No Serve Situations - Short #243

HVAC School - For Techs, By Techs

Bryan Orr

Training, Careers, Airconditioning, Self-improvement, Hvac, Business, Education, Refrigeration, Heating, Ac, Apprenticeship

4.8 • 985 Ratings

🗓️ 3 June 2025

⏱️ 13 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In this short podcast episode, Bryan talks about some no-serve situations he's encountered as a technician and HVAC business owner. He also talks about situations that may be unpleasant but aren't quite no-serve situations.

Some common and obvious no-serve situations are when a client threatens a technician, especially with lawsuits, bad reviews, or even bodily harm. However, some clients are just naturally defensive, so we want to be careful and give people a chance if they're angry and might just need to calm down.

Unrealistic expectations can also cause no-serve situations. Some complaints are tricky to deal with but can be solved, but other problems are impossible to solve. We have every right not to serve clients who have problems that don't have realistic solutions (such as wanting a thermostat that doesn't make a clicking noise at all). In those cases, Kalos usually gives some degree of a refund and agrees not to do business with the customer again.

Dirtiness of the living space can also be a no-serve situation. Unless a home is dangerously filthy (e.g., it can cause a respiratory disease) or the equipment is not accessible, we can serve them. Even if the home is filthy or the equipment is inaccessible, we can ask the owner to clean up and return to serve them. On the other side of the coin, hypochondriacs can be a challenge to deal with, but no-serve situations are rare; we can take precautions, including more thorough testing and hold-harmless agreements.

Other no-serve situations are people who don't pay, people who regularly pay extremely late, customers who aren't the owner (such as tenants or family members), and clients who try to drag you into drama with other contractors.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Well, hibbley jibbley. This is the HVAC school podcast. I'm Brian, and this is a short episode
0:09.1	where I'm going to talk about cases where you might no-serve, or maybe not. Maybe you do,
0:14.5	maybe you don't, whatever, but I'm going to talk through some situations where I certainly have
0:18.7	in some situations that are kind of on the edge,
0:22.2	and maybe some situations where you don't know, sir, even when you feel like it.
0:26.2	But before we talk about that, let's hear from our great sponsors.
0:29.9	Copeland and their technician appreciation sweepstakes.
0:34.0	Refrigeration technologies, and specifically Viper wipes, the all-purpose wipe that is really amazing what it can cut through.
0:43.3	Everything from mastic to oil grease tar, grime, and it's nice on the hands.
0:48.7	Make some nice and soft when you're done.
0:50.5	So that way, you can go home and head out a dancing when you get back to the house.
0:57.4	Find out more at refrigetec.com slash viper dash wipes.
1:01.5	Refraggetech.com slash viper dash wipes.
1:06.4	Field peace and field peace university.
1:09.4	Get Nate credits.
1:10.4	Take amazing courses on everything from evacuation,
1:13.2	leak detection, gas. Find out more. Go to fieldpiece.com slash fieldpiece dash university. That's
1:18.8	fieldpiece.com slash fieldpiece dash university. Carrier and carrier.com.
1:28.2	All right. So let's talk about some of the more obvious situations.
1:31.1	And these are all things that I've had happen, either as a tech or as an owner or manager.
1:36.7	So even before I started Calo, I was a service tech at another company, and I became the training manager.
1:41.4	But I was also like the special projects guy, also, i.e.
	...

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