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That time I swapped a perfectly good compressor for no reason
Last Tuesday I spent 3 hours diagnosing a fridge that wasn't cooling. Turned out it was just a dirty condenser coil, not the compressor. I was dead set on replacing the compressor because the customer was sure that was the issue. Now I always clean the coils first before touching anything major. Anybody else ever jump to the wrong fix like that?
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lee_barnes7013d ago
@the_leo brings up a good point about tunnel vision when the customer is in your ear. You ever stop and think about how much time we waste just because we listen to the homeowner instead of our own common sense? It's like we forget the basics the second someone throws a guess at us. I bet half the parts we swap end up in the trash because we got talked into it by somebody who doesn't know the difference between a capacitor and a compressor. So why do we keep letting customers lead us around by the nose like that?
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the_leo13d ago
Honestly I had a buddy who spent an entire Saturday swapping out a perfectly good water heater element, like three trips to the store and everything, only to realize the breaker had tripped the whole time. He was so sure the element was shot because the water wasn't getting hot but nope, just a flipped switch in the panel. Ngl we still give him crap about it whenever someone mentions water heaters. Tbh sometimes you just get tunnel vision when you're tired and the customer is breathing down your neck.
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Cleaning the coils first is a basic step, not an optional one. Jumping straight to a compressor swap without checking the simple stuff first is what causes callbacks and wasted parts. Learning to trust your own eyes over a customer's guess is the real lesson here.
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