Recently my AC stopped pumping out cold air, the fans still work - so I brought it into a shop and they said the compressor was bad. The repairs cost me $1300 and when they completed them they called me and told me my the dash control blew out when the compressor overheated. Now they want to charge me another $300 to replace that. I have a hard time trusting mechanics, especially since my last car’s engine died because my previous mechanic made a radiator leak I paid him to fix worse. My dash panel was working fine for all I could tell before - everything worked except the AC, but even that lit up. Are these guys charging me for something they broke? or did they charge me for a compressor that I didn’t need? Or can the dash’s AC control be blown out without showing any symptoms?
There’s not enough info known to make much of a guess at what’s going on but a compressor will usually exhibit some symptoms before failing. Usually they become noisy in some way.
Based on what you’ve stated the entire thing sounds a bit suspect to me.
I find it hard to believe the compressor had any affect on the control unit in the dashboard.
You need a better AC shop.
I’d bet that they did a very bad diagnosis job and there was nothing wrong with the compressor. Once they replaced the compressor and it still didn’t work, they finally did more diagnosis and found out that the real problem was the dash control all along. Instead of being honest and only charging for the control repair, they are lumping it all on you.
An alternate possibility is that they still haven’t correctly diagnosed the problem and when replacing the dash control doesn’t fix it either, they’ll find another part to throw at it, at your expense.
Its seeming more and more like they’re doing unnecessary repairs. After the mechanic diagnosed it as a bad compressor he asked me if it was making any noise. I told him it wasn’t and that literally the AC worked when I drove it one night, and didn’t work in the morning. I also told him that I recently got a new stereo installed, and asked him if it was possible that the AC control was reattached poorly. When I asked him what caused the Compressor to go, he said he didn’t know. I asked him if that problem wasn’t addressed could my compressor go again and he told me it was unlikely. I did a bit of research on the internet about it and it seems that the exact opposite was the truth. But I guess if he would have told me that it was likely that it would go again I would have taken it to a shop that could find the cause.
I’m really not happy right now, but I’m going not going to confront them until I get my car back. Quite frankly I don’t know what they might do to my vehicle if I lay into them now.