Crazy service calls

[simpleman]

I get a call this week from a customer that has no hot water.Gas waterheater.we go out and the heater not running and the water is steaming,run it and check operation.
Also while we there she complain that her electric bills are high and the aux heat coming on all the time.Check
operation of heatpump all is well.Explain its been a cold winter.

I get a call last night that she has no hot water again,and she still feel there a problem with the heatpump.
I go there today,and the waterheater running,but the water
is only luke warm.I go check the water meter.It spinning.
I ask are you using any water she say no.I asked is the tentant running any water,Oh he not here he leave every two days for a couple of days.
So I get the key,as soon as I cracked open the door I can hear water running,also I get blasted by the heat.

I found the hot water at the sink running wide open and the
electric baseboard stat up as highest they will go.

Well Mrs Jones there your reason for high electric bills and the reason why you have no hot water or not enough.

She call the tentant that was out of down and he says well you told me to run the water and turn the heat up when I
go out of town.


Then I had one this week and its a call for no heat I get there and the customer open the door,I go in and start my
way back to the heater,I said sir could you turn on a light,he says I only have a couple of lights that are working,nothing else will, not the heat nor the range or
the dryer.So being a all electric home I head over to the panel box and there no 220 have 110 to ground from each leg but no 220.I go outside and the meter is all black and
you could smell the burnt smell that a electric burn puts out.I said to him so with everything not working why did you call me? He says because I had no heat and it was getting cold.

What can you say,all you can do is smile and take the money.

[Milk man]

I had one this week with one leg broken off the transformer.

[icehouse]

I get a call from a pizza parlor, please come and give my unit some gas. The electrician just left after wiring it up and said all he need is a shot of freon. I get there and owner takes me outback and there sitting on two cement blocks is a Copeland 1/3 hp indoor condensing unit. No fan control, no crankcase heater, no cover. Checked unit, suction service valve front seated all the way,liquid service valve mid-posistion, no wires connected to low pressure control? Checked unit and found no pumping action to compressor. Customer says after I explain this "Just shoot it up with Freon it will be okay". Tried to explain that nothing will happen, and he needed a new compressor this was some used junk he bought from some equipment company. He said "go ahead and just shoot it up". I just collected a service charge and told him call back the idiots that he bought this from.

[karsthuntr]

I had a customer call me and say a/c not working, they just replaced t-stat and now can't get it to work.

I get there and she shows me old t-stat (T87 w/ heat only subbase). I pulled new stat (Hunter) and only 2 wires through the wall. I went to the basement and there is no evap coil or anything.

"Miss you never had a/c". She said "I thought putting a t-stat on with a cool switch would make the a/c work"

I just walked out laughing and putting her on are "No Service" list. I don't want a stupid customer.

[ice machine undertaker]

Had to be a blonde

[The Penguin]

upstairs and downstairs

[a\c don]

Originally posted by karsthuntr
I had a customer call me and say a/c not working, they just replaced t-stat and now can't get it to work.

I get there and she shows me old t-stat (T87 w/ heat only subbase). I pulled new stat (Hunter) and only 2 wires through the wall. I went to the basement and there is no evap coil or anything.

"Miss you never had a/c". She said "I thought putting a t-stat on with a cool switch would make the a/c work"

I just walked out laughing and putting her on are "No Service" list. I don't want a stupid customer.

Thats golden.

[TB]

This wasn't a call, but I had a roomate once that gave me a 3/4 ton window shaker a/c unit. He said that when he got it home to his apartment (he lived in at the time) he set it on the kitchen table and plugged it in. He said cool air came out one side, but hot air came out the other, and it just seemed like the room kept getting hotter. He gave it to me cause it didn't work. I still use it.


Did have a call for no heat, in the middle of winter. The gas co. locked out her gas meter for no payment the summer before, and she wanted me to fire up the furnace for her.

[icehouse]

Talk about dumb blondes. Years ago when I did Domestic Refrigerators, I get a call that she just bought Amana Ice& Water and it is not working. I go there and ask what seems to be wrong ? She holds a glass under the dispenser, no ice no water. I turn the unit around and there is no line to the Fridg. I said you have to connect it to the house plumbing. She said "I thought it came with its own water!

[ct2]

These are a riot
And ill bet that most of these people believe they are the well educated, "profesional" type that spend most of their weekends shopping at the garden section of their neighborhood HD

[dhvac]

Years ago when I was first getting started I did some maintainence work for a mobile home park tennant called and told me there was problem with water in park only hic cold water worked hot water side was cold asked me to go and check parks hot water line

[The Penguin]

Originally posted by ct2
These are a riot
And ill bet that most of these people believe they are the well educated, "profesional" type that spend most of their weekends shopping at the garden section of their neighborhood HD

"edcuated beyond their intellegence"

[billygoat22]

We're putting in some new equipment at a church today.
Guys putting in new pews ask if the heat works? Sure, this one we're working on does office, we fixed that one last week.



Little later he comes back, I think the fuse is blown, its still cold.



Tstat was "off".....Click....heat's on now.

