[UPDATED in post #14] Problem with air conditioner – who should pay to resolve issue?

[pintobean]

My parents own a home that is approximately 20 years old. Last August their air conditioner broke down. They brought in a couple of different repair guys who both said that the unit couldn’t be repaired easily or cheaply, and as such they were better off simply replacing it.

As a result, they contacted a local AC company, and that company sent out a salesman who had a look around their house to determine exactly what kind of AC unit they would need. After completing his inspection and doing some calculations, the salesman provided my parents with three quotes – one for a low-end unit, one for a mid-level unit, and one for a high-end unit. Since my parents were in the process of looking for a new house (they are retired “empty-nesters” that are downsizing), they decided to go with the low-end system because it was the cheapest. Their rationale was that it didn’t make sense for them to spend a lot of money on an AC unit that they would only use for one more summer before they sold their home and moved out.

After thinking about things for a day or two, they changed their minds. They came to the realization that a low-end AC might make it harder for them to sell their home, because a prospective purchaser might decide that the AC was not good enough and would need to be replaced with a better model. As a result, they decided to go with the more expensive mid-level unit to avoid any future hassles.

A few days later, the AC company sent out a couple of technicians who simply unplugged and removed the existing AC unit and connected the new mid-level unit. Everything worked perfectly for the last few weeks of last summer, and when the fall came, my parents turned off their new AC unit and covered it for the winter with the cover that the AC company had provided.

In May of this year, they removed the cover and started up the AC. It worked perfectly fine for the first few months, but then one day last week, it didn’t turn on. My dad realized that the circuit breaker for the AC had tripped, so he reset the switch and the unit came back on. Unfortunately, a few hours later, the circuit breaker tripped again. As a result, my dad contacted the AC company, and asked them to send out a technician.

The next day, the tech looked at the AC unit and said that the capacitor was probably defective. He replaced it for free under warranty, and then tested the AC - it worked. Unfortunately, two days later, the unit shut off again in exactly the same way as it had before. My dad called the company again, and this time the tech came out and installed a new relay switch on the AC unit (again, this was done for free under the warranty).

Unfortunately, the unit only worked for another day before shutting off in the same way as before. Once again, my dad called the AC company. This time, the tech went into their basement and looked at their circuit breaker panel. He then told my parents that the circuit for their AC unit was not powerful enough. He said that their previous AC unit had only been connected to a 30 amp circuit, but their new AC needed 40 amps. As a result, he said that they need to have a new 40 amp circuit installed. He said that this is not covered under the AC warranty, and they will need to pay for the AC company to do the work. Apparently it will cost a couple of hundred dollars. For my parents who are retired and on a fixed income, this is not something that they are readily willing to pay.

And this is where I take issue with the situation and disagree with the AC company’s position.

I believe that when the AC company sent their salesman out last summer to look at my parent’s house and determine what kind of AC unit they needed, he should have also checked the circuit breaker panel to make sure that the units he was quoting to my parents would work in their home. That is his job, and it is not something that my parents could have figured out on their own.

The bottom line is that if my parents had been told up-front that the 30 amp circuit would not be powerful enough to support the new AC unit, they would have opted for the low-end unit instead of the mid-level unit, and would have used the cost differential to pay for the new 40 amp circuit. Instead, they spent their entire AC replacement budget on the mid-level unit, and are now essentially being forced into paying more money for the 40 amp circuit breaker to be installed.

So I would like to know what the RFD community thinks about this situation. Do you think that my parents should have to pay for the new circuit breaker, or is it something that the AC company should have to cover due to their salesman’s failure to verify that the unit he was selling would work in my parent’s home?

Based upon the feedback I receive here, I will either tell my parents to give up their argument and then pay for the new circuit myself, or I will began lobbying the AC company's management to admit to their mistake and pay for the new circuit breaker.

Thanks for reading.

[sunnybono]

I'm not an electrician nor an HVAC Tech, but even I knew that the A/C unit requires 40amp breaker. This is part of the new install and the company is definitely liable to correct their mistake!!!!!!!

sk

[Mr Nobody]

You're better off posting in the home&garden forum. You'll get better responses there.

