Weidner Heating & Air Conditioning

Weidner installed my furnace in 2006, for the previous owners of my home. In January 2016, the blower went out. I called Weidner, and their tech showed up. I asked two questions: how much it was going to cost, and how long it would take.
The technician agreed that the blower motor had gone out. The first price for the repair I got was $ 450, with the repair being finished on the same day. I thought that was reasonable, and I didn’t realize that’s how much these guys wanted to charge me JUST for the blower motor, the part that was obviously faulty — I thought that $ 450 was the whole repair cost.
The technician went out to his van «to make sure the part was in stock.» In retrospect, it was to have a private conversation with his boss and apprentice to see what the part actually cost and figure out how much they could pad out the bill. The tech came back, and he told me that he would also charge me for half-​an-​hour of his working time, $ 100, and the price of the service call, $ 99. Suddenly, the price for the repair had jumped to $ 649, over 50% of the cost of a new single-​stage 70,000 BTU 80%-efficient Bryant gas furnace like mine (UPDATE: Model #311AAV036070, available online for $ 1139), just for a replacement blower motor.
I told the technician that $ 650 was too much, and without missing a beat he told me that he would still have to charge me for the service call, $ 99 for coming to my house and looking at my furnace for less than 10 minutes.
I called the Weidner number and insisted that the total repair cost was too steep and the price of the «service call» was very high. The Weidner guy answering the central number insisted in return with that the $ 99 service call fee for these circumstances was perfectly, unquestionably reasonable.
I did not tell him that before I called this company in the first place, I had looked up the price of a replacement blower motor for my furnace model online, and so I knew that the actual prices for the part in question range from $ 170-​$ 220. (UPDATE: The exact price for a new Bryant/​Carrier ¹⁄₃ horsepower blower motor model #HC41TE114 is $ 238, with shipping, for anyone on the online market, not a Bryant dealer like Weidner). A bit more poking around revealed that you can get a generic ¹⁄₃ horsepower made-​for-​Bryant/​Carrier replacement blower motor with a universal housing for less than a hundred dollars, and there’s an online YouTube video of exactly how to change it out.
And yet the tech had insisted that he was just charging me $ 100 for labor and the real price for the part.
I just ended the call with a laugh and told the guy at the home office to get ready for Weider Heating & Air Conditioning’s latest online review.
I don’t know if this is how all of Weidner works. For all I know, the company may employ a majority of conscientious, reasonably-​priced HVAC professionals who don’t PROVABLY, DEMONSTRABLY LIE IN THEIR CUSTOMERS’ FACES and pad out their part-​replacement bills for minor repairs by, in this case, MORE THAN $ 200, PROVABLY, DEMONSTRABLY, CHARGING TWO HUNDRED PERCENT OF THE ACTUAL REPLACEMENT PART’S REAL COST. Honest HVAC professionals who do not provably, demonstrably expect to collect SIX HUNDRED DOLLARS PER HOUR BY FAIR MEANS OR FOUL to ply their trade. I do know that I have documented that this is exactly what happened in this case.
In this January «service call,» the Weidner people I dealt with behaved like little better than outright thieves, the last of the buccaneers, clearly believing that I would unquestioningly pay their extortionate price, certain that I would not be able to find out even in the Internet era how much of a completely overpadded ripoff their quote for the job was.
It is, after all, January. They must have assumed I would be so desperate for heat that I had forgotten how to use my computer, or so terrified of machinery I could not possibly understand how the blower of a forced-​air furnace works.
You have been warned. Think of the $ 99 fee that I am about to be billed for as a learning cost that you get to avoid.