Maintenance Agreements: What You Are Actually Promising

The short version

A maintenance agreement is a service contract, which federal law defines as a written contract to perform maintenance or repair services on a consumer product over a fixed period. Four promises usually come inside one: a number of visits a year, a task list, a discount on repairs, and priority scheduling. The trap is selling the agreement as coverage and delivering it as inspection, because a maintenance task under the residential standard, ANSI/ACCA 4 QM, is work done with a minimum of tools to adjust components and restore filters and fluids, and that is not a repair. The customer pays for that twice. A visit that leaves no readings behind cannot show a fault getting worse, so the failure the plan existed to prevent still arrives and arrives as an emergency call at full price instead of a scheduled part swap, and when the missed item is the condensate drain the customer pays for water damage in the house on top of the repair.

Write the task list into the agreement by name, and record the measured value next to every task that produces one. A task list the customer can read is what fixes each side’s obligations in writing, though whether the agreement is enforceable depends on the ordinary elements of a contract and on the state law that applies to it. A recorded number is what makes the second visit worth more than the first. The rest of this post covers where the task list comes from, what the visit has to document, what you may not say about the manufacturer’s warranty, and where your state stops treating the agreement as maintenance.

What you are promising when you sell one

Federal law already has a name for the document you are selling, and the name is not warranty. The Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act is the federal statute governing warranties and service contracts on consumer products. It defines a service contract at 15 U.S.C. 2301(8) as “a contract in writing to perform, over a fixed period of time or for a specified duration, services relating to the maintenance or repair (or both) of a consumer product.” Separate items of residential heating, ventilating and air conditioning (HVAC) equipment are consumer products for this purpose. The FTC’s rule at 16 CFR 700.1(d) covers separate items of equipment attached to real property, described in the rule as appliances and other thermal, mechanical and electrical equipment, and says the Act “does not extend to the wiring, plumbing, ducts, and other items which are integral component parts of the structure.” The statute defines consumer product as “any tangible personal property which is distributed in commerce and which is normally used for personal, family, or household purposes (including any such property intended to be attached to or installed in any real property without regard to whether it is so attached or installed).” The parenthetical covers equipment installed in a building, so a furnace bolted under a return plenum is inside the definition.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) publishes the interpretations that separate the two documents. Its rule at 16 CFR 700.11(c) states that “an agreement which calls for some consideration in addition to the purchase price of the consumer product, or which is entered into at some date after the purchase of the consumer product to which it applies, is a service contract.” The same paragraph covers maintenance-only agreements directly: “An agreement which relates only to the performance of maintenance and/or inspection services and which is not an undertaking, promise, or affirmation with respect to a specified level of performance, or that the product is free of defects in materials or workmanship, is a service contract.” It then gives an example of exactly that kind of agreement: “An agreement to perform periodic cleaning and inspection of a product over a specified period of time, even when offered at the time of sale and without charge to the consumer, is an example of such a service contract.”

That matters for one practical reason. Under the Act at 15 U.S.C. 2301(5), the warranty belongs to the warrantor, meaning “any supplier or other person who gives or offers to give a written warranty or who is or may be obligated under an implied warranty.” That is usually the equipment manufacturer, but the statute does not require it to be. The agreement is owed by whichever company the agreement names as the obligor. Where those are two different companies, you have two obligors, and the two documents can list different work or overlapping work. A customer who believes they bought one document has a reasonable complaint waiting.

Read a stack of residential agreements and the same four promises turn up, though rarely all four in one document. The first is a number of visits per year. The second is the task list performed on each visit. The third is a discount on parts and labor for repairs made during the term. The fourth is priority scheduling, which usually means the plan holder goes ahead of a first-time caller when the schedule is full. Three of those four appear somewhere in the federal and state definitions quoted in this post, because Congress and the state legislatures had to describe these agreements in order to regulate them. Priority scheduling appears in none of them, which does not make it harmless. It is the promise a shop is most likely to break, and it comes due on the week the customer is least willing to hear about it.