Personally, I feel that the company should have done a proper inspection *if they where a good company*, but my experience with any contractor type companies is that they generally suck. I don't think arguing with them will make them install the breaker for you free of charge. Taking them to court would be costly and you would probably lose. I would just pay for the proper breaker and be done with it.

Next time you need work done for anything, get a few quotes from different companies (I'd say at least 3, but 5 would be better). One of these companies may turn out to be good and tell you that you needed a new breaker or whatever it is you need for whatever it is you're doing.

[dgmorr]

Find out what gauge wire is being used. Maybe you can just use a 40amp breaker if it's enough.

[Shaner]

I'm not an electrician nor an HVAC Tech, but even I knew that the A/C unit requires 40amp breaker. This is part of the new install and the company is definitely liable to correct their mistake!!!!!!!

sk

The company likely assumed that the old AC unit also required a 40 amp circuit, which is why they didn't bother checking it.

They may have overlooked this fact, but your parents would have had to pay for it either way, so I think your parents are responsible to pay.

[pintobean]

I'm not an electrician nor an HVAC Tech, but even I knew that the A/C unit requires 40amp breaker.
My parents are in their 70's, so neither one of them were aware of the amperage requirements for an AC unit.

I knew that ACs, fridges/freezers and dryers almost always require more power, but I had no way of knowing that their AC circuit breaker was not powerful enough.

On my circuit panel at home, the switches are colour coded based on their amperage, and the number of amps is actually engraved into each switch for super-easy identification...but on my parent's panel, all the switches are simply black with nothing engraved or written on them. There is no way to tell just by looking whether a circuit on their panel is 15, 20, 30 or 40 amps.

...Next time you need work done for anything, get a few quotes from different companies (I'd say at least 3, but 5 would be better). One of these companies may turn out to be good and tell you that you needed a new breaker or whatever it is you need for whatever it is you're doing.
My parents did get quotes from a number of other companies; in fact, they got quotes from 8 different places listed in the Yellow Pages.

The problem is that 7 of these 8 companies would only give their quotes over the phone and would not send anyone out to the house. All of them simply asked what the square footage of the house was, and then what level of efficiency (SEER) my parents wanted. The 8th company wouldn't say anything over the phone and insisted on sending a tech to the house to provide the quote, but they wanted my parents to wait 6 days until there was a tech in their area. My parents were not willing to wait almost a week without AC for this 8th company, and so they chose one of the first 7 (for the record, they didn't go with the cheapest company either - they went with the company that was quoting on AC units with the best warranty and good reputation) .

Not one of the companies we spoke to said anything about the circuit needing to be 40 amps. I guess they all made the same assumption. I have no way of knowing whether any of them would have caught this issue before selling my parents a new 40 amp AC unit.

Find out what gauge wire is being used. Maybe you can just use a 40amp breaker if it's enough.
I'm not electrically inclined or knowledgeable, so I'm not even certain what you're suggesting (!) but it sounds like some sort of a shortcut...

I can assure you that my parents would not be willing to take any shortcuts with their electrical system, especially since they are selling the house and it will most likely be inspected by the Home Inspector of the prospective purchasers. If that Inspector caught any shortcut, I'm sure it would cost my parents much more than the expense of adding a new 40 amp circuit.

Thanks for the suggestion though!

The company likely assumed that the old AC unit also required a 40 amp circuit, which is why they didn't bother checking it.

They may have overlooked this fact, but your parents would have had to pay for it either way, so I think your parents are responsible to pay.
I totally understand that my parents would have been responsible to pay for the new circuit if the AC company had discovered that it was missing in the first place...

My argument is that if they had been advised of this before they finalized their purchase, they would have saved some money in their budget by buying the lower end AC unit instead of the mid-level unit, and then they would have spent those savings on the new circuit that was required.

Instead, nothing was said about the circuit breaker at all, and so they spent their entire AC budget on the mid-level unit, only to be told 11 months later that they now have to spend more money so that their new mid-level AC unit will work.

(It's like a car dealer upselling you a car with a sun-roof in the summer time, and then calling you 6 months later at the start of winter and saying that the sun-roof is not water-proof and you need to pay a few hundred dollars more for that, or else your car will get wet when it snows.)

