Spoke to the owner to schedule a diagnosis for a freezer that wouldn't defrost. I had already replaced the thermocouple, and visually the heat strip looked fine, so I needed someone to diagnose why it was freezing up. He quoted me $49.50, and scheduled to come out at 2pm. He didn't show. When I called him, he took down all my info again as if I was a new customer. He went out at 7pm and billed me $79. Then he quoted me $220 all in to replace the heat strip. I was surprised, and asked him how he knew the heat strip was bad. It had looked fine to me. He told me he was a professional, he had tested it and knew it was bad. He seemed annoyed and impatient by the question. I told him I would replace the part myself since it was a simple "plug n play" repair. When I showed up at the rental the next day and opened the freezer, I was surprised to see that it was completely iced up. There was no way it could have iced up in one day, so he had obviously not defrosted it. Furthermore, at the edge of the ice, then end of the heatstrip was bent and an un-natural angle. As I defrosted the ice, it became apparent that he had snapped the heatstrip out of the ice to test it, and it was now in 3 pieces. I confronted him about it, and he said I had probably done it myself when I replaced the thermocouple, that I didn't know what I was doing (why, because I'm a woman???). He said he has been doing this for 25 years and is a "professional". He also said he hadn't even opened the back of the freezer (then how had he tested the heatstrip). Tenant confirmed she had watched him open it up, and had remembered wondering why he hadn't replaced all the screws afterwards.
I had to spend $70 to replace the part, and it still iced over again afterwards. He had also cut the blue wire to the heatstrip which I had to splice back together. On the plus side he did refund the "call-out fee". Be aware that he stated to me by text message that the call-out fee is NOT a diagnosis, and furthermore doesn't cover defrosting because apparently this takes 45 mins to do. I myself defrosted the freezer with a hairdryer, in about 10 mins. I told him about the hairdryer trick and asked him what the hell he'd been doing for the past 25 years.... read more