Trick of air conditioner maintenance technician in hot season

If not careful, consumers can easily fall prey to the "tricks" of air conditioning repair and maintenance workers...

Avoid testing

Firstly, the technician often arrives later than the scheduled time to create a sense of impatience and haste for the homeowner so that the air conditioner repairman can easily commit fraudulent acts. During the repair process, they may ask the homeowner to get them something to replace, repair, or check the air conditioner. Therefore, do not be careless and give the air conditioner repairman the opportunity to take advantage of your absence to pretend to have replaced or repaired the air conditioner when in fact it has not.

Reason for failure

If only maintaining and cleaning the air conditioner, the technician will not be able to "pick" the customer's pocket, so they need to find reasons for the failure to make money. The failures used by the technician are cracked gas-supply copper wires, unsafe copper wires that need to be replaced, leaky gas valves or dead circuit boards, damaged capacitors, etc. To prevent this, you need to learn about air conditioners, and if you are not sure, do not rush to let the technician repair or replace them right away.

This is considered the most commonly used trick when replacing copper wires and pipes. For example, if you buy a new air conditioner to install without having a copper wire to conduct gas, the air conditioner technician will buy and install it. The actual length is only 4m, but when calculating the price for the number of meters of copper wire installed, the air conditioner technician will calculate it as 5m. To avoid being cheated by the technician, you must check this measurement again.

Overcharging

Buying at a low price but then saying a high price when installing to get the difference is also a trick of the technician. For example, to replace a capacitor, the technician can charge up to 400,000 VND including 150,000 VND for labor and 250,000 VND for the capacitor. But in reality, the price of this capacitor is only 30,000 VND. Therefore, to avoid being "cheated", consult the technician for a clear price before replacing or ask the repair company to provide you with a price list.

Suggest to bring back for repair

Many technicians offer to bring the machine or damaged part back to the company for inspection. For example, the technician will report that the circuit board is damaged and needs to be brought back for inspection and give two scenarios: if the circuit board still runs after charging, it will only cost you money to repair, but if the circuit board does not work, it will have to be replaced. However, with this trick, many technicians not only extort more money from customers but also change the power supply to a poor quality or take away the sensor capacitor... Therefore, in addition to choosing a reliable unit, you also need to monitor and grasp the error and repair results.

Pump out gas

This is the most common and widely used trick. The air conditioner's gas will still be there or will run out, not depleted and need to be refilled as many technicians explain. When the gas is completely leaked, the technician needs to find and fix the source of the leak, then refill the gas.

Normally, air conditioner repairmen will cheat like some gas stations do. For example, you buy 50,000 for gas but in fact you only get 35,000 - 45,000 for gas. Therefore, you need to check when pumping gas, normally the process of charging gas for air conditioners takes about 10 minutes, the standard for fully charging gas must be close to 0.8. In particular, you need to pay attention because air conditioner repairmen after charging gas often use a soldering iron to re-wire the copper wire carelessly, so after a while, the machine leaks gas again. After that, the machine falls into a state of poor operation because the gas has leaked out through the hole.

In case the repairman reports that the air conditioner is out of gas, you should pay attention to check the following points: If the gas is leaking or if there is a lack of gas, the machine will not cool well, and there will be frost on the small pipe valve of the condenser. The operating current is lower than the rated current written on the machine. In some air conditioners, when there is a lack of gas, the control board will automatically turn off the machine after about 5-10 minutes and report an error on the condenser.

To properly maintain the air conditioner

Like humans, after a long period of operation, machines also need to rest and be maintained to be able to operate well in the following season. Therefore, before each peak season, they should be maintained to ensure operating capacity and avoid wasting electricity during use. In Vietnam, especially in the North, the demand for air conditioning in the summer is particularly high, so the best time for maintenance is March - April (if you "skip" this occasion, the maintenance services will not be as expected, the price will increase in both labor and accessories). The number of maintenance times will depend on the environment where it is used and the frequency of use during the year, but according to refrigeration experts, air conditioning should be maintained 1 - 2 times per year.

The air conditioner maintenance process will include cleaning the machine (dust filter, fan blade compartment, condensate membrane of the cold block...), checking the external condition of the hot/cold unit (machine shell), electrical connections, checking the air circulation capacity of the hot/cold unit. In addition, the compressor will be checked for coldness, noise, unusual vibrations, gas pressure in the machine and compared with the allowable value. However, you can completely do these simple steps at home without the need for maintenance services.

To ensure safety, turn off all power to the air conditioner, check the indoor/outdoor hot and cold units to make sure there are no obstructions inside the machine (bugs or dead insects).

Check that the electrical wiring is not connected, short-circuited or damaged.

Clean the dust filter for both the condenser and evaporator according to the disassembly steps in the manual. Sometimes the air conditioner's poor performance can also be caused by clogged dust filters. Remove the evaporator cover, you will immediately see the dust filter system, you can easily remove this membrane, shake it clean and can wash and dry it because it is made of plastic or special fiber so it can withstand water and soap. The same goes for the external condenser, outside the fan and compressor is a protective mesh system, although sparse, it should also be cleaned regularly to avoid unwanted obstacles, reducing the capacity of the machine. Finally, close the power circuit breaker, turn on the machine to test run. If you detect strange noises, you need to turn off the power to find the cause. If you cannot solve it yourself, you should ask for help from a professional technician.

In case of hiring workers

According to the recommendation of refrigeration experts, if you do not maintain it yourself at home but need a service, when doing it, the homeowner needs to closely monitor the process of disassembling and assembling the product's equipment to avoid the situation of exchanging items, damaging the equipment or just cleaning, not checking the parameters but still charging for labor. Regarding the issue of gas refilling, you must know exactly how much gas is left in the machine before deciding whether to refill or not. This index cannot be assessed by feeling or time of use but must use a gas pressure gauge with a display.

According to DSPL