Document	Who owes it	What it covers	What the customer pays
Maintenance agreement	The company the agreement names as the obligor, which is your company when your company issued it	The task list and the visit schedule written into the agreement	Usually a charge separate from the price of the equipment, though 16 CFR 700.11(c) treats a cleaning and inspection agreement as a service contract “even when offered at the time of sale and without charge to the consumer”
Written warranty on the equipment	The warrantor named in the warranty, usually but not necessarily the equipment manufacturer	An affirmation that material or workmanship is defect free or will meet a specified level of performance for a specified period, on the warrantor’s terms	Nothing beyond the purchase price of the equipment
Service warranty or home warranty	In Florida, a licensed service warranty association for a service warranty and a licensed home warranty association for a home warranty, or in either case an insurer the state has already authorized to write property or casualty business	Repair, replacement or indemnification on failure, which in Florida’s statute includes normal wear and tear, on the contract’s terms	A segregated charge paid by the consumer for a service warranty, and for a home warranty the premium or other consideration the association receives for issuing it

Where the task list comes from

Write the task list against a published standard, because a list you invented on your own is one you have to justify on your own when a customer asks where it came from. Two standards already have a list, one residential and one commercial, and both were developed by the people who service this equipment.

The Air Conditioning Contractors of America (ACCA) publishes the residential standard. The American National Standards Institute (ANSI) accredits the organizations that develop standards in the United States, and it approves the documents they produce as American National Standards. The ANSI prefix on ANSI/ACCA 4 QM shows that approval. ANSI approved the reaffirmation of the 2019 edition on August 7, 2024, after a 45 day public review period that drew no comments, which makes the current designation ANSI/ACCA 4 QM 2019 (R2024). ACCA describes what it is for in one sentence: “The purpose of this standard is to establish minimum inspection requirements in the maintenance of HVAC equipment found single-family and multi-family dwellings.” ACCA also describes it as a nationally recognized, manufacturer-endorsed set of minimum tasks for maintenance inspections, and the Department of Energy’s Building America Solution Center describes it the same way, as a standard providing a nationally recognized, manufacturer-endorsed set of inspection tasks for HVAC maintenance.

The word minimum is the useful one. ACCA says the standard “establishes the minimum tasks that should be performed for HVAC equipment maintenance inspections,” which makes it a floor you can write an agreement against rather than one the law applies to every agreement by itself. What your agreement should include beyond that floor is your decision, and it is the part a customer can compare between two proposals.

ACCA separates maintenance from service in the 2019 edition. Write the agreement on the same line. ACCA defines a maintenance task as “a work item, requiring a minimum of tools to adjust components and restore expendable materials (such as fluids and filters) to their agreed upon condition.” Cleaning, adjusting, tightening, calibration, measurement and lubrication are on that side of the line. Replacing a failed compressor does not. A customer who reads an agreement promising maintenance as promising repair will dispute the first failure, and they are not being unreasonable, because nothing in the everyday meaning of the word maintenance tells them where the line falls.

ACCA also added a column of recommended frequencies in that edition. ACCA describes it as “the recommended minimum frequency for the recommended maintenance task items,” and it added an exception in section 5 for seasonal systems, with language that allows homeowners or contractors the ability to adjust service frequencies based on equipment usage. That exception is the reason your agreement should state its own number of visits rather than pointing at the standard and stopping there.

Commercial work has a separate standard. ANSI/ASHRAE/ACCA Standard 180, titled Standard Practice for Inspection and Maintenance of Commercial Building HVAC Systems, is published by the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) with ACCA as a co-sponsor. ASHRAE describes it this way: “Standard 180 establishes minimum HVAC inspection and maintenance requirements that preserve a system’s ability to achieve acceptable thermal comfort, energy efficiency, and indoor air quality in new and existing commercial buildings.” If your shop sells agreements on houses and on light commercial buildings out of the same template, the two standards are not interchangeable and the two templates should not be either.

