Stupidest Service Call you've run!!!

[gmb]

no heat call, stat turned off. At least once a winter

[Indoor Comfort]

Sunway get your installing contractor out promptly that could be a very serious if not DEADLY problem

[Northfloridatech]

Got a call one night about 12:00 lady says her "system stopped working" I told here the after hours fee she ok'd it, show up at her front door she leads me to the back yard to the pool pump, and says "It stopped working two days ago" I said too bad wheres the ac? She says (But nothings wrong with the ac its the pool pump thats not working).....

[BNME8EZ]

WEnt on a call, no cooling. Got to the A/C, the wires were cut to the motor, fan blade laying in the bottom, end bells and armature gone fromthe motor. Didn't have the right motor with me and thought this was vandalism so I went back to the shop and told the boss. He said go back and get some pics and put in a new motor. So I get back, everything is running just fine. Origional motor is working. Turns out the husband call us the wife calls another co. They got there first and found bad bearings. The guy takes the motor apart there, takes the parts he needs to put bearings in, leaves the rest and goes to get bearings. This is a 1/4hp motor. Apparently he cut the wires so he didn't have to cutthe power. Go figure.

[gasguy]

Maybe not the stupidest call, but one of the stupidest customers! Woman calls @ 4:00 friday afternoon saying her oil furnace is puking black smoke into her basement. Told her to shut it down and I'd be right over. When I get there, she told me it had been doing it all week but started getting worse today!! I asked why she didn't call right away and she said she said it started doing it after she had run out of oil and just had the tank re-filled on monday. She never had oil before (bought the house a month ago) and thought 'it would get better after a while'! I told her to go out right away and buy a lotto ticket because she was lucky to be alive! (No CO detector in the house either!)

[fv_tom]

Drove 2.5 hours each way after hours for a walk in cooler at a grocery store. Find it's a water-cooled condensing unit. Press the manual reset high head pressure switch, watch it run for a while, everything is fine. Ask the store owner if they had any problems with their water earlier in the day, he tells me the city had the water shut off to the whole building!

AC keeps freezing up...I ask the HO how often they change the filter, he says every 2 months. Too bad he was putting a 16x25 filter in a 20x25 opening.

Also had lots of furnace switches off and also had the filter still in the plastic wrap too.

One of my all time faves was a no cool, find the filter plugged solid, condenser coil plugged solid, and the dog chewed through the low voltage wires.

[robinair]

Late night call 110 miles into west Texas countryside , client happy to pay $289.00 just to show up by midnite ! Arrived to find a trane variable speed system from the early 90's (variable speed compressor and variable speed fan coil ) house smelts smoke ! Looked in attic ICM motor was a molten mass ! Went outside and braker was tripped , what the heck I reset the breaker and the variable speed compressor made a sounds I have never heard again to this day , it sounded like a old fashioned telephone , DRR, DRR ! And then Kaboom the terminals blew !
Never took more than a nut driver out of my truck , by 12.15 we where talking about a new system , the client stated that he never had the system touched since the day it was installed 11 years earlier ! Spines fin coil 100% blocked , evap coil 100 % blocked , original trane electronic air cleaner 100 % blocked .( he did not know the EAC existed ! )
Sold him an infinity system , when we called after the first year to renew the service , he said he didnt need a service agreement ! Can you believe it , the trane would have run 15 more years if it had been taken care of ,
I called him and told Hume we would see him in 5 years to change out the system , he laughed at me

[akelesis]

thats so far my favorite one (-: cx's are sooo smart haha

[akelesis]

the same thing happened to me in 2010. The customer told me that the fireplace isnt working. got there didnt know there was a remote for it. i started it by hand ( going up to unit and turning it on manually) then i told the customer its working fine...... she said, how did u do that. and then looked at me and said but this doesnt work. i removed the back and popped out the old batteries and popped in my batteries from my flashlight and then there was a awkward silence 5 secs smiled and said all done checked the system out CO and visually the unit and recommended to her she needs a maintenance done....... so lucky i wasnt busy that day after my first few calls.so i called my boss and scheduled a cleaning that same day after i had other calls to go to first. she was extremely happy so she called in and said i was the best tech she ever had and she only wants me back for her annual maint for her furnace/ac and fireplace (-: Boss was very happy Sometimes you as a tech have to put out the charm for customers sometimes its not all bad i guess. she was a very attractive lady
(9 out of 10)

[Rob_in_WV]

the same thing happened to me in 2010. The customer told me that the fireplace isnt working. got there didnt know there was a remote for it. i started it by hand ( going up to unit and turning it on manually) then i told the customer its working fine...... she said, how did u do that. and then looked at me and said but this doesnt work. i removed the back and popped out the old batteries and popped in my batteries from my flashlight and then there was a awkward silence 5 secs smiled and said all done checked the system out CO and visually the unit and recommended to her she needs a maintenance done....... so lucky i wasnt busy that day after my first few calls.so i called my boss and scheduled a cleaning that same day after i had other calls to go to first. she was extremely happy so she called in and said i was the best tech she ever had and she only wants me back for her annual maint for her furnace/ac and fireplace (-: Boss was very happy Sometimes you as a tech have to put out the charm for customers sometimes its not all bad i guess. she was a very attractive lady
(9 out of 10)

Attractive huh? I'm sure being a gentleman you didn't though right?

