Tens of thousands look forward to the summer season as it is a time for rest and relaxation, but for others, technicians of air conditioners and refrigerators, summer is a time when they are busiest. They find themselves racing against time to cope with the growing demand from customers who are feeling the summer heat more than the cool air of their air-conditioning units at home.
A number of technicians told Arab News that this is “their season”. They said the number of air-conditioners that break down during the hottest time of the year, with the temperature reaching 45 degrees, is what keeps them going throughout the rest of the year when their services as less needed.
A Jeddah resident said that he had to spend SR 580 for the repairing of his home’s air-conditioners within two weeks.
“In the beginning, I had spent SR 280 to repair the air conditioner in my living room. I spent another SR 300 on Saturday to repair the AC in the kitchen,” he said. “The technician was too busy to have a negotiation and he didn’t give me even a single riyal discount,” he said.
Mushtaq Ahmad, a Pakistani technician, said that his shop receives eight to nine air conditioners daily for repair work in the current summer season. “We receive more orders and work hard to earn more money. We charge SR 500 to SR 600 for major malfunctioning and up to SR 1,000 for changing compressors,” the 36-year-old technician said adding that they are charging higher amount during the current summer season. Saeed Badugaish, owner of a shop for eyeglasses, said that the air conditioning system of his car failed while he was picking his children back home from school recently.
The 38-year-old citizen said that when he took the car to a workshop he was asked to change the air conditioning system’s compressor. Badugaish had to pay SR 2,300 to fix a new compressor. Othman Quraishi, an Indian who runs a tailor shop, said that three air conditioners at his shop failed to start up almost in the same period. “I took them to the workshop and had to pay SR 1,500 to change one compressor and charging the other two with gas,” he said.
It is not only technicians of home air-conditioning units that see a major hike in business, but also automobile mechanics who are flooded with business from motorists whose radiators and air-conditioners cannot handle the scorching summer weather.
“As temperatures rise, we become twice as busy and earn more money,” said Ameen Saleh, 33, a Yemeni automobile mechanic in Jeddah. “When the temperature falls, our work is negatively impacted. We make far less money.”
Saleh was upbeat when he said that technicians were prepared for the increase in business and in fact, enjoy it as it means more money will make it to their pockets.
“Before the summer, we used to repair eight to 10 vehicles daily,” Saleh said. “The average cost for repair work of a vehicle amounts to at least SR 800.”
However, according to Saleh, the repair shops charge between SR 1,500 and SR 2,500 for the repair work during the Summer to change the air-conditioning’s compressor in a car.