One more list belongs in this section, because the customer has already read it. Energy Star says it “is administered jointly by U.S. Department of ENERGY (DOE) and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA),” and that under a 2026 Memorandum of Agreement the two agencies “agreed to consolidate leadership and program administration at DOE.” The program tells homeowners to “Keep your cooling and heating system at peak performance by having a contractor do annual pre-season check-ups,” checking the cooling system in the spring and the heating system in the fall. The published checklist covers specific work: check thermostat settings, tighten all electrical connections and measure voltage and current on motors, lubricate moving parts, check and inspect the condensate drain, clean the evaporator and condenser coils, and check the refrigerant level and adjust if necessary. The program gives the homeowner a job as well, which is to “Inspect, clean, or change air filters once a month in your central air conditioner, furnace, and/or heat pump.” A customer holding that list will compare it against your invoice, so write the agreement knowing they have seen it.

What the visit has to leave behind

A maintenance visit is worth what its record is worth, and a record made of checkmarks is worth very little. A checkmark shows that somebody looked at the part. It does not show what the part was doing. The value shows up on the second and third visits, when a technician can compare today against last spring, and that comparison is impossible unless somebody wrote the number down the first time. This is the section to read before you print the service ticket your plan will use, because the fields on that ticket are the only things that get captured.

Record two things for every task that produces a measurement: the value you read, and the target you compared it against. A number with no target beside it is not evidence about the equipment. These are the readings worth capturing on a residential visit.

Total external static pressure, which is the resistance the blower works against, measured in the return and the supply and compared against the maximum external static pressure on the equipment nameplate. A manometer is the instrument that reads that pressure, in inches of water column.
The temperature split, meaning return air temperature minus supply air temperature, recorded together with the indoor conditions it was taken under, because the target moves with the air entering the coil.
Superheat or subcooling, whichever the metering device calls for. Superheat is the suction line temperature minus the saturation temperature for the suction pressure, and subcooling is the saturation temperature for the liquid line pressure minus the liquid line temperature. Record the outdoor dry bulb and indoor wet bulb they were taken at, since the manufacturer’s target is stated at conditions.
Run capacitor capacitance in microfarads, compared against the rating printed on the can and the tolerance printed with it.
Motor and compressor amp draw, recorded with the voltage and the conditions it was taken under. A motor’s current compares against that motor’s own nameplate rating. Compressor RLA is a reference value rather than a target. Copeland calls rated load amps a “Reference current used in contactor and wire selection for US Customers,” and says RLA “is calculated from the Maximum Continuous Current (MCC) and serves as a running current value for the compressor,” with that maximum continuous current being the “Current measured just prior to protector trip.” Compare the reading against the current the compressor manufacturer publishes for the conditions you measured at rather than against RLA alone.
Combustion readings where the agreement includes combustion analysis on gas equipment: carbon monoxide in the flue in parts per million, oxygen or carbon dioxide as a percentage, and stack temperature.

A run capacitor measuring 43 microfarads against a 45 microfarad rating is one fact. The same capacitor measuring 38 the following spring is a different fact, and it is the one that allows you to replace the part in April on a scheduled visit instead of in July on an emergency call. Only the written number makes that comparison possible, and only a ticket with a field for the number gets it written.

Recording the reading is the easy half of this. The slow half is the target: the maximum external static pressure for that blower, the charging chart at today’s conditions, the current criteria the compressor manufacturer publishes for the conditions you measured at. Those figures are in the installation and service literature for the specific model, and finding them mid-visit is the part of the visit nobody puts on the invoice and everybody pays for.

Two habits make the record usable later. Capture the same measurements in the same fields on every visit, since a comparison needs the same measurement taken twice. And write the measurements into the agreement itself, because that is the part of your plan a customer can actually check, and it is what separates a maintenance agreement from a filter change with a clipboard.

The warranty sentence to stop saying

“You have to keep your maintenance plan current or the warranty is void” is the sentence to stop saying, at least in that form. A warrantor may not condition warranty coverage on a consumer product on the customer buying a service identified by a company name, unless that service comes free under the warranty or the FTC has waived the prohibition.

The Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act covers this directly. 15 U.S.C. 2302(c) states that “No warrantor of a consumer product may condition his written or implied warranty of such product on the consumer’s using, in connection with such product, any article or service (other than article or service provided without charge under the terms of the warranty) which is identified by brand, trade, or corporate name.” The statute allows the FTC to waive that prohibition, but only where the warrantor satisfies the Commission that the product will function properly only if the named article or service is used with it, and the Commission finds the waiver to be in the public interest.

