My AC went out overnight Friday into Saturday. I know nothing about that kind of stuff - except to check the very obvious circuit breaker, etc. Turns out it was a / the capacitor. Nice little emergency service charge + the cost of the part.
Oh, and the first company I called couldn't come out until Monday and was very unclear about their "24/7 Emergency call" service - because I'd explained the sitch - woke up - no AC (went to bed with AC) I just figured they couldn't get out until Monday because they were so busy - this is typical Murphy's Law, right. Besides, if things got so bad here in the house, Thing1 and I could go to a hotel - I was prepared to deal.
When Thing2, my Firefighter/EMS son talked to me that morning, he said - "mom, it's going to be 95* today and tomorrow - you don't have AC - I'd consider that an emergency". He urged me to call back and ask more about their emergency call service. So, I did. I called and asked what constituted an emergency and the young man who answered had to put me on hold to ask.
When he came back on the phone, he spoke so fast I couldn't understand him, so I asked him to repeat it and he then began speaking as though I was an idiot.
His answer was basically "we've filled all of our emergency slots". My job IS Customer Service in a service business and I know that you have to judge these types of things on a case by case basis, so I GET IT, but the answer didn't really make sense. I then said "you only have a certain number of emergency slots?" To which he replied (verrrrrry slooooowwwwly) "Yes-and-all-of-them-are-filled-with-people-who-think-they-have-emergencies-just-like-you".
I thanked him, (he didn't deserve that reply, but I was going to deal with them again later) I hung up and called another company locally her in PF. I paid DOUBLE the service charge and they came out ON Saturday by 2pm and it was fixy-fixed. (for now - I have a 22 year old system, and I'm sure it's on borrowed time)