[craig1]

about a month ago, i go on a call for a noisy circulator. i get there, find an old B&G with busted motor mounts, a seized bearing, leaking seals, and a broken coupler. The 90 year old HO says he tried to oil it. I can tell he did a thurough job because of the Exxon Valdez size oil slick on the floor. he says he shut the boiler down last night due to the noise. boiler is cold (this is important later in the story.) I hook up drain hose to the boiler and start draining. this was an old gravity system so it has a lot of water. i remove the pump and put in a new Taco cartridge circulator.

i go to turn on the fill valve, and the HO stops me. he says that the last contractor that came to the house (35 years ago) cracked the boiler by filling it with cold water. I explain the boiler is cold sinces it has not been on for 12 hours. He will have none of it. He gives me a washing machine (double female) hose and insists that i fill it with warm water. i hook one of the hose to the boiler drain. i go to hook the other end to the utility sink. discover the sink has no theads. HO suggests i hook it to the water heater drain. even though i know there is no hot water at the bottom, i agree to the plan. i hook the hose to the cheap plastic valve and give the valve a twist

valve snaps off in my hand. water spraying everywhere. i hurry to turn off the valve on top of the heater. it is rusted open. i find my pipe wrench and shut it off. water still spraying from heater. discover that valve is on the HOT water pipe. ask for location of water meter. HO says its under those boxes. move boxes, shut off meter, replace water heater drain with a real valve, turn on water. slip on previously mentined oil slick which has become 4 times bigger due to the water. refill boiler with "hot" water from bottom of tank. bleed radiators. write bill, give bill to customer. customer asks why the water heater drain valve cost almost half as much as the circulator. collect check. drag soggy self to van. take out notepad. make 2 notes to self "never touch plastic water heater valves" and "don't go back to this guys house"

[mark beiser]

About 6 years ago I had a commercial call once to a Ross Dress for Less that was kind of alone in a newly developed area.
At the time, I was doing post checkups for Lennox on new Ross Dress for Less, Petsmart, Office Depot and Kinkos stores that had L-Series units installed. Most had DDC controllers with remote monitoring by a company in California.
On this particular one, the remote monitoring company had also reported that the heat wasn't working in some areas. I get there, and there is no heat anywhere in the building.
I figured that they didn't do the startup on the heat so I'll have to purge all the gas lines in addition to the normal controls configuration and operation check.

I go up on the roof and there are about 20 Lennox L-Series units up there with some of the best gas pipe work I have ever seen. Everything on the roof is very high quality. I find that there is no pressure so I started looking for a gas shutoff. After turning all the ones on the roof on, still no pressure.
Start following the main gas line, find where it goes down the side of the building, look over, and dont see a meter.
I climb off the roof and go around back to take a look. Nice 4" gas line stops about 2 feet from the sidewalk, and there is no gas supply line in sight!

I later found out that there wasn't even gas supply to the site, and the nearest gas main was over 1/4 of a mile away!

Talk about an oversight, I bet some heads rolled for that one!


I used to find all kinds of wierd stuff on those calls. The contractor that did the ductwork and set the units did some nice work, but I think they had untrained monkys doing the startups and configuring the control systems in them.

The most fun was when I got to really get the installing contractor in trouble. One Kinko's in Fort Worth was on the newly refurbished bottom floor of about a 60 year old 4 story building. There were six 5 to 10 ton L-Series split systems and all the condensors were on the roof. when I got there, 2 of the untis had compressors that were not pumping and the other 3 had no visible oil in the sight glass on the side of the compressor. Looking over the installation, I found ALL of the suction lines badly oversized for the application. The refrigerant lines ran about 60 feet across the roof, all sloped away from the condensors. They then went down to above the cielings on the first floor.
No traps in the suction lines at the air handlers. One trap in the middle of the 45ish foot vertical rise, 60 foot of horizontal lines on the roof that are sloped away from the condeners, and the lines are oversized so the velocity is low.
I WONDER WHERE ALL THE OIL IS?!?!?!?!?

[Edited by mark beiser on 01-31-2005 at 11:26 PM]

[markco]

One of our techs goes on an overtime no-cool call, at night. As the homeowner is giving information over the phone, he asks our guy "do you have a flashlight with you?"
Our guy says yes. "Good, you're going to need it, the whole neighborhood has a power outage."

[TB]

He musta been as happy as I was one night. I was the only guy on call, on a cold winter nite with a lot of calls left to get to. I went to the next no heat on the list, "urgent" he said. I walked in the house and was hit by a 90* heat wave. He had the fireplace insert stoked up and the place was nice and warm. I would have turned arround and left right then, but it was out of my way about 10 miles and I was allready there.

[vmc1161]

Got a call for a new computer room unit that we installed being out. Drove over 40 miles to get there within the 2 hour show up time. Arrived to find everything OK, asked the computer room guy whats going on and he tells me it was only a test. They wanted to know how long it would take for us to show up.(55 min.). I told him don't plan on me showing up again you're a jerk.

Also had a number of calls for no heat only to find gas meter turned off and locked. Oh can't you take the lock off and start it? Pay your bill and i'll come back and start it,and by the way its C.O.D.

[craig1]

Originally posted by vmc1161
Got a call for a new computer room unit that we installed being out. Drove over 40 miles to get there within the 2 hour show up time. Arrived to find everything OK, asked the computer room guy whats going on and he tells me it was only a test. They wanted to know how long it would take for us to show up.(55 min.). I told him don't plan on me showing up again you're a jerk.

Also had a number of calls for no heat only to find gas meter turned off and locked. Oh can't you take the lock off and start it? Pay your bill and i'll come back and start it,and by the way its C.O.D.

did you tell him to call 911 and test the fire and paramedics response time while he's at it?

[vmc1161]

Craig1; That would have been a real good reply, but this guy was such a jerk he might have done it. There was no thought on his part about us losing money, pulling off one job to rush to another job and then turn around and go back. If only I had known where his car was parked, he would have had an emergency.