The FTC’s rule at 16 CFR 700.10(a) describes the same prohibition: “Section 102(c), 15 U.S.C 2302(c), prohibits tying arrangements that condition coverage under a written warranty on the consumer’s use of an article or service identified by brand, trade, or corporate name unless that article or service is provided without charge to the consumer.” Paragraph (c) of the same section gives the sort of language it treats as prohibited, quoting the example “This warranty is void if service is performed by anyone other than an authorized ‘ABC’ dealer and all replacement parts must be genuine ‘ABC’ parts,” and stating that language of that kind is prohibited where the service or parts are not covered by the warranty.

What remains true is narrower, and worth saying accurately. A warranty document may still contain conditions about installation and about maintenance in general terms, and whether the warranty on the equipment in front of you does that is a question about that certificate rather than about the industry. Terms differ by manufacturer, by model year, and by whether the owner registered the equipment inside the registration window. Read the certificate before you repeat what it requires.

The honest version of the sales conversation is also the easier one. Sell the agreement on what the visits find and what the record is worth on resale or on a warranty claim, rather than on a consequence you have not read. The first version holds up when a customer calls the manufacturer. The second one does not.

Where your state draws the line

Whether your maintenance agreement is a regulated product depends on the state you sell it in, and two states show how far apart the lines are. What follows is statutory text rather than legal advice, and it is where a conversation with a lawyer should start rather than where it should end.

Florida treats a paid maintenance service contract on a consumer product as a service warranty once it runs a year or longer. Section 634.401(13) of the Florida Statutes defines a service warranty as “any warranty, guaranty, extended warranty or extended guaranty, maintenance service contract equal to or greater than 1 year in length or which does not meet the exemption in paragraph (a), contract agreement, or other written promise for a specific duration to perform the repair, replacement, or maintenance of a consumer product, or for indemnification for repair, replacement, or maintenance, for operational or structural failure due to a defect in materials or workmanship, normal wear and tear, power surge, or accidental damage from handling in return for the payment of a segregated charge by the consumer.”

The exemption in paragraph (a) is narrow. It excludes “Maintenance service contracts written for less than 1 year which do not contain provisions for indemnification and which do not provide a discount to the consumer for any combination of parts and labor in excess of 20 percent during the effective period of such contract.” Three conditions have to hold at the same time. The term has to run under one year. The contract cannot contain provisions for indemnification, which section 634.401(5) defines as undertaking the repair or replacement of a consumer product, or paying for it, in return for a segregated premium, when the product suffers operational failure. Doing the repair yourself counts, not only paying for it. The combined discount on parts and labor cannot exceed 20 percent during the term.

The twelve month plan with two visits and a repair discount, which is the shape most of this trade sells, does not meet the first condition. Section 634.403(1) then applies: “No person in this state shall provide or offer to provide service warranties to residents of this state unless authorized therefor under a subsisting license issued by the office.” That is a licensing question rather than a paperwork question, and a Florida contractor selling annual agreements should get the answer from the state or from a lawyer rather than from any blog, this one included.

Texas draws the line in the other place, and it uses the phrase maintenance agreement as a defined term. Section 1304.004(a) of the Texas Occupations Code defines a maintenance agreement as “an agreement that provides only for scheduled maintenance for a limited period.” Section 1304.004(b) then excludes maintenance agreements from the chapter, alongside warranties, service contracts sold to buyers who are not consumers, and several other categories.

Section 1304.004 is not the whole exemption list, and reading it as though it were is how a contractor reaches the wrong answer. Section 1304.0041 adds more exemptions, and the two a residential contractor is most likely to use come with conditions of their own. The first covers a guarantee or warranty for the repair or service of an appliance, system or component of a residential property, and it applies only where the person who issues it sells, services, repairs or replaces that item at the time the guarantee is issued or before. The second covers a service or maintenance agreement sold, offered for sale or issued by a manufacturer or merchant that manufactures or sells the covered product, where the agreement provides for the maintenance, repair, replacement or performance of that product.

