I mean, I fix my own fridges and appliances and do small appliance work for my friends and neighbors, but I already own the required tools so I’m really just charging for some time and the refrigerant.
134a is still cheap, and no company worth their salt should be charging a fee to customers so that specialized tools can be purchased. If you don’t own the tools of the trade, that’s a company problem, not a customer problem.
3000 dollars was a “I don’t want to do it price”
For people I don’t know, I do charge about 300 bucks to just show up, because that covers operating costs and an hour of my time. But unless the system was pulling into a vacuum, it shouldn’t take longer than an hour or so to recover the refrigerant, patch the leak, pull a vacuum, and recharge. So yeah, if your fridge is only worth 500 bucks, it’s not worth it. But if it’s an expensive fridge it might be worth it to find an appliance technician that will charge you a fair rate to repair the damage.
I actually love doing appliance repair as side jobs. Most of the time it’s a cheap part that I have on hand and it’s a quick fix.
Unfortunately, just my hourly rate usually makes some people second guess if it’s a good idea, which is fair, because manufacturers have made their products so bare bones and cheap that is often cheaper to buy a new one then have someone diagnose and repair it. It’s a real shame, because you do end up with literal tons of equipment that gets scrapped every day because of a 10 dollar relay or capacitor that went bad.