

Cherry said...

ok... I'll see what I can do about that.