How to save $1,250.00 on your car's A/C

Do you own a newer model Audi A4? and is your air conditioner not working like it should? This was the trouble one of our customers suffered with his Audi 2004 A4. He took his Audi to the local Audi dealer one he frequents (or did) and trusted (or used to).

The story goes that John (we will call him John for the sake of a name) took in his Audi to one of our local Audi dealers here in beautiful San Diego. The complaint was that the A/C wasn't cooling like it used to. John handed over his keys to the service manager and his car was taken away behind the wall that separates the customers from the working technicians and John got a ride back to his place of business where he awaited a call to tell him why his A/C wasn't working right.
About three hours later John got the bad news "the air conditioning compressor and related parts needed to be changed" this project would set john back about $1,400.00 and he would be with out his car for a day or two.
Well John decided to get a second opinion and asked one of his employees who they deal with (John works at a refuse disposal company)  and so John was referred to us that's how we ended up with Johns Audi.

When we hooked up the A/C machine to Johns car we noticed that the A/C system was completely out of R-134A freon so Donovan our main technician does the usual inspection , recharge and A/C performance test and to his surprise the A/C blows  just as it should nice and cold (45deg) and the compressor and related parts are preforming like they should. We looked the vehicle over several times looking for a reason that would keep the compressor from functioning but everything looked good. At that point I call John and give him the good news "looks like we can save you about $1,250.00" all you need at this time is a recharge and a service that will set you back $150.00. Needless to say John wasen't to happy with the dealership he has patronized over the past few years. I guess the technician could have made a mistake but that's not my real guess, and that is what gives all of us in the auto repair industry a bad name. I believe it was a false up sale, someone needed to make a few thousand dollars and they didn't care how. The morel of this story is get a second opinion especially if its a big job.
John is now our customer and probably will be for a long time.
http://www.intermountainradiator.com