My neighbor’s refrigerator stopped cooling. It is 23 years old. This guy is out of El Paso 50 miles from our area. My neighbor found good reviews about him. She called his cell and he was in the area and stopped that day. He has a Hyundai Ioniq. Anyway he check out her frig. 3 parts/sensors need replacement. $350. And he would have to order the parts. One week later he shows up with the parts in his Ioniq and repairs the frig. He used to have a van but the EV has saved him a bundle in gasoline expenses.
He told my neighbor to keep repairing her frig. He claims it is better made than the new ones. The parts can individually be removed. On the new ones there are multiple parts in modules. The whole modules have to be replaced which can be expensive. Likely the modules can be cheaply manufactured though which is why the new refrigerators are designed that way.
On the other hand, over on Shrewd I saw a story about Private Equity larceny.
{{ I’ve had some adventures with my hvac system which is critical in the Phoenix area. I found a solid company and was talking to the guy who is also the owner. He worked at another company for a long time and they were valued around $15M but the owner wanted to take it to $20M before selling it. In order to try to get there he or maybe with consultants decided every tech has to have an average bill of $700 at the end of every month. This guy I was talking to said he was the lead and he would have to do the firing and he thought it wasn’t right so he left and took several of the best employees with him to start his own company, the other company has dropped to $9M valuation.
But this is why people are get screwed by many contractors. Either private equity or other demands that require the technician/contractor to make $x per month and causes many of them to recommend work that is completely unnecessary. }}
Just had lunch with the neighbor. She told me the repair guy spent $60/day driving his van. He now spends $90/month driving his EV. Wow!
This guy is a sole proprietor. He is around 50 years old. He worked for large repair shop for 20 years & now is on his own. His children are all grown & out of the house. He now works at his own pace beholding to no one. [maybe not as good as my retired gig, but pretty good] My neighbor is a woman. She wrings every detail about any new person she meets. LOL
I’ve built a list of services folks I’ve found, used over the years, with notes on problems, as well as +'s once shown they were great or really great! HVAC & Plumber are top of the list, great guys, crew, no second thoughts on calling them.. Same with a painter, and recently a tree guy, due this week sometime… Others, contractors, mostly will never be seen here again… Share the good guys with family, friends, hope they don’t retire too soon!
This alone isn’t enough. The excellent local window company that my sister used to replace all her windows. And then I used to replace all my windows. And then my parents used to replace all their windows. And plenty of our local friends used to replace THEIR windows. That excellent local window company was bought out by a giant window company. And now their service is not excellent anymore, it is instead rather cra**y (a word that probably can’t be used here in kindergarten).
And before I hire any company to do work in my house, I do my best to check if they are owned by private equity, or some other large entity, and if they are, I usually decline.
Amazon knows this too. They use quite a lot of delivery vans (understatement of the day) and they drive 150-200 miles a day while idling constantly. That uses roughly a tank of gas, or perhaps $50-60 a day. Now they are rapidly switching over to interesting looking electric vans made by Rivian, and use roughly a full battery each day. But they fill it up at commercial electric rates of about 7 cents/kWh, or $7 to fill up the battery each night with about 100 kWh of electricity. And $7 is a lot less than $50. Amazon knows that because they can do arithmetic.
They probably are. But at some point you can’t get parts anymore. I have a shelf support that is cracking, and they don’t make it anymore. They gave me the part number, and I searched numerous parts warehouses (online), and they all said they couldn’t get it anymore.