[landolb]

Had a no heat call. Temp would not go over 68 got there checked the gas furnace had no gas pressure, the rest of the house is all electric. So went and to see tge gas meter and was turned off with a lock on it..Ho never was told they had to get gas on!!

[keeplearnin]

WEnt on a call, no cooling. Got to the A/C, the wires were cut to the motor, fan blade laying in the bottom, end bells and armature gone fromthe motor. Didn't have the right motor with me and thought this was vandalism so I went back to the shop and told the boss. He said go back and get some pics and put in a new motor. So I get back, everything is running just fine. Origional motor is working. Turns out the husband call us the wife calls another co. They got there first and found bad bearings. The guy takes the motor apart there, takes the parts he needs to put bearings in, leaves the rest and goes to get bearings. This is a 1/4hp motor. Apparently he cut the wires so he didn't have to cutthe power. Go figure.

what an idiot. not the op the dude replacing bearings

[keeplearnin]

the same thing happened to me in 2010. The customer told me that the fireplace isnt working. got there didnt know there was a remote for it. i started it by hand ( going up to unit and turning it on manually) then i told the customer its working fine...... she said, how did u do that. and then looked at me and said but this doesnt work. i removed the back and popped out the old batteries and popped in my batteries from my flashlight and then there was a awkward silence 5 secs smiled and said all done checked the system out CO and visually the unit and recommended to her she needs a maintenance done....... so lucky i wasnt busy that day after my first few calls.so i called my boss and scheduled a cleaning that same day after i had other calls to go to first. she was extremely happy so she called in and said i was the best tech she ever had and she only wants me back for her annual maint for her furnace/ac and fireplace (-: Boss was very happy Sometimes you as a tech have to put out the charm for customers sometimes its not all bad i guess. she was a very attractive lady
(9 out of 10)

to bad in the brain dept she was 1 out of 10

[conditionedhvac]

Maybe not the most stupid one I've been on, but up there.

I go to a modular duplex(only six months old) on a complaint from the tenant that they have a high electric bill and they work out of town and set the stat on 50 while not home (heat pump unit). I notice that the air volume kinda sucks coming from registers (ductwork in attic). I get in the attic space and work my way over to above the air handler and find that the installer had installed a wye instead of a 90 degree elbow off the top or the A H, and they didn't even cap it! They HAD connected some flex to it and connected it to the existing modular trunk duct, but never capped the one side...

I guess the thing that amazed me the most is that the tenant hadn't had an outrageous bill before. Good thing for them its been a mild winter!

One more fantastic thing to relate. Upon removing the attic access, i got a face full of blown insulation. They probably could have done a better job there, but it didn't help that the attic was in a positive pressure and living space in a negative. D'oh!

About a year or so ago, we bid on this job. But according to the builder we were "too high". Now the property owners are gettting the money for the call and our correcting the problem back from the builder... Should've just had it done right the first time. Go figure!

[37bluebird]

I think my best ones are that the fan runs all the time you get there and the t stat is on Fan on or I just changed my air filter now the furnace doesn't work and you find they put the door on wrong and isn't making the door switch.

[Rob_in_WV]

I went on a call last winter, The homeowner was complaining that her electric bill was very high and was upset because it was a new heat pump. I get there and she had the stat set to emergency heat and had been running it like that for a month or two.

[shavedneon]

I went on a call last week, new construction, ICF house, Dual fuel heat pump. Home owner acting as own contractor. One of the systems had blank stat and wouldn't work, I thought of the pack rats that had chewed up low voltage wires after install. No power at furnace, breaker was good had power, rechecked outlet, had power. The homeowner had installed tamper resistant recept. and the plastic covers were not allowing contact to furnace plug, took 15 minutes to diagnose and replace with standard recept. He argued for longer, about me charging him.

[pacnw]

UPDATE:

the call I posted before, they called again and it was the same thing, plugged filter!!!!

[Tech it out]

You dont know stupid until you have worked around "educators" for 28 years. I could spend all day ranting here but the number one stupid call I went on when I worked for the schools was,,,,

It was close to lunch time but it was August and school had just started so my partner and I decided to catch one more call before going to eat. We rolled up to the classroom (it was a portable classroom) and started checking the unit. Everything seems to be running fine so we go inside to check with the teacher. The room feels comfortable and the class has gone to lunch so after turning the stat down some we go eat lunch. When we come back we notice the unit is off. We go inside and ask the teacher if she was having any problems with her A/C as we figured the wrong room # may have been put on the work order. But she says "yes, its not cooling". So I go to the stat to learn it has been turned up from where I had left it. I ask her about it and she says "it was cold when we got back so I turned it up some". I just stand there looking at her and she figures out what she said then says "but I didnt get as cold as I normally would".

These are the people that educate our children!

[madhat]

Had a meeting room full of PhD's, our elected community leaders, and some off the smartest people in the county. They were freezing, after enduring comments about, "is the heating system broken, can you fix it, this is totally unexceptable." Went to the thermostat, and flipped the little lever from cool to heat, and heard the blower kick on. BTW, I had a FocusPro in the room, and had already put the Mercury stat back on the wall, because it was too complicated. These are the people that are planning our future in the county and state.