A refrigerator compressor is supposed to be rated for at least 10 to 15 years, the owner of G and R Appliance Repair says. These days one can go out in three.
He blames the coolants. As far as refrigeration goes, he says, the industry has moved toward eco-friendly refrigerants, and “the units don’t last.” Fixing them is “a little more challenging,” and the job takes “a lot more equipment” than it used to, along with more training.
That has changed what he would choose to work on. Residential calls are the shop’s “bread and butter,” and he is trained in both residential and commercial repair. Asked which he prefers today, he picks commercial. That side of the business, he says, has “for the most part stayed the same.”
Staying current takes schooling. He says the company keeps going to trade shows and to the training programs manufacturers put out. New technicians sit through multiple interviews, and before one goes out alone, he works alongside a lead or master tech who watches how he handles a job and points out where to improve. The habits drilled in are specific: keep the work area clean, wear gloves, put on a mask if the customer asks.
He did not set out to learn any of this. After high school he took a gap year before college. “After about two months, I got really bored,” he says. His uncle, now retired, told him to come learn the trade so that if he decided against college, he would have “something to fall back on.” The uncle trained him, and he started working at 18.
He went back to school anyway and earned a business degree at Cal State Northridge. He and his wife, Priscila, then opened G and R. The two run it together, with no partners.
Equipment that wears out sooner leaves customers weighing whether to repair a machine or replace it. The owner says a warranty makes people more comfortable paying for the fix. If the same problem comes back three months after a repair, he says, the company will come back out without questions and take care of it, as long as it is the same issue. The company’s site puts the terms at 90 days on labor and a year on parts. The alternative, he says, is shopping for a new unit, waiting for it to arrive and having the old one switched out, which he calls a hassle.
Commercial calls work differently. A customer with a shop in Glendale described a commercial refrigerator that had stopped holding temperature; the technician diagnosed it quickly, explained the problem before starting and had it running again the same day.
The company does not take emergency calls, but the owner says a restaurant refrigerator that goes down tends to become one, and someone has to head out right away. “There’s been some late nights just trying to get the restaurants up and running so they can continue their service,” he says.