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Posted
On 10/14/2025 at 7:28 AM, Dbeasy said:

Unnecessary dental work. It’s huge. Sorry that you’ve got mouth full of fake cavities. 

I have a fake tooth from a tractor tire incident as a child.  Our local dentist kept insisting that instead of having a permanent fake drilled into my jawbone, we keep trying a less invasive fake that was bonded to the back of the other teeth.  After the third time it broke on regular food, and he tried to suggest the same procedure that failed a bunch of times, my old man told him to fuck off and we went and got a permanent installation that's had no issues 20+ years in.

Dude just wanted to keep me coming through the door every 3 months.

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Posted
3 hours ago, Jameslaw121 said:

Pretty much same thing happened to me, but we really did need ours replaced. Found a local company who I could talk to the owner. Alot cheaper with a much better service 

What’s the company name?

Posted
2 minutes ago, Ignatius said:

Thankfully it’s more a thing of the past but the proliferation of Six Sigma bullshit in white collar industries was the biggest scam going for a while…

It made it even easier to identify the dumbasses though. 

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Posted
Thankfully it’s more a thing of the past but the proliferation of Six Sigma bullshit in white collar industries was the biggest scam going for a while…
Fuck Jack Welch and the "leaders" he spread like a cancer across the globe in the aughts. When one of his lackeys took over my former company Six Sigma became mandatory for everyone. It was really just a way to reduce headcount by putting the "right" people on the black belt path, but everyone had to complete green belt training & sit on at least 3 project charters that closed within 12 months or you'd be ranked low & job eliminated. Paranoid yes men were launching charters left & right to show how much they'd "embraced our new culture" which was bullshit because the company already had a century's worth of process improvement baked into its DNA. The black belts & master black belts would search out the high achievers & fight over the high profile charters that looked awesome on PowerPoint, but the yield was rarely more than 15% of what was advertised due to the bullshit math & fake numbers they were pushing. I had a colleague who ended up on a two month long project charter that amounted to eight people 5S'ing a reception area desk because their boss was in danger of not closing the minimum number of charters that year.
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Posted
25 minutes ago, GhostOfTomJoad said:

Fuck Jack Welch and the "leaders" he spread like a cancer across the globe in the aughts. When one of his lackeys took over my former company Six Sigma became mandatory for everyone. It was really just a way to reduce headcount by putting the "right" people on the black belt path, but everyone had to complete green belt training & sit on at least 3 project charters that closed within 12 months or you'd be ranked low & job eliminated. Paranoid yes men were launching charters left & right to show how much they'd "embraced our new culture" which was bullshit because the company already had a century's worth of process improvement baked into its DNA. The black belts & master black belts would search out the high achievers & fight over the high profile charters that looked awesome on PowerPoint, but the yield was rarely more than 15% of what was advertised due to the bullshit math & fake numbers they were pushing. I had a colleague who ended up on a two month long project charter that amounted to eight people 5S'ing a reception area desk because their boss was in danger of not closing the minimum number of charters that year. emoji2959.png

Outside of manufacturing, where six sigma is just SPC/SQC by a fancy name, it's pretty much bullshit.

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Posted
Outside of manufacturing, where six sigma is just SPC/SQC by a fancy name, it's pretty much bullshit.
Yep. And especially problematic when it's forced into an R&D environment. Try to force brilliant lab guys to make concepts fit into C&E matrices.
Posted
16 hours ago, Al_4_ISU said:

I have a fake tooth from a tractor tire incident as a child.  Our local dentist kept insisting that instead of having a permanent fake drilled into my jawbone, we keep trying a less invasive fake that was bonded to the back of the other teeth.  After the third time it broke on regular food, and he tried to suggest the same procedure that failed a bunch of times, my old man told him to fuck off and we went and got a permanent installation that's had no issues 20+ years in.

Dude just wanted to keep me coming through the door every 3 months.

YARN | And you call that the tractor story? | Seinfeld (1989 ...

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Posted

I have an uncle that worked at Ford. 

They had a 6 week six sigma training that managers could send employees to. Only shitty employees got sent to it because managers would not want to send a good employee there and lose them for 6 weeks. So when my uncle saw somebody trying to transfer into his group and they had the 6 week six sigma course on their employee record they were an auto reject for him.

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Posted
18 hours ago, PvilleStang said:

Those are great, but cost 4x what a properly sized cap does.

Then buy 4 caps. Or buy one of those which cost about 1/4 what an A/C guy is going to charge you. Put the universal one in, order the normal one, install the normal one and have the universal one back on the shelf. It ain’t rocket surgery. 

Posted
22 hours ago, Covri said:

What’s the company name?

Medley. We live in Allen, and I think you live close. We had an excellent experience with them the several times they came out before we finally bought the new AC.

Very professional. Never felt like we just a sales ticket for them.

I don't remember all the details, but the day they were supposed to come for the new install, there was a part that hadn't arrived yet. My wife complained to the dispatch person a little bit, but I knew they're were some shortages and stuff still trying to get back to normal from Covid. They offered to come install some window units if we needed them

They called the day before the rescheduled install to say they didn't have the part yet. I called and basically said something like "We have four dogs, 4 chickens and two cats. We have two kids in school. We both work full time. This isn't like having having someone drop off a package. We have to schedule this install around alot of things. I think this incredibly unfair of you."

