AC cleaning service

Several weeks ago, we decided that it was a good time to get our air-conditioner in our room serviced since my family was going to come soon to visit. The AC hadn't been properly working for months, which turned out to be a blessing in disguise for me because I wanted to live in a more energy-efficient way and also cut down on energy costs, yet my boyfriend Mike always used to blast on the AC as soon as he broke out a sweat. Which is not hard to do in a tropical city that soars around 30 degrees Celsius year-round.

A few days before my family came, we called the AC technicians to have a look at our AC as it was totally dysfunctional. We had just gotten it fixed once several months prior by another man, and had to buy a whole new part which proved to be really expensive, let alone set a lot of time aside for the back and forth and the late arrivals (and by late, I mean several hours late) of the technician. But when the AC's functionality still went into oblivion several weeks after the fix, so did our drive and motivation to get the machine fixed yet again. So to my delight, my boyfriend had to learn to cope with just the fan.

Just as Mike was starting to get used to using our modest fan to survive the heat in our bedroom and during sleep, it came time to get the house ready for my family's visit. The previous technician had promised me warranty on the part I had bought, but as all things Vietnamese, words have no insurance, and I was not able to reach the technician. I had no choice but to call technicians from a different company, who came promptly and exchanged the same problematic part again for the same sky-high price, which solved the problem (for the time being). I also requested to get our AC cleaned. Initially, Mike protested that he had already tried cleaning the AC before. But little did he know that his cleaning, which involved wiping out the dust from the front cover and the first layer underneath, was quite primitive. The technicians engaged in an arduous process, involving covering the whole AC unit with a huge plastic bag complete with a tube attached at the bottom, so that they could power-hose down the whole unit and let the dirty water run down to a pail. The hose had to be attached to the mechanical component of a toilet at the nearby bathroom. And they had to repeat this process 2 more times as we asked for servicing on other AC units in other bedrooms too.

The cleaning, as specialized and arduous as the process was, cost a mere 60,000 VND (about $3) per unit. My boyfriend does not mention anymore that he has cleaned the AC before. And for the time being, he gets to relish in the feel-so-good freezing cold air in our bedroom as long as my family stays here... But when my family leaves, I'm enforcing an AC-only-for-desperate-times policy and let's just say that for this particular situation I wouldn't mind if the machine breaks down again.