Tuesday, March 10, 2009

When is a Warranty a Discount?

I'm sitting on my couch, with my windows open, and a nice breeze blowing across my living room. It is awesome. Or at least it would be if Sophie would stop barking and the boys actually go to sleep without one more incident tonight. I love the spring and fall when it's not too hot and not too cool and I can just open the windows to enjoy the air. Unfortunately, here in the very near future, I will have to shut my windows as storms blow in to our area. Darn!

Yesterday I had turned my a/c unit off because it had gotten cool in the house the night before. I turned it on because the house was so stuffy that no one was sleeping well. Well I noticed that I will still freezing and it wasn't supposed to get out of the sixties so I got up and turned on the heat. After a bit, I was still cold. So I walked back to my thermostat only to find the house had dropped another three degrees instead of going up. That's when I realized something wasn't quite right. I turned the unit off but it didn't turn off. I looked for a reset button on the unit, turned it off at the breaker and left it off for over a half hour. When I turned it back on, the thing was still running. So I called Dad. Poor Dad is the one I call every time something goes wrong and Hubby isn't here. So he came out and looked at the thermostat and unit. He let me know that my heat exhaust was what was actually running (I thought it was the fan) but the a/c section still worked. He took the thermostat off the wall, unhooked the wires and determined that it had to be in the unit because the unit should've shut down without the thermostat attached. So I shut it down at the breaker knowing I would have to call the a/c repairman this morning.

I have very bittersweet feelings about the a/c repairman. Simply because he is going to fix what I need in order to heat and cool my home, but is going to charge me a massive amount of money to do so. I will be billed for a bit of wire and labor for him to open my unit, tell me that some piece had gone out and triggered something else (these are technical terms mind you) and that it would need to be replaced. So he called the office and had the lady working for him (secretary, wife, gf???) check with the company to determine if I had a warranty on my unit. Surprise, I did. I was stunned. This unit will be 10 years old next year and I have a warranty no one told us about. Even with the warranty, it is going to cost us $400 to fix my unit. Come January when my warranty runs out, it will run us $1200. Words cannot describe the frustration. Doesn't warranty usually mean if the part goes out that the company replaces it? I don't know.

Since I had so much to do this morning, I skipped the opportunity to take a nap. The repairman was here within an hour of calling him and left after 45 minutes (bill is in the mail, I'm sure). I applied for an administrative assistant job for a local company. I washed nine loads of laundry today, including the sheets on all four beds, and made those beds. I picked up a small section of the boys bedroom. I folded all of that laundry that I washed and dried. I had the most productive day than I have had in a long time. Maybe tomorrow I will continue to be productive and clean the boys room. Maybe. But that would require me to go to bed soon so I guess that's what I will do. Sleep.

1 comment:

janjanmom said...

"I washed nine loads of laundry today, including the sheets on all four beds, and made those beds."

You are my HERO. Wow!!