Customer reimbursement

M

mannyb

Senior Member
Location
Florida
Occupation
Electrician
During an ATS install and during power outage we may have damaged the control transformer for ac. The customer called theirAC people and they determined it was the transformer. The customer had home warranty so customer Home warranty fixed the issue only charging customer $60 of the $560 in repairs leaving $0 for customer to pay. Customer wants $560. This may or may not have been our fault but how is that determined? Second why do.we own customer money and not the warranty service. This ever happened to anyone and how was it resolved
 
ModbusMan said:
So did the customer pay $60, or $0? Either way, what makes them think they can charge you $560?
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$60 he says because that's what he would have paid if he had to pay. As a courtesy we would like to help but also have them sign we arent taking responsibility. But who's to say it's our fault. Transformer could have been installed incorrectly
 
mannyb said:
During an ATS install and during power outage we may have damaged the control transformer for ac. The customer called theirAC people and they determined it was the transformer. The customer had home warranty so customer Home warranty fixed the issue only charging customer $60 of the $560 in repairs leaving $0 for customer to pay. Customer wants $560. This may or may not have been our fault but how is that determined? Second why do.we own customer money and not the warranty service. This ever happened to anyone and how was it resolved
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Of all the things, what makes you suspect you may have damaged the 24v transformer?
 
The customer gets the warranty repair done either by you or by the Home Warranty not by both. The customer must be made whole by someone, they are not guaranteed to make a profit.

Were you given the chance to do the repairs?
 
mannyb said:
During an ATS install and during power outage we may have damaged the control transformer for ac. The customer called theirAC people and they determined it was the transformer. The customer had home warranty so customer Home warranty fixed the issue only charging customer $60 of the $560 in repairs leaving $0 for customer to pay. Customer wants $560. This may or may not have been our fault but how is that determined? Second why do.we own customer money and not the warranty service. This ever happened to anyone and how was it resolved
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Please correct anything I have wrong but sounds like shortly after you done your ATS install, the AC system stopped working.

Customer called a HVAC company and they determined the control transformer is bad. HVAC repaired it and had a repair of $560?

Customer's home warranty company paid the HVAC company though I'm not clear on the mentioned $60 as to whether warranty covered all but 60 or if they paid all the bill as you also mentioned "leaving $0 for customer to pay".

What I don't like about this if I have things right is if the warranty company paid for the repair bill, then why is customer asking you for full amount of the repair bill. If anything they should only be asking for the $60 portion if they only paid that, and the warranty company should be after you for the rest if they think it is your fault it failed.

Regardless who is asking for payment, I be wanting to be able to examine the defective transformer or at least have some other party investigate it and determine what may have caused the failure. If they already got rid of the evidence I wouldn't be willing to simply pay up. The fishy thing here is say if you somehow applied improper voltage and that caused it to fail, chances are there would have been other items that failed from improper voltage as well.

I think this customer looking for a free lunch, don't give in too easy. Let them take you to court if they willing to go that far. Hopefully they end up spending more than they get from you out of this case. I still say the most you owe them is $60 if it can even be proven you cause the failure. The warranty company is who should be pursuing anything more than that from you since they paid the bill.
 
I wouldn't even offer the $60 unless they can prove the damage was from my work. Sounds like the customer is just looking for a dishonest profit.
I had a customer want me to come back and fill in, or fix, a trench that he said settled after a torrential rain storm. He then offered to do it himself if I took half off the entire bill for ALL the work that I did. I had my trench guy go up to look and you could barely see a dip in the trench. The customer said just scrape some dirt from the yard into the trench. I said "then you will complain about the yard not being level from grabbing dirt form it"!
The customer's wife came out and the man asked her what she wanted done. she said everything looked fine to her!

The trench guy didn't have to do anything but charged me $125 anyway. I was glad to pay that to shut the customer up.
For context, my total bill was around 3K, customer wanted me to take $1500 off if he used his tractor to smooth the trench. The trench didn't need anything, but even if it did, it would have taken him maybe 30 mins to drag a box blade over the trench.
His plan all along was to get me to reduce my bill. My price was more than fair for what all I did for him!
 
Unless this was a good repeat customer, they would get nothing. If you just have to pay, give them $60 and tell them to kick rocks.
 
mannyb said:
During an ATS install and during power outage we may have damaged the control transformer for ac. The customer called theirAC people and they determined it was the transformer. The customer had home warranty so customer Home warranty fixed the issue only charging customer $60 of the $560 in repairs leaving $0 for customer to pay. Customer wants $560. This may or may not have been our fault but how is that determined? Second why do.we own customer money and not the warranty service. This ever happened to anyone and how was it resolved
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IMO, if you did something to burn up a control xfmr that wouldn't have been all that let the magic smoke out.
tell em to prove it.
 
CoolWill said:
Unless this was a good repeat customer, they would get nothing. If you just have to pay, give them $60 and tell them to kick rocks.
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None of my good repeat customers will do that to me. They also would likely have called me first when the AC wasn't working if it happened immediately after I done other work. If it had been some time in between then OP's work likely wasn't the cause for failure, unless maybe this was first time they attempted to use the AC since that work was done.
 
If you blew the control transformer from an improper install, there would be more than that toasted, unless you shorted the transformer when you installed a load shed module, then it could be on you. But unless it quit working the same day you did the install, it would be hard to prove it was your fault.
 
hillbilly1 said:
That, or they did it live and shorted it by cutting the lv stat cable.
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Possible, yet at same time that fault would likely be short enough duration to not take out the transformer.

Who says HVAC guy didn't somewhat rip them off and replace transformer when all he really needed to do was replace a blown fuse? Most newer units, like in the last 25 to 30 years, that I have seen pretty much all have fuse in the control circuit.
 
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