One Bad Apple Spoils the Bunch

In this week’s issue of The NEWS, one of our regular guest columnists and industry veteran Butch Welsch wrote about unethical sales practices. In the column, he gave one example of a technician who told a homeowner there were holes in three of the four heat exchanger cells and if she ran the furnace it could kill her. Welsch explains how the technician turned off the gas and put a tag on the furnace. However, when his company was called out to check it out, the heat exchanger was in great condition, without any sign of rust.

I met up with Welsch last week at the ACCA conference, where his company was named ACCA 2016 Residential Contractor of the Year. There, we discussed this story for a bit. It hit rather close to home because someone tried this tactic with my mom a few months ago. She was having a regular tuneup and the technician told her the heat exchanger was cracked and warned her of the danger of carbon monoxide poisoning. Not really trusting his word, she called a family friend out to have a look. Upon inspection, she was told there was nothing wrong with the furnace or heat exchanger.