Repair bill

So agent calls and tells me the tenant has called and complained the AC is not working. The tenant had just moved in and on trying to turn on the AC it would not work. Agent suggests they organise a guy to come out and take a look / fix it. AC guy goes out and AC works no problems. $150 bill for attending to tell me the AC works just fine.

Do I have any right to ask the tenant to pay the bill considering there was nothing wrong with the AC?

 

Were instructions provided?

 

If the manual was provided, sure

 

Agent is an idiot for not troubleshooting over the phone. Get a new pm

 

Instructions to turn on the AC? I would imagine not. There’s a remote and you hit start.
AC guy suggested in his report that it might have been a building power issue. Though sounds like an attempt at some explanation. Power issue would have effected all electrical and not just AC.

Next time I will request the PM to take further steps before suggesting to get a repair man out.

 

Let me guess, the isolation switch at the outdoor unit was turned off?

 

Any person with knowledge of google would just google the model number to get the guide.

 

Its an air con. They shouldn’t have to google the guide to turn it on!

 

Not sure. All the report said was tested unit and was working.

 

Agreed. But in case it was in the wrong mode etc. Not hard to figure out. Im going to make sure my IP has the manuals there to avoid this kind of stuff happening.

 

Give the A/C guy a call and ask him what he actually did.
Might be a bit more than 'tested; working'. I reckon @Michael Mitchell could be on the money with the AC switch being off at the box.

Until you know 100% what the 'issue' was, I wouldn't be trying to claim anything back from the tenants. I'm sure the tenants would have tried the 'start/on' button.....

 

Good point. Will do that to see what the AC guy says.

Cheers

 

Legal requirement here to provide the guides

 

Good to know. Unsure of what the rule in WA is. Will ask my new PM.

 

Definitely good to know. For $150 I could have googled the guide and emailed to them.

This sort of nonsense is exactly why I only own 1 ip. Never had this problem with my investment shares in VAS. vanguard has never called me with a maintenance request for my investment with them.

 

We have a real cheapo one that we bought years ago from Target(split system) ,and does not get used a lot, but its a shocker for the display on the remote , the symbols and icons make no sense, the cooling symbol looks like the sun , where as most units use the snowflake(cystal) icon.
Unlike the kelvinator , in the other room that is very straight forward to use and have never had to consult the manual.
I can see why Target was flogging them off cheaply.

 

Keep all original instruction manuals.

Ensure that the PM has a photocopy of each, and ensures a copy of each is supplied to every ingoing tenant.
Marg

 

This has happened to us a few times:
- Hubby went and checked and found out the outdoor unit has a power point which was turned off
- waited 24 hours and AC fixed itself
- Battery for remote was dead.

Yes, all the above required some “investigation” and we are just too grateful that we are Onsite! Pity Owners are not aware....

 

I always used to supply manuals for all the appliances. With each successive tenancy, they always vanished and had to be replaced.

 

This actually happened with one of my rentals. The Tenant was a computer programmer on big money, very smart cookie. They said they'd read through all the manuals and googled (checked circuit breakers, batteries in remote, etc.) so when they reported the A/C not working I had no hesitation in sending a work order to get the technician out. $99 later turns out the isolation switches were off. Nothing wrong with the equipment, and Tenant didn't want to pay the bill, so went through dispute resolution, where they agreed to pay half as neither side wanted to waste the time in QCAT over $50.