During the pandemic, many people avoided public contact at all costs. This had a noticeable effect on service jobs such as ours. My services were still in demand as a technician, but some clients avoided calling us. Fewer visits meant more calls and handling customer care problems over the phone. Before, someone would just call the office and get a redirect to an HVAC technician who could assist immediately. However, since the pandemic, everyone had direct contact with us to try to get us to fulfill home services over the phone. Of course, some calls made sense. Others didn’t. For example, a client tried to seek help with indoor comfort by video-calling me. He asked me to determine the air quality in their home by reading and observing the air conditioner’s behavior from a video call. It was a challenging time, but for simpler ones like changing the ac filter, I gladly gave clients a crash course on how to do it over the phone. It took some clients a while to catch on with the reusable ones, but the challenge was with the disposable ones since we constantly had to re-train them after the service period lapsed. This is the only HVAC maintenance job I managed to offload, enabling me to concentrate on more serious issues like in-person ac repair during the peak season. The more demanding tasks involve assessing and determining how to solve issues with the HVAC unit or air conditioning system. The former is more complicated when you have to inspect ductwork and file a report on the condition of the air ducts. Many homes went unserviced during the pandemic because tenants feared letting people in even when they proved they are from an HVAC company, so the cumulative effect eventually became a nightmare for many HVAC professionals like me.