The price of cold air

Cyprus is one of those places, where you’d pay anything for a breeze of cold air. Especially in summer. Especially if you haven’t been raised in the desert. And I proved it true today.

On Friday I realized that air condition in my car is not that efficient anymore. It was still blowing air, but it wans’t cooling it at all. And I started hearing a strange sound every time the A/C was on. I passed by my service garage and talked with the mechanic. He listened to the noise and confirmed that the compressor is dead. He re-assured me that this was a perfectly normal thing – he has the same car as mine, and he changed 4 A/C compressors in the last two years. Hmm.

In order not to risk leaving me without the car for the weekend, we agreed to meet again on Monday.

Today I left the car in the garage in the morning. The guy explained to me, that there are about four different models of A/C compressors for the car like mine, and in order to get the right one, he’ll have to take mine off and go for the search mission with it. No guarantees that we’ll find it today.

A couple of hours after lunch I called him back and he reported that the car was ready for me to pick up. So I did.

The bill was somewhat more than I was expecting. The A/C compressor came out at 120 CYP. Another 25 CYP were for labour. Another 20 for the regas (putting new freon in the system), that he had to do in another garage (I saw the recepeit, if it means anything). Plus VAT, this and that, all came up to 195 CYP.

My guess is that I overpaid. But I don’t care. The A/C works as good as new now. It cools down the hot car in less than a minute – something that I am not really used to. Until now I had to wait for at least five minutes. I’m glad and I’m happy. Which means, I don’t care about the price.

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