The keep-people-cool in Texas Company we’d used for years got bought out by investors. It was right when we had new heating and cooling units installed.

They offer to help protect our only means of surviving a Texas summer or winter equipment.

For a fee, bi-annual maintenance visits would be free.

The sky Foxes.

They come out check boxes on their clip boards but mostly an opportunity to up sale.

When the drain line got clogged this week and the nitrogen tank wouldn’t flush it, while the service guy was suggesting a line replacement ($3000) Vick got broke out his mini roter rooter and swished the line into flowing in five minutes. Cooling started.

“This system is seven years old. These numbers” he frowns at the yellow electronic gaget in his hand. It’s our most modest receptacle, in tone. He’s nodding like to his verdict, scrutinizing a reading on a yellow device we don’t understand. It it looks serious. The cooling lungs are going out. He shakes his head like a doctor talking to desperate family members in the waiting room. “

Fix them now, it’s a big repair, he nods his head in that human way, that softens bad news like that come with little hope and enormous medical bills, or replace the whole system.”

He showed us a picture of “the coils” they looked matted dead animal was in there. My first reaction was take my money, please! Deal with that. I pause.

“Don’t you guys come out and do maintenance every six months? Are you guys not doing a good job?”

I’m not gonna change you for this, he points at the cleared line and puts the PVC drain pipe at the pipe back together,because you did it yourself, He smiles generously. I think I am gonna get one of those.

A split look came over his face, then resolved into staring at the handy almond cheerful rooter Vick is winding back up like it’s a giddy puppy.

When he’s back inside collecting his nitrogen tank, he shows us how to look into the pipe with the sensor that shut of the system when the sensor detects water. He seems so hopeful.

Vick and I look at the coils on our outside unit while we’re outside rootering.

There’s no matted material in the coils. There’s no way. What we are looking at is not the same as the picture of a run away screaming AC coil he showed us.

Is this the “picture of your system outside that every client gets shown?

The bill for the urgent repairs needed from the evidence of those numbers we don’t understand and the run over-rodent in the coils photo is $6,000.

With the line flush the initial problem is solved the AC works again. Meanwhile, my friend Tonya, she’s been staying here suffering with us, calls her AC tech friend from work. He brings his tools and meets her outside at the AC. She wants to surprise us.

There’s nothing wrong with the AC, keep using. It doesn’t need anything. Use it till it breaks. It could be years.

These “service” guys are really sales guys.

I’m guessing these revenue focused bought up businesses have just the right bedside manner, a calculated balance of lack of tools and training and big job or replacement bonus incentive, to be a revenue focused company and no longer a cooling and heating for people business. It just looks like the same business from the outside.