 

Wife got a call from the owner about an hour later saying he would drive to Ft Worth and grab the part and meet us at the house the next day. He said they would make it work, but might need to work a little different hours. Basically work from 10 - 5 instead of 9-4 as originally scheduled. I want to say they took a couple hundred bucks, but I don't really remember.

 

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Posted

Man, that's some damn good service right there.  The big names around Austin would just upsell you to the next tier if they had a part missing, to the tune of a couple grand more.  Used to use Precision religiously, but when Fox Service bought them out, it went WAY down hill.

They came out a few months ago to troubleshoot the indoor unit not working.  Sent a greenish tech, and they triaged the unit for a good 2 hours, replaced the transformer then put a fan motor on order.  Given this was a Friday afternoon around 4, they couldn't get the motor in hand until at least the next day.  I called the office the next day, and swapping the fan motor is considered a new install, so they had to assign a different tech to return and install the unit, and installers only work M-F 8-5 hours, so had to sit the entire weekend.  Fast forward to Monday, they tried to duck out for another no AC call, but the tech had already talked to me, and I told him the situation, and he came early and swapped the motor for me.

 

Now 2 months later, they come out for an annual maintenance on the system, and they stated we really need to clean the fan (the one they pulled 2 months prior to swap the motor) and it was $800 to clean it since they'd have to pull it again.  Could have easily taken a brush to it for 2 minutes while it was out of the system and knocked off all the dust and debris before mounting the new motor, but that would have made too much sense, right?

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Posted
4 hours ago, PvilleStang said:

Man, that's some damn good service right there.  The big names around Austin would just upsell you to the next tier if they had a part missing, to the tune of a couple grand more.  Used to use Precision religiously, but when Fox Service bought them out, it went WAY down hill.

They came out a few months ago to troubleshoot the indoor unit not working.  Sent a greenish tech, and they triaged the unit for a good 2 hours, replaced the transformer then put a fan motor on order.  Given this was a Friday afternoon around 4, they couldn't get the motor in hand until at least the next day.  I called the office the next day, and swapping the fan motor is considered a new install, so they had to assign a different tech to return and install the unit, and installers only work M-F 8-5 hours, so had to sit the entire weekend.  Fast forward to Monday, they tried to duck out for another no AC call, but the tech had already talked to me, and I told him the situation, and he came early and swapped the motor for me.

 

Now 2 months later, they come out for an annual maintenance on the system, and they stated we really need to clean the fan (the one they pulled 2 months prior to swap the motor) and it was $800 to clean it since they'd have to pull it again.  Could have easily taken a brush to it for 2 minutes while it was out of the system and knocked off all the dust and debris before mounting the new motor, but that would have made too much sense, right?

Yeah, we got lucky. The unit wouldn't turn on at all. We had a1air come out and they spent about 10 minutes looking at the units before telling us we needed a whole new unit. It was February, so I said no and bought a couple of window units.

Don't know how my wife found Medley, but the tech came out. Spent about an hour or so and cme back and basically said "They're right you need a new unit. But that's not why it won't turn on. You have a fuse or wire (or something, I don't remember) that's burnt out. I can get it up and running for about $200. I'll be honest with you, once it gets into the upper 90's/low 100's its probably not going to keep you house under about 85. But with the window units, it can get you through summer. Help y'all plan a little bit and call us in February when we're slow and probably give you a better deal."

And when we did have the sales guy come. it was about 10K less that what a1air quoted. And he could have easily upsold me on some stuff, because I asked about duct work and a bigger unit.  He basically told us that it would be a waste of money for how our house was set up. 

Posted
On 10/27/2025 at 11:08 AM, PvilleStang said:

Window Salesmen:  Renewal by Andersen quotes a quarter of the value of your house for window replacement (I think we got quoted 3700 / window) and their sales tactics are more aggressive than a used car salesman.  What they do is not terribly difficult, but most of the big box stores won't sell drop-in replacement windows for standard sizes, so even Lowes / Home Depot get you by the short and curlies trying to force custom orders and install fees.

HVAC techs.  Granted, when you're paying $400 for a capacitor replacement, you're paying $20 for the part, $100 for the diag and labor, and $280 for not having to drive to the HVAC supplier and waste half a day to get said part and do it yourself.  My number 1 complaint about HVAC is the suppliers seem to be open from 10a to 3pm M-F, and you usually find out your crap's broken on a Friday afternoon at 4pm.  Either pay the tech fees to get it fixed in a few hours, or sweat out the weekend and hope you can get to the parts depot first thing Monday.

Plumbing, well, you pay the premium for the tools, experience, and most importantly WARRANTY.  The barrier to entry to do PEX is a big enough step to keep most plumbers in business.

As a former replacement window salesman, I can tell you that you don't know what you are talking about and you are doing it wrong.  Andersen is one of the highest priced windows you can buy.  Wood windows, generally, are the highest priced windows compared to the other materials available - vinyl and aluminum.  When it comes to sizing, there really is no such thing as "standard."  Sure, a 3050 single hung window measures 36"X60" most of the time, but it's not the frame size you have to worry about - it's the opening size.  That is affected by the type of siding you have - wood, Hardie, brick, stone, stucco, etc.  I would recommend some good quality lower-end vinyl windows.  

Posted

As someone that worked briefly in the roofing biz, I'm surprised roofing hasn't come up more often in this thread.

While I would hesitate a little to call it a scam profession, it's definitely sketchy.  Very predatory, filled with aggressive, unethical canvasser/storm chaser dirtbags, and an industry rife with fraud.

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