Had I been a character in the old Batman TV series, I would definitely have been Mr. Freeze…read more(hopefully when he was played by George Sanders rather than Otto Preminger!). I like to think I can handle adversity as well as anyone, but I'll have to concede that I'm a big wuss when it comes to staying cool during the torrid months of summer.
(Had I been a character in an H.P. Lovecraft story, it would have been Dr. Munoz in "Cool Air.")
When I was a kid, my family had central air conditioning in the house, but my father, a child of the Depression, would only turn it on when the weather turned so brutally and insufferably hot that even he couldn't ignore it. As I got older, suffering from migraines, rampaging insomnia, and various other ailments, my parents took mercy on me and bought an air conditioning unit to put in my bedroom window, and I was very happy with that little unit. The rest of the house might resemble Hades Lite (or just plain Hades), but in my room, it was a cool and refreshing oasis, a restorative "boy cave," supplemented by my pile of Black Sabbath records, my stack of horror comics, and those few "Adult" magazines I had been able to shoplift from the Preakness Luncheonette.
When I finally (and reluctantly) entered adulthood, and moved into where I live now, for the 1st time I had central air conditioning that I alone was responsible for, and that air conditioner was on continuously from the end of May to the middle of September. In the midst of one scorching hot summer, it stopped suddenly. In a panic, I called a company that may have been Economy, although at this late date I'm not entirely sure. The repairman examined my unit, made some repairs (and the price, as I remember it now, wasn't prohibitively expensive). He told me the filter hadn't been changed in a long, long time. "Huh?" I managed to respond. "Filter?" Patiently, he explained that the filter needed to be changed regularly. I could buy them at the local hardware store.
I heeded the advice. A few years ago, I had to have the unit replaced, and this time it definitely was Economy who did the job. They did it very well, and... again... the price wasn't exorbitant. (Although the new thermostat was baffling to me when I had to replace the battery and reset it; thank God for Youtube tutorials! I mentioned it to a friend, and she agreed, telling me her elderly mother had recently had the same thermostat installed and had nearly given herself apoplexy trying to figure out how to use it.)
It's been working fine since then, but last week, one of the hottest stretches I've ever experienced in my lifetime, had me very nervous. (In addition to migraines, insomnia and various other ailments, I'm a bit of a paranoid.) Everything seemed to be working fine, and I was cool enough, considering, but the temperature on the thermostat wasn't reaching as low as I had set it. Common sense told me that because it was so exceptionally and brutally hot outside, the air conditioner had to work that much harder and wasn't necessarily going to get down to a level of frigidity that would keep Mr. Freeze, Dr. Munoz or yours truly perfectly happy, but common sense pitted against paranoia never has much of a chance (at least not with me).
I called Economy in an effort to reassure myself, but...naturally...got a voicemail. It was expected, but my nervousness increased. Resigned, I left a voicemail message. Truth is, I wasn't expecting any call back. According to their website, they close at 5pm. A few minutes after 5, however, I received a call back from Joe. I expressed my concerns, and he was very patient, explaining to me that I was probably correct in my assumptions, but that if it did present a real problem, to call them back and make an appointment for someone to come out to my place. He also told me that if I changed my air filter more frequently during the summer months, it might blow out cold air a little more efficiently. It was a reassuring phone call.
I've liked the service I've gotten from this company in the past, and I have to say I was mightily impressed by the callback on what had to be one of their busiest days. I'm so used to calling companies for service, much less to simply ask a question, and getting no response at all, that this was a notable and commendable departure from what I'm used to.
It's a family run, local business, they've been around for a long time, and I would readily recommend them to anyone.