Ok, not exactly. It was actually on my air conditioner, and Geiko had nothing to do with it. My AC crapped out on me last Friday evening, and I couldn't get anyone out to take a look at it until Tuesday. I was at work when the tech came out, and all he did was have my wife turn the unit on so he could listen to it. 'Oh yeah, I can tell what the problem is already. It's a blown compressor terminal. You'll most likely need a new unit which will run about $5500.' Ouch.

Well, being as I don't have $5500 anywhere I can get to without a large caliber weapon, I had my wife send him on his way. As I got off the phone with her, one of the guys who does AC maintenance for the company where I work happened to be walking by. I stopped him and asked if his company did any residential work. He said not really, but sometimes the techs will do some work on the side. He'd come out and see what he could do, and if I actually did need a new unit, he could install one for around $2000. Well, thats still a lot, but its quite a bit better than $5500.

He shows up around 5PM the next day. After about an hour of running a freon leak tester all over the inside of the unit, looking for problems, he cant find anything other than a small leak in a high pressure valve. He replaces the valve stem and fills the unit with freon. I turn it on and he spends about another half hour checking for leaks and finds nothing. The AC works fine. So, I owe him about $1 for the valve stem, and for a couple hours of his time. One hundred dollars and we call it even. :)

The fun part was calling and raising hell with the original AC service people. They refunded the $80 I paid them to come out and lie to me, and offered to come out and do free cleanings for a couple years, but I don't think I want them anywhere around my AC at this point.

To be fair, the second guy I had come out said that the brand of unit I own does have a reputation for blowing compressor terminals, and the symptoms were consistent with that, but there is still no excuse for not running the proper checks on the system before trying to sign me up for $5500.