I don't think that's fair. In my eyes, all charges should have been clearly laid out up front.

[Mr Nobody]

I can understand that the company may have assumed the house had a proper breaker already based on the fact that they were replacing an existing unit. Get involved and see if they will give you a discounted price out of goodwill, otherwise, you can start shopping around for quotes for the breaker installation. I find that as my parents age, I need to become the parent and get more involved in what they're doing so they don't miss anything or get ripped off.

[peelhic]

The company likely assumed that the old AC unit also required a 40 amp circuit, which is why they didn't bother checking it.

They may have overlooked this fact, but your parents would have had to pay for it either way, so I think your parents are responsible to pay.

I agree with your comments shaner... most likely this was an oversight by the salesman

Pintobean, I think what your parents paid for is what they received, ie if the breaker was to be replaced the quote would have been higher. At least thats what I am assuming since you have not mentioned that in the quote there was a charge for a new breaker that wasn't installed. Seems to me that it was an oversight on both sides and hopefully the company will give you a bit of goodwill and split the difference... otherwise if you have to pay for the breaker... get someone else to do it. No sense in giving them more business when your not satisfied with the original work.

[megamonsterman]

I am sorry that you go through this. I have a similar case with my builder. They put in oak staircase without letting me know (came with carpet) because I have hardwood (maple cherry throughout the house) I have to pay for the staining.

It is like buying a car and they upgrade you to a better door but you got to paint the door to the colour of the rest of your car. What happen was we have a long lengthy conversation, they agree it is their mistake and willing to cut the price off for the staining. I still have to pay. I am still not happy because it is not the matter of money rather than they don't give a care about the consumer and changes things as they wish.

I totally agree with you, they should have due dilligent process but they didn't and they should pay for it. Unfortunately there is no law like this to protect consumer and taking them in court will waste money and time and chances of you winning is slim. Negotiate a discount

[Anonymouse]

I don't recommend you do this unless you are comfortable doing electrical work, but I bet if you take the face plate off the circuit panel you will find that the breakers are marked as to their amperages.

As was pointed out by an earlier poster, if the gauge of the wire to the air conditioner is of sufficient thickness, it may be a simple matter of swapping in a 40 Amp breaker if you can still get breakers for your parents' panel model. The wire will have a marking on it as to its gauge - have a look and report back. It may be marked as 12/3 or 6/3 for example, where the first number is the gauge and the second number is the number of conductors.

It would be interesting to know what the Electrical Safety Authority thinks of an installer that puts in air conditioners on circuits that won't support them.

[Ockham]

It would be interesting to know what the ESA thinks of engineers giving out this type of advice to home owners.

[pintobean]

I don't recommend you do this unless you are comfortable doing electrical work, but I bet if you take the face plate off the circuit panel you will find that the breakers are marked as to their amperages.

As was pointed out by an earlier poster, if the gauge of the wire to the air conditioner is of sufficient thickness, it may be a simple matter of swapping in a 40 Amp breaker if you can still get breakers for your parents' panel model. The wire will have a marking on it as to its gauge - have a look and report back. It may be marked as 12/3 or 6/3 for example, where the first number is the gauge and the second number is the number of conductors.

It would be interesting to know what the Electrical Safety Authority thinks of an installer that puts in air conditioners on circuits that won't support them.
The AC company's tech actually suggested that it may be possible for him to simply change the breaker as suggested by the poster above. However, when he looked at the wiring that ran from the panel to the AC unit, he said that it was not the right gauge (it was too thin).

The other option that was suggested is that my parents could switch the 40 amp circuit from their stove to the AC (and vice versa). This would be possible because their stove is a gas/convection range and doesn't require a 40 amp connection like most electric stoves. In terms of distance, the AC is almost directly outside their kitchen window, so I think it is doable...but I'm not sure if that would be any cheaper than just running new wires to the AC in the first place.

