He had already put me on hold, and I considered hanging up, but that was rude
I was well aware I was going to need a new furnace before winter arrived. I thought I could put a couple of hundred dollars back every month and pay it off before I needed the furnace. Unfortunately, like everything else, the price of the new furnace had gone up. I was going to need to put a thousand away every month if I wanted to purchase the new furnace. The next day, I was home and called the HVAC company. I wanted to know if they had layaway plans for new furnaces. The woman who answered the phone seemed confused. She asked if I was a customer of theirs. I told her I was, and I had already been told I needed a new furnace. Since their prices went up more than my finances, I needed to know if I could get a layaway plan for the furnace now. That would lock in the price, and hopefully my furnace would last until it was paid for. She told me they didn’t do layaway as far as she knew. She asked if I would hold for a minute, and she would get an HVAC technician on the phone. After talking to the technician, my hopes were dashed. He told me they didn’t have layaway plans. I was going to ask if they had a payment plan, but I was too embarrassed to admit I couldn’t afford the price they wanted. He had already put me on hold, and I considered hanging up, but that was rude. When he came back, he asked for my name and address. An hour later, I got a phone call. They were offering me an easy payment plan with up to years of interest-free payments.