These are the things my husband and I wish we knew when we bought our Carrier split-type inverter aircon. If you plan to buy this aircon brand, these tips might help you out.
Tip No 1: We strongly recommend that you contact the official Carrier accredited maintenance company for the installation and servicing of the unit in your province or area.
In Cebu, this is J Turla Appliance Service Corporation.
Tip No 2: If you are buying Carrier aircon, know that the first cleaning servicing and first freon recharging is FREE, provided that the unit is still under warranty. Warranty for the unit is one year from purchase date, for the compressor it is five years.
*Make a validation and confirm this free service with the sales agent as well as Carrier itself before you buy, as there might be new policy changes after I’ve published this post.
The SM Appliance sales agent did not share above critical info to us. We shelled-out P950 for cleaning and P4,500 for recharging of the freon to the “unofficial” aircon maintenance firm that the agent referred to us during purchase.
Last year October when we bought our 1.5 HP Carrier X Power Gold 2 from SM Appliance in Pueblo Verde Lapu – Lapu City, we asked the sales agent to give us the contact number of the official firm for the installation of the unit. He gave us the number of an aircon servicing company which we later found out 7 months after installation, that they are not accredited and not ‘official’.
*Split-type aircon installation fee charged was P9,500. Installation fee is cheaper for box aircon.
Tip No 3: Make sure to buy aircon with horse power that is ideal for the size of the room. Our original plan was to buy 1 HP as it was cheaper but after further research we decided on 1.5 HP as it is more ideal for our room’s floor area of 18 sqm.
If you will buy an ‘underpowered’ aircon, whether or not box or split-type, the unit will be forced to work harder to cool the room each time you use it, which eventually will hasten it’s deterioration. So buy one that is a good fit for the room size.
Tip No 4: Clean the filter of the indoor unit every week or two. The filter on the indoor unit can be easily remove. Once removed put it under running water to get rid of the dirt, and then put it back. Do not use brush on the filter screen as it might damage it.
*A split-type aircon is composed of an indoor unit and an outdoor unit.
Do not wait for your filter to get as dirty as ours. Ughhh. We now intend to regularly clean the indoor filter hehe.
*We intended to have our unit service last March but quarantine happened. :/
Tip No 5: It is recommended to have your airconditioning system clean and service every 4 to 5 months, or earlier by professionals.
Tip No 6: Choose to have your unit service by the brand’s official and accredited aircon servicing and maintenance company. The fee might be a bit higher, but it’s worth their expertise.
The unofficial firm which installed our unit seems like no expert at all when it comes to Carrier aircons.
How come I say this? Imagine this – they ‘cleaned’ our unit last May but water dripped again, which means there is blockage, after only few weeks. Instead of calling them to check and fix the issue, we called J Turla, the official accredited firm.
The true experts from J Turla found lots of molds when they inspected and cleaned the unit.
If cleaning was done effectively and properly by the unofficial firm, much molds wouldn’t have been present that fast.
Titus, who was observing both cleaning jobs, said the unofficial firm’s aircon technicians just sprayed water on the indoor and outdoor unit. The Turla aircon technicians took out lots of volts and screws to access the parts where molds were present and cleaned them well, they even clean the cover.
There is really a marked difference between the performance of the two firms as observed by my husband.
The official technicians are professionals too, the other nevermind.
After the unit was cleaned by the unofficial technicians, the aircon was not able to ‘cool’ the room during testing. We informed them that the ‘coldness’ is not reaching our bed, compared to before when you will feel the aircon’s coldness after just about 15 minutes of running it.
These unofficial technicians tried to put the blame on our curtain-less room. They said the room won’t really get cold because it’s hot and humid outside, it was afternoon when they came. We countered that the lack of curtain for our windows shouldn’t matter because we didn’t have trouble with coldness for the last 7 months with our darkly-tinted windows. And every day we used the aircon for our 2 hours afternoon nap. ‘It was cold then, why not now?.’ we asked.
We kept insisting that the aircon’s performance is not normal. They recommended for freon recharging, we agreed, trusting their ‘expert’ recommendation. So we paid P4,500 for recharging of freon but even after that was done, the aircon was still not performing well.
The unofficial technicians again kept insisting that everything is okay and that the aircon is working normally and to wait because the freon need to “cycle” before reaching full potential.
