Trick to 'cheat' customers, revealed by air conditioner technicians

In reality, air conditioner maintenance, repair or installation, in addition to the salary, air conditioner technicians can also "pick up" millions of dong thanks to their own tricks.

Mr. Nguyen Van Sam, owner of an air conditioner maintenance, repair and installation shop with nearly 20 years of experience in Ha Dong (Hanoi) revealed that the amount of money that is charged depends on each technician, but one thing is certain, whether it is maintenance, installation or repair, air conditioner technicians have tricks to "take money" from customers.

First, "spare" money during installation

Mr. Sam said that installing an air conditioner takes a lot of time and effort, but for air conditioner technicians, in addition to being paid a high salary, this job also allows them to easily "squeeze" the most money from customers.

For example, after the installation is complete, the air conditioner technician will sit down and list a series of payments that the customer needs to make. Of course, the labor fee of 250,000-400,000 VND is a fixed amount that the customer must pay. As for the other fees, the customer often understands that they are the cost of accessories that the air conditioner technician buys for them. However, in reality, that is not the case.

Air conditioner technicians now come up with all sorts of tricks to "squeeze money" from customers (illustrative photo).

Accessories needed for air conditioner installation include copper pipes, electrical wires, drain pipes, insulation covers, insulation cloth, condenser brackets, etc. Accessories are usually calculated by meter, so the farther the distance from the evaporator to the condenser, the more expensive the accessories are.

At this point, air conditioner technicians often cheat on the distance, that is, they use up 4 meters of copper pipe and declare 5 meters to get 1 meter of copper pipe. When the copper pipe has cheated on the meter, the other accessories also cheat on the corresponding meter.

For example: To install a 9000 BTU air conditioner at a distance of 5 meters, it takes 5 meters of copper pipe at a price of 160,000 VND/meter, 5 meters of insulation fabric at a price of 10,000 VND/meter, 10 meters of insulation fabric (must be wrapped around the pipe) at a price of 8,000 VND/meter, 5 wastewater pipes at a price of 8,000 VND/meter, and 5 meters of electrical wire at a price of 18,000 VND/meter.

With the above accessory prices, if you inflate the price by just 1 meter, the air conditioner technician will cheat you out of about 200,000 VND. Not to mention, the type of accessory is copper pipe wire, the price the technician charges the customer is usually 4 times more expensive than the wholesale price at the dealer, the electric wire is 2 times more expensive. In other words, with the above number of meters to install the air conditioner, the technician will make an additional 500,000 VND in accessory price difference.

“The farther the installation distance, the more the number of meters is inflated. Therefore, when installing an air conditioner, in addition to the labor cost, customers are charged an additional 1-2 million depending on the installation distance, which is not too strange,” Mr. Sam shared.

Second, air conditioning repair

Similar to air conditioner installation, when repairing an air conditioner, the technician will charge 50,000-100,000 VND for the repair fee. If replacing, they will charge extra for buying new components. However, air conditioner technicians often use the "trick" of reporting one failure and two failures, reporting a failure even if it is not broken, or causing the failure to happen so that they can repair it for money.

“Repairing air conditioners is easier than installing them, because not all customers are knowledgeable enough about air conditioners to be able to check them themselves,” said Mr. Sam, adding that after many years of working in the industry, he has heard all the tricks that technicians come up with to rip off customers.

The simplest thing is that a customer calls to say the air conditioner is not cool when turned on, and the technician comes to check. It should only be cleaned, checked for gas, and refilled if needed. However, many technicians say they have to check everything and then list all the problems from broken capacitors, dead microcircuits, exposed copper pipes, burnt compressors, etc.

Many times the gas is not out yet but the air conditioner technician thinks it is out and needs to be refilled (illustrative photo).

The repairman did not have spare parts available. If the customer agreed, he would have fallen into their trap. Because, at the store, the technician only had to clean the machine and pump gas, while the other devices did not need to be repaired, but they were still charged for replacement as usual.

“The labor cost is low, but the cost of replacement parts is high. The air conditioner technician only needs to ask for 2-3 replacement parts to be able to steal millions from the customer. The customer hardly checks this because the parts are all inside the machine,” he revealed.

Not to mention, many mechanics also use tricks to check the machine, report a series of broken internal components with replacement costs up to 3-5 million VND, customers who are reluctant to spend money to replace them will ask to buy them at a "scrap" price of only about 1 million VND. If the purchase is successful, they only need to replace the components for 200,000-300,000 VND and then sell them, pocketing a few million VND right away.

Repairing air conditioners, technicians often get more money from customers than installing them. Therefore, before calling a technician, customers should look up the cause online first. For example, why the machine is not cold, why the fan in the hot block is not running, signs of a broken capacitor, signs of a dead microcircuit,... he advises.

Third, air conditioning maintenance

Mr. Sam said that many people think that only installation and repair work is often "cheated", but maintenance is not. However, when doing maintenance, customers are still "cheated" by workers as usual, but to a lesser extent.

Specifically, for air conditioner maintenance, the technician will charge about 150,000 VND/machine. However, when performing maintenance, the air conditioner will have to be pumped with more gas, and this is where the technician can easily get money from the customer. Because, normally, when pumping gas, depending on the level of the machine, the technician will calculate the gas cost that the customer must pay.

“If the machine runs out of gas, it will cost about 200,000 VND to refill the entire tank, and 100,000 VND to refill half of the air conditioner. However, no technician will actually say that the machine needs to be refilled even though it only needs a very small amount of gas,” said Mr. Sam. Just by reporting that the gas is full, the technician can earn 100,000 - 150,000 VND because if the air conditioner is regularly maintained, the amount of gas consumed will only be half or 1/3.

According to VNN