Anyways, the AC tech visited their home again yesterday, and said that before they go through the work of changing the circuit, he wants to make sure that there is really nothing wrong with the AC unit. So he's going to go back with some better diagnostic tools today, and run more tests. If all the diagnostics come back clear, then he said that the only option would be to deal with the circuit breaker issue. He is refusing to provide my parents with a fixed cost for doing this, and instead said that he would just charge them for the parts and maybe only a little labour. I am not happy with this approach, as I feel that they could get ripped off, so once the free AC diagnostics are done, I am stepping in and demanding a fixed price for the install of the 40 amp circuit wiring. Then I will get quotes from some other people to do this work.

Thanks everyone for your advice...wish me luck...

[Neil]

Some things to consider....

This was a replacement of an existing unit on an existing circuit. It's somewhat understandable they would assume the existing circuit was fine.

You said yourself that determining the circuit size is near impossible.

These factors suggest your parents should be paying for the upgrade.

But one could also consider....

Doing this work probably required an electrical permit, and that means everything about the job should have been checked over.

It's seems surprising the AC is going over 30 amps. Maybe the breaker in question is loose or weak. Or maybe the AC unit is imperfect, causing it to draw more.

[pintobean]

Just when I thought that things were getting better, it seems that they've gotten worse...

On Friday I called a couple of AC companies, and both of them said that the AC unit my parents bought really didn't require more than 30 amps to run. They said that even though AC units should always be connected to 40 amp circuit breakers, it was not 100% necessary in my parent's case considering the size and model of AC that they had purchased. One of the companies even suggested that if we had used them in the first place, they wouldn't have changed the circuit breaker at all, and it was their opinion that the problems my parents were experiencing had nothing to do with the circuit size, and were probably related to a defective AC unit.

Armed with the above knowledge, I decided not to do anything further, and to simply sit back and wait for my parent's AC technician to conduct his diagnostics.

On Saturday afternoon, the AC tech came and conducted extensive tests of my parent's AC unit. Sure enough, he discovered that the compressor in the unit had failed. We were relieved to hear this, since the compressor had a 5 year warranty, and therefore was obviously defective since it hadn't even lasted 12 months.

But this is where it gets ridiculous. The AC tech said that he would happily replace the compressor under warranty, but that my parents would have to pay for the refilling of the freon gas in the unit. He said that the freon that was currently in the unit would escape when the compressor was swapped out, and that even though they captured it, it was impossible to reuse it in the new compressor. The cost to refill the freon in the AC unit after the compressor was replaced would be $900.

Obviously I objected to this. I explained to the tech that he had sold my parents an AC unit with a defective compressor, and therefore it was his responsibility to make things right since the unit was still under warranty. He said that the compressor warranty only covered the compressor and not the related parts and equipment like the freon. I said that was ridiculous, and that it was totally unfair to make my parents pay $900 after they had just dished out $2000 for the AC last summer. I asked him what would happen if the replacement compressor was also defective and died after one season? Would that mean that my parents would have to pay another $900 when it was changed next summer? The tech had no response for this.

In the end, I told the tech that we were not going to pay him $900 for the freon refill. I said that it was his company's fault for selling my parents a defective AC unit, and therefore they should be the ones to cover the costs associated with making sure the customer had received the product and service they had paid for. As a result of my argument, he said that he would only charge my parents $450 for the freon refill, and would absorb the rest of the costs himself. I thanked him for this offer, but said that it wasn't enough. I reiterated that we were not willing to pay anything for the freon refill. He said that he would see what he could do, and would call me back later on this week.

I will update this thread again when I have more info.

[mart242]

That's like buying an AC from costco for a low price and then when the guys shows up to install it, you have to pay for the extras (ie: circuit breaker, switch, ..). It was the case in Ottawa when they had some kind of AC roadshow at costco last year.

If the breaker panel is right next to the AC, it shouldn't be an expensive addition. On the other hand, you'd think that the technician would have noticed if he was working with gage 10 or gage 8 wire.. (ie: 30A or 40A)

[Anonymouse]

I think your response was absolutely correct, and good for you for standing your ground. If you still have it, it might be useful to read the warranty package that came with the unit.

Did the tech explain why he can't use the existing freon in the new system?

[Neil]

Starting to sound like you're being jerked around.

I have heard that AC models and types of refrigerant have changed in recent years. Perhaps by changing your unit, they are required to switch to a whole new type of coolant.

But you'd think those costs should be borne by whoever warranted the unit originally.