I found this guy on Craigslist because he was advertising cheaper service stating that this is a "side business" for him as a licensed A/C tech. I should have known better.
My A/C was working intermittently, a sure sign of being low on refrigerant (R-22). As far as checking for the leak he took a lot of time snooping around and explaining a lot of different scenarios, half of which made no sense. He did not do a soap bubble test, nitrogen pressure test, or anything that any competent A/C tech would do to find a leak. After a while we were getting nowhere and out of desperation I asked that he just recharge the system with R-22 and be on his way, and he obliged. Undiagnosed.
Sure enough the refrigerant leaks out again a few weeks later and I'm back to square one. Having lost all trust in this guy, I called another A/C company and it took this different company all of a minute to diagnose the true cause of the refrigerant leak. They noticed oil coming out of the access ports (Schrader valves). They replaced them with parts that only cost a few bucks, and recharged the system again. They also offered to re-fill the system for free and do a complete nitrogen pressure test if the problem reoccurred, because they were pretty sure about the Schrader valves being the culprit. System is working great.
Looking back I remember Sun Reys tech rubbing his fingers over the Schrader valves and pausing and looking at me. I didn't say anything because at the time I didn't know that they were the common cause of refrigerant leaks. Then he just proceeded to ramble off all the other services he could perform on my A/C unit.
So whether he is dishonest or just incompetent, either way it's a bad situation. read more