Just some truth from a residential technician for the homeowner

I feel bad for you guys. But my industry doesn’t. Residential HVAC industry has been on a trend for the last 20 years to make record amounts of profit. The price increases that came with COVID have given even more momentum to massive profits. This is how I see it as a journeyman service technician who has been doing this work for over 25 years.

A lot of the smaller shops that provided the type of service I was taught as an apprentice have disappeared. When I started in the late 90’s a lot of the owners were baby boomers. These owners started to want to retire in the early 2000’s and that’s when private equity began to buy shops up because they were essentially recession proof. With all the influx of money more people jumped in purely to profit. Then the cycle of private equity turning smaller companies into giant regional companies began. They charged unreal amounts to the customers and mainly preyed off homeowners ignorance and lack of patience. It became more about getting into a service call purely for maximum profit without real intentions of looking out for the customers. This lead to record profits and a trend just about every owner in my industry regardless of size jumped on. It became a money grab.

Technicians became selling technicians. They are paid by commission and incentivized to sell new equipment. Companies started offering “club membership” programs with auto renewing monthly payments just to be a regular customer. Now a furnace that’s over 10 years old should be replaced in the eyes of service managers. Minimum ticket sales averages became a thing. You now had to charge an average of $700 - $1200 a call. Technicians became less informed and if the equipment was not replaced the solutions they offered for repairs were only band aids and fixed symptoms but often not the root cause of the problem. In short the system you have in your house now has become obsolete in the eyes of our industry regardless of age or condition. The system you buy next will only have a shelf life in the eyes of our industry for another decade.

I truly mourn the death of the industry I knew. Now I’m on my way out since I’m basically a dinosaur in this industry with my ethics. My ask to anyone who can answer what is a good industry for a guy with mechanical skills and ethics?