$75. Here is what you get for it.

Every other shop in this market advertises a free estimate. We publish a number instead. It is the first thing most people ask about, so here is exactly what it covers, what happens on the visit, and where it goes from there.

Book a visit (512) 591-5915

What the service call covers

Here is exactly what that buys, and what happens if you decide not to go ahead.

Proposed wording. Tony, this is our best guess at your own terms. Correct it in one sentence and we will change it.

A licensed contractor at your house, in a window you agreed to. Not a salesman. Not a technician working on commission. The person whose license number is on the truck.
A real diagnosis. Gauges on the system, a meter on the electrical, and a look at the whole thing instead of the one part making the most noise. A weak capacitor and a failing compressor can present the same way from the driveway.
A straight answer about what is wrong and what it costs. In plain language, before anyone touches anything. Not a range. Not a ballpark that doubles once the panel comes off.
Work that starts on the same visit when the part is on the truck. Capacitors, contactors and float switches usually are. A coil is not.
The freedom to say no. Sit with it. Call somebody else and compare. The diagnosis is yours either way and nobody calls you for the next six months trying to change your mind.

The three questions everybody asks on the phone

These are the industry norms and they are what we would put on the page. Tony changes any of them with one sentence.

Does the $75 come off the repair?: Yes, when the repair happens on the same visit. You are paying for the diagnosis, and once it turns into work you should not pay for it twice.
Does it change on a weekend?: The $75 is the weekday number. Saturday and Sunday are by appointment and quoted when you book, so you hear the figure first.
What if the fault will not show itself while we are there?: Intermittent faults are real and we will not guess at a part to look decisive. We document what we measured, tell you what to watch for, and come back for the fault rather than for another diagnostic fee.

What a free estimate usually is

Nobody does free work. That is not cynicism, it is arithmetic. A company that sends a van, a body and two hours of drive time to your house for nothing is recovering that cost somewhere, and the only place left to recover it is the quote you get at the end.

There is a second problem with it that matters more. The person a free-estimate shop sends is very often a salesperson, and a salesperson who finds nothing wrong has had a bad day. Paying a licensed contractor a small fixed fee to look at your system removes that incentive completely. He gets the same $75 whether the answer is a capacitor or a whole new system, which means the answer can just be the answer.

That is the entire argument for a published price, and it is why we would rather show it than bury it.

What moves the price of the actual repair

We will not print a repair price list, because a price list that does not know your house is a guess with a decimal point on it. Here is what a real number is built out of instead.

The part, and where it lives

A run capacitor sits behind a service panel on the outside unit and takes minutes. An evaporator coil sits in an attic air handler in July, which means a recovery machine, a nitrogen purge, brazing, and a long afternoon in 130 degree air. Same system, different day entirely.

Access

A pull-down ladder into a floored attic with a light already up there is one job. A scuttle hole over a closet, no decking, and trusses at sixteen inches on center is another. This is the variable homeowners never think about and technicians think about first.

Refrigerant

R-22 has not been produced or imported in this country since 2020, so what is left is reclaimed and it is expensive. R-410A systems are still straightforward to service. It is printed on the nameplate of the outdoor unit, and it changes the conversation more than almost anything else.

The duct, and the size of the thing

A system that has been failing every August since it went in is sometimes not a broken system. It is a return that cannot move the air the equipment is producing, or a size that was picked off a square footage rule instead of a load calculation. Fixing the box and not the duct is how you buy the same problem twice.

More on how a replacement gets scoped is on the system replacement page, and the AC repair page walks through the diagnostic in the order we actually do it.

Repair it or replace it

Four questions. It gives you a leaning and the reasoning behind it, and it never gives you a price, because we have no way of knowing what your house needs from here.

The short version, if you would rather just read it: multiply the age of the system by the repair quote you are holding. If that number is large next to what a replacement costs in this market, you are looking at a replacement. Then check the nameplate for R-22, count how many repairs it has had in the last two years, and ask whether the compressor is the thing that failed. Those four facts settle most of these conversations in a driveway.

Answer the questions and the leaning appears here.

What this assumes

Proposed. Every threshold below is ours, not Two Seasons pricing. Tony changes these numbers or deletes the tool before launch.

The old trade rule of thumb: age times repair cost, measured against $5,000. It is a rule of thumb, not a law, and it ignores your ductwork entirely.
Wear starts counting at year six and stops mattering separately after year sixteen.
R-22 pushes the answer hard toward replacement on its own.
Every unanswered question widens the range instead of guessing a middle value. That is deliberate. A confident answer built on four maybes is worse than a wide one.

This is an estimate of a leaning, not of a cost. The real answer comes from somebody looking at your system.

Two things we do not have yet

A maintenance plan

We do not sell one today. We have drafted the plan we would build, priced the way comparable Williamson County shops price theirs and marked as proposed.

Financing

Also not offered today. Credit cards are. The financing page explains how it normally works on a replacement and states plainly that no lender has been selected.

Questions about money

Can you tell me what the repair costs over the phone?

No, and be careful with anyone who will. Warm air out of the vents is a symptom with about eight common causes and they range from a twelve dollar part to a new system. A number given over the phone is either padded to cover the worst case or it is going to change when the panel comes off.

Do you take credit cards?

Yes.

Why publish a price at all?

Because a price you have to hunt for reads as a price somebody is embarrassed about. Stating it up front, with the reason attached, turns it from a toll into a policy. It also filters the call: if $75 is not worth it to you, we both find that out before anyone drives across the county.

What are your hours, honestly?

Monday to Friday, 7:00am to 5:00pm. Saturday and Sunday by appointment. We would rather tell you that than promise midnight and not show up.

Proposed answers. These two are not documented anywhere and only Tony can settle them.

Is the service call credited toward the repair?

Our proposed answer: yes, when you approve the repair on the same visit, the $75 comes off the invoice. Tony has not confirmed this and it may well be wrong.

Do you charge for a replacement quote?

Our proposed answer: no. Sizing a system and pricing a changeout is a bid, and bids are free. Diagnosing a fault is work, and work is $75. Confirm or change it.

The rest of them live on the FAQ page, and a longer piece about the service call is on the blog.