Why Do I Need Maintenance, If I Already Have A Warranty?
This question has been asked to us several times by many of our customers. In the process of earning their trust through visits to their home that include maintenance, service, and even installation of new equipment, homeowners want to know,
How come you’re telling me my system needs regular maintenance when it comes with a lifetime warranty?
This is a great question. One that we appreciate hearing from homeowners because it means they’re taking their home comfort seriously.
So why do we tell homeowners this? Is our equipment not as reliable as we claimed it is? Are we trying to squeeze more money out of homeowners?
After these initial thoughts, homeowners wonder, how much money am I going to have to spend on annual maintenance?
Again, these are all great questions, but before we dig into responding to them let’s take a look at two different homeowners, who had very similar equipment, but ended up with very different experiences based on their decision to have (or forgo) regular maintenance on their system.
These are true stories with only minor changes to respect our customers’ privacy
Homeowner A
Homeowner A purchased a high-efficiency air conditioning unit from us approximately 9 years ago. The homeowner had maintenance performed on their system regularly.
This summer, an electrical short caused a small fire in the air conditioner and caused the compressor to fail. This particular unit had two warranties. One was a 10-year parts and labor warranty, the second was a lifetime unit replacement warranty on the compressor.
After a thorough inspection of the air conditioner and a look through our records we contacted our distributor (who then contacted the manufacturer) and determined that because the compressor failed, the entire unit could be replaced at no cost.
The labor, which isn’t included in the lifetime unit replacement warranty, was covered mostly by the 10-year parts and labor warranty that was also included with the air conditioner.
In the end, the customer only had to pay a few hundred dollars for an entire new unit rather than a few thousand dollars.
Homeowner B
Homeowner B purchased a high-efficiency furnace from us approximately 6 years ago. On file, we had no history of any maintenance completed on the furnace.
The customer called us to their home because their furnace was not producing any heat in the home. Our technician determined the blower motor in the furnace had failed.
Through a lot of debating and conversations with us, the homeowner ultimately decided to purchase a new furnace rather than spend several hundred dollars on repairing their furnace.
Unfortunately, this decision shouldn’t have come about. The homeowner, if they had kept up with regular maintenance on their equipment, should have been covered by the manufacturer’s warranty and had the parts and labor covered to repair their furnace.
We really can’t say it any simpler than this;
No maintenance, no warranty.
You Can Still Keep Your Warranty
Regardless of whether you have a maintenance record for your system or perhaps you can’t remember if maintenance has ever been performed on your system…
It’s not too late.
There’s an old saying that the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is today.
The same applies to maintenance. Now is the best time to call us and schedule it even if you’re concerned about not doing it in the past.
No matter what brand or size of furnace or air conditioner, we can perform our Ultimate Tune & Clean on it and get it ready to run safely and reliably for you.
Below is our phone number and a link to email us.
Mention this blog post and we’ll give you 15% off our Ultimate Tune & Clean
Call us at (262) 728-1655
Email Us