FRANCISCO could see that I was not best pleased about my gasless air-con unit. ‘The pipe has a hole in it.’ He assured me cheerfully.
Well, if you don’t fence gas in properly, it’s going to escape – that’s the way gas is!
I felt we needed to keep to the point here. ‘Why did the pipe have a hole in it?’
‘It was an old pipe.’
‘But it’s a new unit – why did it have an old pipe?’
With a smile as bright as the day is long he replied ‘I was trying to save you money by not putting in a new pipe.’
Francisco may be short by British standards, but he is built like a racing ferret on steroids, so I didn’t give in to my desire to pick him up and shake him – apart from the physical difficulty, it is never a good idea to shake a Spaniard.
The upshot was that he departed, and almost immediately returned with 2 ‘experts’, a length of pipe and a new gassing machine. I parted with an eyewatering amount of money and they left. I switched on the machine. No cold air. I rang GasFast.
Ever-cheerful Tony turned up, climbed into the roof and pronounced ‘It’s not working because the new pipe is not connected – but I’ve fixed it.’
I switched the unit on – cool air!
In 10 minutes Tony had remedied Francisco’s un-economy, and the inability of his ‘experts’ to put 2 and 2 together, so to speak!
