Best Of

Some of this depends on how the companies are structured as well. There's a few companies in the Detroit area that have a high turnover rate of employees. I have gone behind some other companies and explain my findings to the homeowner where they say what they didn't catch that. I find some of the companies where they give commission to techs more times that not are the ones to stay away from. The tech is more focused on getting to the next call and sell parts so they increase their commission. Train and pay guys so they focus on quality rather than quantity of calls.

Well done! I'm more of an installer than a service tech, but I try to service boilers that I install which has taught me a great deal more than any book ever would have. I usually turn down service calls from others simply due to the fact that I'm not a service tech and don't know enough to be good at what I do, but, on occasion I will take calls from folks who are at their wit's end with salesmen telling them they need a new boiler even though theirs is only 5 years old. I recently came across an old Weil McLain CG-4 system that had been "serviced" by 2 small local shops and one big corporate operation within a month's time but still had a terrible noise coming from the system on occasion and the basement never warmed up. One of the small shops replaced a relief valve, expansion tank, and tridicator gauge and said it was good to go, but small shop #2 and the corporate shop both told the homeowner (a 21 year old girl, first time homeowner) that she needed a new boiler to the tune of $11k and $18k. The burners were full of cat hair from the previous owners so I know none of them cleaned it, the original Taco 007 was squealing due to bad bearings, and the basement thermostat was bad. Somebody monkeyed with the gas valve and had the CO up to nearly 8000PPM (yes, eight thousand) which obviously was causing some issues, but I was able to clean it out, replace the circ, flush the system, replace the faulty stat, and adjust the gas valve back to proper spec in a matter of 4 hours. According to the homeowner, she had spent several thousand dollars on these "service" calls already and whether the previously replaced components were actually bad I don't know, but the original call was for the basement being cold and the noise which obviously none of them could figure out. Basic common sense is no longer a requirement to become a service tech, apparently… It's scary how many of these guys are running around performing "service" like this.