And would you believe one of the unofficial tech have the temerity to say na nag-inOA ako to the company owner over a phone call. I was under the ledge on the ground floor, hidden from view, when I heard him described the situation to the owner. Lol. I called him on it. Dapat lang. Our concerns are valid.
They left us still feeling frustrated.
That night we tested the aircon but still not satisfied with the performance that the day after Titus decided to contact the Facebook page of Carrier. It was their social media team who referred us to the official maintenance and servicing company for their brand, J Turla in Cebu.
An official aircon technician came to check our unit, he found out that the psi was low at 60 when it should be nearing 150 psi. Remember we recently had the unit cleaned and fresh freon loaded by the unofficial technicians.
The official technician wrote-up a report recommending recharging of the freon.
We informed the owner of the unofficial firm that we contacted Carrier and we shared with her the findings of the official technician, the owner was clearly worried.
The following day, she sent a team to fix the issues. Her team dismantled the whole piping set-up, redid the installation, and recharged the freon for the second time, this time not charging us.
I think the owner was feeling the pressure because we informed her staff that Carrier said they are not one of the official accredited companies.
Plus, we explained to them that if they will ask us to pay for another freon recharging when kabago-bago lang nilang nag-load ng fresh freon, that we are going to SM Appliance Tamiya to file a complaint plus we will go to DTI.
That night, the aircon performance was better but still slightly off. The following morning, we informed the firm’s owner that the coldness is better. She said that’s good to hear and she sent us a txt message saying ‘kung puede sana huwag nalang natin ipagalaw sa iba technician para iwas conflict po’.
Remember the report made by the J Turla expert tech? Well, 5 days after that they visited us for servicing and charging of the freon. They said that they only put-in a small amount of freon. That’s expected we think because the other firm just loaded fresh freon few days back.
Did Turla charge us? NO. Because that was our first official recharging of the freon.
Turla did not charge us for it because they said our unit is under warranty and they informed us that Carrier gives FREE OF CHARGE for the following services made by any of their accredited maintenance companies:
- Recharging of the freon for the first time
- Cleaning of the unit for the first time
Again, we didn’t know about this because the sales agent did not inform us. Nasayang yung pera namin sa unofficial firm na palpak naman ginawa. If we had known about it, dumiretso na sana kami sa Turla, di pa kami napagastos sana.
Moving forward, we’ve decided that all servicing will be done by J Turla for our aircon unit. We will not again contact the company referred to us by the SM Appliance sales agent.
We asked the Turla technicians how much is the fee for recharging of the freon if unit is no longer under warranty, he said that it’s P9,000 for our split-type unit. Freon is cheaper for box types aircons. For cleaning, the fee is P1,050.
We recommend to have your Carrier aircon or any aircon brand installed and serviced by the official technicians even if their services fees are higher. It’s worth their expertise.
Electricity Consumption Monitoring
We have been monitoring our daily electrical consumption for few weeks now after we were shocked with the amount reflected on the latest electrical bill. Turns-out our local electric company, MECO, also made average billing instead of actual billing for March, April, May, like Meralco.
Anyhow, so we’ve been monitoring daily, once in the morning and once at night. Sharing our database as resource. See this bigger image of our monitoring.
Normally, we are averaging 11 kilowatts per day. Our appliances include 1.5 HP split-type aircon inverter, inverter refrigerator, TV, laptops, regular washing machine, electric fans, mobile phones, conduction stove (rarely used), led ufo bulbs. We are only 2 living in the house, so medyo tipid.
Tip No 7: Monitor your electricity consumption for a couple of weeks. Experiment with the settings on your inverter aircon, then after gathering enough data go with the setting which gives you ideal coldness comfort at the same time there will be no bill-shock. 🙂
Our normal aircon electricity consumption is 5 kilowatts for 9 hours at night, with setting set at 25 degrees Auto. When we set it at 23 degrees at 4 fans level, we consumed 10 kilowatts overnight, lol.
Tip No 8: When it comes to electricity consumption – an inverter aircon is better versus the non-inverter types,. They are a bit pricey compared the regular ones but over time, you will save with the inverter.
We are happy now with our Carrier aircon’s performance, it’s back to normal. 🙂 Do we recommend this aircon brand? Yes!
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