Not Licensed? Not Cool!

Licensing guarantees, or at least improves, the revenue stream for those seeking to justify their miserable existences.

Thieves are thieves, licensed or not....A license in itself carries no guarantee of fair trade...I've seen a few over the years, and I might add here the guy that has the license is not usually the guy that shows up, it's somebody working for him...There's nothing wrong with using sub-contractors to save money, in many cases it's the same guy, it's just now he's working for you directly, and not the contractor that's charging the premium rates....These organisations of contractors like to point out bad experiences that get reported of work that was done by "unlicensed" contractors because they aren't paying the same overhead, and hence the lower prices...they are trying to level the playing field by telling horror stories, but the truth is there are just as many if not more that can be told about licensed contractors...So if you're lucky enough to know a good A/C mechanic that will work for you as a sub-contractor, go for it,,,...A sub-contractor doesn't need a license, just liability insurance....Home owners can act as a contractor for their own property here in Florida...

Seems to me the HVAC industry has (or lacks) as much credibility as any other industry involved in building construction. This sounds like the Miami-Dade Contractors Alliance is involved in a form of 'rent-seeking' protectionism.

My personal experience with the HVAC crowd is the ones with the licences are generally the worst crooks and offenders around.

I just visited a buddy of mine who had is central air system for his store go out. The local HVAC guy told him it was a three ton unit that was at least 20 years old and needs to be replaced with a new 4 - 5 ton system that will cost about $7K to set up.

That's fine and dandy except I put the system in for the guy 5 years ago with all brand new components and it is already a 5 ton capacity system. The problem is the compressor run capacitor burned up and the HVAC weasel stuck a oversized one in for a cheap price of $250, a $20 part that took all of 10 minutes to put in, which fryed his compressor motor about two days later from over driving the start circuit due to the wrong capacitor having been put in.

The guy in passing did say that he could get him a new compressor for around $2000 plus install.

So in short the guy overcharged for the wrong part then burned out my buddies compressor then lied about its size and age and tried to sell him a new system for about three times the systems fair market value of which anyone can legally buy off the shelf and install themselves being split unit systems like my buddies are exempt from needing a licence to install.

BTW I can get him a brand new commercial compressor unit for about $850 of which it would take me at most about 3 hours to install and I would toss the flush and recharge in for free!.

North Dakota, what the H, you could just freeze your waste water in a giant tank and use it for cooling....what's your summer like, about a month in the 80's??

A month in the 80's? I thought Summer there was a month of 60 degree weather?

Oh, wait, I'm thinking of Minnesota.

I hated the 80's. I went through about ten years of them.

I loved the 80's, great music, great fashion, great hair.

Of course it also had horrible music, atrocious fashion, terrifying hair.

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..."

Just because they are licensed does not mean they do great work. I've seen pretty shoddy workmanship from some licensed HVAC people. Not all but some get the license just to get the $$$ and don't care about workmanship, reliability, customer service etc.

On the other hand I've seen the same from unlicensed HVAC people...as well as really good workmanship!

I'd like to see all of them licensed and to have more education for the public to understand how to report/avoid poor workmanship, and maybe a few of the customers that hire the unlicensed should be punished too! If you ask to see the license, that's not an excuse to hire them.

Regulations that cannot be enforced are useless...even when created by "licensed lawmakers".