An agreement that is a service contract and fits no exemption in either section is subject to section 1304.101(a): “A person may not operate as a provider or administrator of service contracts sold or issued in this state unless the person is registered with the department.”

The Texas definition has two conditions, not one. The agreement has to provide only scheduled maintenance, and it has to run for a limited period. An agreement that provides scheduled maintenance and nothing else, for a stated term, fits the wording. Add a promise to cover a failure at no charge and the word “only” no longer describes the document. Whether adding a repair discount has the same effect is the harder question, and it is one to ask before the marketing goes out rather than after the first renewal.

Two states, two different lines, and one template will not fit both. Before you set the term length and the size of the repair discount, read how the state you sell in defines these agreements. Florida’s exemption turns on three things, the term, indemnification, and the size of the parts and labor discount. Texas asks a different question, whether the agreement provides only scheduled maintenance for a limited period, and then sends you to a second list of exemptions.

Common mistakes

Write the task list into the agreement by name, so the customer and the technician are working from the same list rather than from two different expectations.
Record the measured value next to every task that produces one, because a checkmark shows only that somebody looked at the part.
Compare each reading against the target published for that model, since a number with nothing beside it cannot tell you whether the equipment is drifting.
Read how the state you sell in defines a maintenance agreement before you set the term length and the repair discount, because Florida’s statute and the Texas Occupations Code draw that line in different places.
State in the agreement what the visit does not include, so that the first repair invoice is not the first time the customer hears that parts are billed.
Read the warranty certificate for the equipment before you tell a customer what the manufacturer requires of them.

Don’t

Tell a customer that your company’s maintenance plan is required to keep a manufacturer’s warranty valid, because 15 U.S.C. 2302(c) prohibits a warrantor from conditioning coverage on a service identified by brand, trade or corporate name unless it is provided without charge or the FTC has waived the prohibition.
Advertise that your program meets ANSI/ACCA 4 QM unless the visit actually performs the tasks the standard covers.
Sell priority scheduling at a volume you cannot staff, since that promise comes due in the same week for every customer who holds it.
Hand back a completed checklist with no readings on it, because it gives the next technician nothing to compare against and gives the customer nothing to look at.
Assume that an agreement exempt from licensing in one state is exempt in the next one.
Use maintenance and repair as if they were the same word in the agreement, since ANSI/ACCA 4 QM defines a maintenance task as work requiring a minimum of tools to adjust components and restore expendable materials.

Frequently asked questions

Is an HVAC maintenance agreement a warranty?

Usually not. A written agreement to maintain residential equipment for a fixed term is a service contract, which the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act defines at 15 U.S.C. 2301(8) as a written contract to perform maintenance or repair services on a consumer product over a fixed period. The FTC’s rule at 16 CFR 700.11(c) states that an agreement calling for consideration beyond the purchase price of the product, or entered into after that purchase, is a service contract rather than a written warranty. The warrantor named in the warranty owes the warranty, usually the equipment manufacturer, and the company the agreement names as the obligor owes the agreement, which is why the two documents can list different work.

Can a manufacturer require a maintenance plan to keep the warranty valid?

Generally not, where the plan carries a company name and the customer pays for it. 15 U.S.C. 2302(c) prohibits a warrantor from conditioning a written or implied warranty on the consumer using an article or service identified by brand, trade or corporate name, unless that article or service is provided without charge under the terms of the warranty or the FTC has waived the prohibition. The FTC’s rule at 16 CFR 700.10(c) gives “This warranty is void if service is performed by anyone other than an authorized ‘ABC’ dealer” as an example of language that is prohibited where the service is not covered by the warranty. Whether a particular warranty asks for maintenance in general terms is a separate question, and the answer sits in that certificate.

Do I need a license to sell a maintenance agreement?

That depends on the state. Section 634.401(13) of the Florida Statutes treats a paid maintenance service contract of one year or longer on a consumer product as a service warranty, and section 634.403(1) bars any person from providing or offering service warranties to residents of the state without a license issued by the office. The same section exempts insurers the state has already authorized to write property or casualty business. Texas takes the opposite position: section 1304.004 of the Texas Occupations Code defines a maintenance agreement as an agreement that provides only for scheduled maintenance for a limited period, and excludes it from the chapter that otherwise requires registration, with section 1304.0041 adding further exemptions.

