Freon II - The debate continues

[bam]

How do all you guys handle this?

Evac and recharge. You run the freon through your machine that recycles it and then you put it back in - say a pound and a half. You add a 1/2 pound of new stuff to top it off.

One of my techs said he was taught in school that you charge the customer the full two pounds. One advisor says charge only for the 1/2 pound of new. The other advisor says round the 1/2 pound to one pound and charge the customer.

What are you doing in this situation? Charge 2 pounds? 1 pound? 1/2 pound? What is your reasoning?

[Tazz121]

If you use 6 1/2 quarts of oil in a car you still charge for 7. You can not charge for half of a part. You have to charge for the 1/2 pound that you added that would be rounded up to 1 pound.

[This message has been edited by Tazz121 (edited 06-08-2005).]

[robc]

Charge for capacity. Your dealership, via the machine, is actually a generator of recycled refrigerant. You are the manufacturer - you took their systems left over junk and made 2 pounds of recycled refrigerant. Many manufacturers allow for the capacity to be billed on A/C work to account for this, but you might hear various interpretations of this from your local reps.

Gosh I remember the days of pulling the schrader valve and just letting it go. Which brings up the big question I understand recovering R12, but I thought the point of R134a was it was safe for the environment why do we have to recover it then?

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** Rob, Editor Dealersedge/WD&S **
Help is only a message post away!
robc@dealersedge.com

[BoomBoom]

WE BILL REFRIGERANT BY THE OUNCE. NO ROUNDING NEEDED.

[Tazz121]

By the ounce... That must be an inventory nightmare. As is we weigh the container when it leaves and when it comes back and still have the tec's saying they only used a pound and being two pounds short. I asume you are going by what the AC machine says to get the accurate amount of ounces. It's good to see that at least one dealer doesn't have tec's doing side jobs and ending up short on freon because they do not report those ounces.

[Jon]

We bill by the ounce, too. Tracking is pretty easy once you set up a p/n for ounces. We're GM so a 30 # tank is p/n 12356150, add a period to the end of the p/n and 12356150. becomes your ounce p/n. When you hand out a tank, you post off one of 12356150 to keep your on-hand count correct. At the same time you receipt 12356150. in the amount of 480 (16 ounces/pound times 30 pounds). You can put in a receipt reference like "BULKCONVERT" so it's easy to spot in your transaction journal.

If service is having Parts charge out the full system capacity, valid even under GM warranty, there should never be any shortage. If there are "ounces" left in inventory when a new 30# tank goes out then service gets a policy adjustment to zero out the uncharged ounces. Now that R134a is getting expensive, all of the service people are much more attentive to making sure that the refrigerant gets on the RO and not on the policy ticket.

Billing out ounces keeps rounding to a minimum which is fairer to the customer, especially with current pricing of R134a. Tazz121 is right, you can't bill half parts.

Making the base p/n for ounces the same as for the 30 # tank works for the warranty clerk too since the correct p/n is already there when they submit a claim that requires entry of the GM p/n, dropping the period from the end doesn't cause them any grief.

Rob, R134a is safer for the environment than R12 was but it still depletes ozone in the upper atmosphere, thus the EPA mandate for recovery and recycling. If we eventually go to CO2 refrigerant we may be able to vent that. At least one of the proposals would be to pull CO2 from the atmosphere rather than by some other process that would add net CO2 and increase the greenhouse effect. Cost issues will probably still warrant recovery and recycling of pure CO2. All we need is equipment that can deal with pressures in the 2500-3000 psi range !

Jon

[Number 65]

We charge for whatever refrigerant capacity is for the vehicle, recycled or virgin.

A retired engineer for Harrison Radiator once told me something that made me think: He said that regardless of how you handle/recover/recycle refrigerant, it all ends up in the atmosphere eventually. Never thought of it that way...



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My friends call me Wikid.

[spwilkins]

I agree that we should charge capicity after recovering and recyling. But isnt this one of those issues we in the biz understand (like flat rate) and the average customer has problems with? What can we tell our customers that makes sense on why they should pay to get there own freon back when we are also charging them labor to do it? What are independents doing?