How Do HVAC Contractors (and Customers) Navigate the Abundance of Chain Companies?

D107

It's certainly not hard to notice that these days if you call a company for HVAC, plumbing, electric, etc. more often than not if your former contractor is not around anymore, you're going to find yourself in a jungle of a diminishing number of sole proprietors vs a burgeoning crowd of statewide and national chains, each with multiple/interchangeable names and teams of receptionists. You email one company and get a reply back from another that claim to have the same owner. When I recently found some sole proprietors I breathed a sigh of relief as if I'd been stuck in a world of androids.

EdTheHeaterMan

I am familiar with this trend.  Some of those Mom and Pop companies have even kept their original names and connected with the "Chain Gangs". I owned a sole proprietor (actually registered as LLC) that I ran with my son.  I had several competitors that were "affiliated". They all seemed to offer you a 3 tier price Good, Better, Best, to get just about everything done from replacing a thermocouple to installing an entire system.  The goal is to upsell everyone.  And taken at its base philosophy it is a great business plan as long as the leadership of the company offers reasonable “GOOD” options that were actually available for the less fortunate income wise. 

The problem is that when the owners join up and take the “How to run a Successful Contractor Business” meetings they see profits and become bean counters and break away from the thing their parents started 30 years ago.  “Customer Service”

The bottom line is that if you find a Mom & Pop outfit, they will probably go out of business within 10 years. that is because the good technician is not always the good business man. He has the knowledge to fix your stuff but is not as good at balancing the books. With the friends that I had in the business, I was able to find some of the secrets that make the big boys profitable, and incorporate those ideas into my small business.

If nothing else, the owner will get old and not have anyone to pass the business on to. So here i am in am disabled state, sharing my experience.

D107

@EdTheHeaterMan Thanks for your very interesting cautionary tale. I know doctors have been doing this for years—perhaps more for protection from the high insurance costs. Doctors bristle at having to take orders from the bean counters when they called their own shots for years. Perhaps HVAC people are more of an independent breed—but the Wall's followers are probably not a typical cross-section. I have found that in the music business when you go to put your music online, one is hard-pressed to find a company that you can speak to on the phone; email is the only way. And that causes problems that could have been solved in one or two short calls to take more than a week as people go back and forth trying to clarify what they meant in the first place.