How often should the visits happen?

Energy Star, the labeling program DOE and EPA administer jointly, tells homeowners to have a contractor do annual pre-season check-ups, with the cooling system checked in the spring and the heating system checked in the fall. ANSI/ACCA 4 QM 2019 (R2024) has a column of recommended minimum frequencies for its maintenance task items, and section 5 of the standard has an exception for seasonal systems that allows homeowners or contractors to adjust service frequencies based on equipment usage. Whichever number you choose, write it into the agreement rather than pointing the customer at a standard.

What should a maintenance visit leave behind?

A record with numbers in it. Write down the measured value for every task that produces one, the target it was compared against, and the conditions it was taken under. The comparison between this visit and the last one is the thing a maintenance agreement actually sells, and that comparison needs the same measurement recorded twice.

What is the difference between maintenance and repair in the agreement?

ACCA defines a maintenance task in ANSI/ACCA 4 QM as “a work item, requiring a minimum of tools to adjust components and restore expendable materials (such as fluids and filters) to their agreed upon condition.” Cleaning, adjusting, tightening, calibrating, measuring and lubricating fall on that side of the line, and replacing a failed part does not. An agreement that leaves the difference unstated turns the first failure into an argument about what the customer bought.

Glossary

ACCA: the Air Conditioning Contractors of America, the trade association that publishes the residential maintenance standard used in this post.
ANSI: the American National Standards Institute, which accredits the organizations that develop standards in the United States and approves their documents as American National Standards.
ANSI/ACCA 4 QM: the residential HVAC maintenance standard, current designation 2019 (R2024) after reaffirmation in 2024.
ANSI/ASHRAE/ACCA Standard 180: the standard practice for inspection and maintenance of commercial building HVAC systems.
ASHRAE: the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers, publisher of Standard 180 with ACCA as a co-sponsor.
Consumer product: in the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act, tangible personal property normally used for personal, family or household purposes, including property intended to be installed in real property.
Dry bulb and wet bulb: the air temperature measured by an ordinary thermometer, and the temperature measured by one whose sensor is kept wet, which together describe how much moisture the air holds.
Energy Star: the federal efficiency labeling program administered jointly by DOE and EPA, with a 2026 agreement consolidating its leadership and administration at DOE. It sets efficiency specifications, has products tested in recognized laboratories and reviewed by recognized certification bodies before they carry the label, and publishes consumer maintenance guidance.
FTC: the Federal Trade Commission, the agency that publishes the interpretations of the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act quoted here.
HVAC: heating, ventilating and air conditioning.
Indemnification: in Florida’s statute, undertaking the repair or replacement of a consumer product, or paying for it, in return for a segregated premium, when the product fails. Its absence is one of three conditions deciding whether a maintenance contract is exempt.
Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act: the federal statute on consumer product warranties and service contracts, at 15 U.S.C. 2301 and following.
Maintenance agreement: in the Texas Occupations Code, an agreement that provides only for scheduled maintenance for a limited period.
Manometer: the instrument that measures duct pressure, read in inches of water column.
Microfarad: the unit of capacitance printed on a run capacitor.
RLA: rated load amps, a compressor nameplate value used to select contactors and wire, calculated from the maximum continuous current measured just before the protector trips. Copeland calls it a running current value for the compressor, which makes it a reference rather than the target for the conditions a technician measures at.
Segregated charge: the term Florida’s statute uses, without defining it, for a separately identifiable charge the consumer pays for the agreement.
Service contract: in federal law, a written contract to perform maintenance or repair services on a consumer product over a fixed period.
Service warranty: Florida’s statutory term for the regulated version of these agreements, which generally requires a license to provide to residents of the state.
Static pressure: the pressure air in a duct system exerts against the duct walls, measured in inches of water column.
Subcooling: the saturation temperature for the liquid line pressure minus the actual liquid line temperature.
Superheat: the actual suction line temperature minus the saturation temperature for the suction pressure.
Temperature split: return air temperature minus supply air temperature.

Drafted with AI assistance and reviewed by the author.

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