HVAC maintenance agreement customers most often stop renewing because the plan stopped feeling used: no tune-up was booked in the term, nobody recapped what the visits found, the renewal ask arrived after expiry, or the stored card had expired. One Pennsylvania contractor told ACHR News it renews 83% of about 1,600 agreements; measure yours as renewed divided by up for renewal.
The short answer from LeadsNow AI: HVAC maintenance agreements most often lapse at six predictable points, and each one shows up in your field service software before the expiry date, not after. Pull the six fields below for every agreement due in the next 90 days, fix the biggest count first, and compare your renewal rate with the 83% one contractor reported to ACHR News.
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Rules of thumb (each one sourced or worked out on this page):
- A member who received zero visits in the term is the likeliest to lapse: pre-book the next visit before the technician leaves, the way DiFilippo Service Co. asks “Six months from now, what’s a good day for you?” (ACHR News, 2023).
- Start the renewal conversation 30 to 45 days before the renewal date, the window SmartAC’s legal guest recommends for renewal notices (SmartAC, June 2026).
- Every 1 point of renewal rate on 400 agreements due is 4 agreements, or $636 a year at a $159 plan price (worked example below).
- Published contractor figures run from 60% to 83% renewal; above 83% you are ahead of every individual contractor figure we found (SmartAC’s CEO claims about 95% for contractors using his product), and the bigger lever becomes sign-up rate.
Why HVAC maintenance agreements don’t renew: the 6 failure points
Even a well-run program loses members: an 83% renewal rate on roughly 1,600 agreements, the figure Vince DiFilippo gave ACHR News in July 2023, still means about 272 households a year that did not come back. The diagnostic below names the six points where an HVAC maintenance agreement quietly dies, the data field in your field service management (FSM) software that shows it, and the fix.
| Failure point | What the customer experienced | FSM data field to check | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. No tune-up booked in term | Paid for 2 visits, received 0 or 1 | Completed recurring visits in the current term vs visits promised in the plan | Pre-book the next visit on the current job; flag any agreement with 0 completed visits at month 6 |
| 2. No value recap | Cannot remember what the plan did | Visit notes and readings recorded; whether a findings summary or member-discount total was sent | Send a one-page annual recap: visits done, readings, parts and labor discount used |
| 3. Renewal ask after expiry | First heard about renewal from a lapse notice, or never | Date of first renewal contact vs agreement expiration date | First contact 30 to 45 days before expiry, then a call before the date passes |
| 4. Card expired | Auto-renewal charge failed silently | Card expiry month on the stored payment method vs renewal date; failed-payment log | Ask for a card update when expiry falls before renewal; ask your processor about automatic card updating |
| 5. Price rise unexplained | Renewal invoice higher than last year with no reason given | Renewal price vs prior-term price on the agreement record | Separate notice stating the new amount, when it applies and what changed |
| 6. Tech never mentioned the plan | Saw the plan only on an invoice line | Who sold the agreement; whether the plan was discussed at the last visit (job notes or checklist) | Add the plan to the technician’s visit checklist and reward renewals, not just new sales |
The table is ordered from the problems you can see earliest (month 6 of the term) to the ones you only see at the door. How members turn into replacement quotes is a separate metric, covered in HVAC replacement close-rate benchmarks.
How it works
Diagnosing a lapsed HVAC maintenance agreement
Pull agreements due
List every agreement with an end date in the next 90 days. This is the denominator of your renewal rate.
Check six fields
Look at visits completed, recap sent, first renewal contact, card expiry, price change and plan discussion. Tag each risk to one failure point.
Fix the biggest count
Book missing tune-ups, send value recaps and request card updates. Explain any price rise in its own notice.
Ask 30-45 days early
Start the renewal conversation before expiry, then call before the date passes. Record renewed divided by up for renewal each period.
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Frequently asked questions
What is a good renewal rate for HVAC maintenance agreements?
The highest renewal rate a named contractor has published that we found is 83%: DiFilippo Service Co. in Paoli, Pennsylvania, told ACHR News it renews 83% of about 1,600 agreements a year. SmartAC’s CEO says contractors using his product started at roughly 65% to 75% retention before adding it, a vendor claim. Neither is an industry survey.
Should HVAC maintenance agreements auto-renew?
Auto-renewal removes the renewal ask from failure point 3, but it creates failure point 4 (expired cards) and legal duties around notice and cancellation in several states. Send a clear reminder 30 to 45 days ahead with the date, amount and how to cancel, and check your terms for each state you serve.
How early should I start asking HVAC members to renew?
Start 30 to 45 days before the expiration date, then call before the date passes. Earlier still, flag at month 6 any agreement with zero completed visits, because a member who never received a tune-up has little to renew.
Do monthly payment plans renew better than annual prepaid agreements?
We found no published comparison. DiFilippo’s plan offers a monthly payment option, and monthly billing turns renewal into a card-on-file question, so failure point 4 matters more. Track both plan types separately with the same renewed divided by up-for-renewal formula.
Can I win back HVAC customers whose agreements already lapsed?
Yes: a lapsed member already knows your company and your technicians, which makes them a warmer list than a cold lead. Call or text them with the specific reason to come back, such as a pre-season tune-up slot, and follow the steps for working dormant lists on the database reactivation page.
How do I calculate my HVAC maintenance agreement renewal rate?
In the worked example, 292 renewals out of 400 agreements up for renewal in one quarter gives a renewal rate of 73%: renewal rate = agreements renewed in the period divided by agreements whose term ended in the period. Count only agreements whose term ended in the period, not every active member. Then tag each lapse with the failure point that explains it. The counts in the right-hand column are an illustrative example to show the method, not a benchmark; replace them with your own.
| Line | How to get it | Example (illustrative) | Your number |
|---|---|---|---|
| A. Up for renewal | Agreements with an end date in the period | 400 | |
| B. Renewed | Of A, renewed or auto-renewed and paid | 292 | |
| Renewal rate | B / A | 73% | |
| C. Lapsed | A – B | 108 | |
| Lapsed: no tune-up booked | Field 1 shows 0 completed visits | 34 | |
| Lapsed: card expired | Field 4 shows a failed charge | 22 | |
| Lapsed: ask after expiry | Field 3 shows first contact after end date | 18 | |
| Lapsed: no value recap | Field 2 shows no summary sent | 14 | |
| Lapsed: price rise unexplained | Field 5 shows an increase with no notice | 12 | |
| Lapsed: tech never mentioned plan | Field 6 shows no plan discussion | 8 | |
| Plan revenue lost | C x plan price ($159, the example price ACHR News used) | $17,172 | |
| Value of 1 renewal point | 1% of A x plan price | 4 x $159 = $636 |
Moving this example from 73% to DiFilippo’s 83% would keep 40 more agreements, or $6,360 a year in plan fees alone, before counting the repair work and first look at replacements that members bring. Some lapses will carry two causes; tag the earliest one in the table order so every lapse is counted once. If your FSM cannot tell you which jobs came from members, the tracking set-up in how to track which leads become booked jobs applies here too.
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Is my HVAC renewal rate actually bad?
SmartAC founder Josh Teekell told Contracting Business (September 2026) that annual maintenance-plan retention among contractors using his product rose from roughly 65% to 75% to approximately 95%. Treat both figures as a vendor’s claim about its own customers rather than a survey: the 65% to 75% is their starting point before adding SmartAC monitoring, not a measured industry average. The same article reports Midwest Heating & Cooling’s retention moving from roughly 60% to about 80% after adding monitoring. We found no independent, industry-wide renewal survey from ACHR News or Contracting Business, so the bands below are anchored on these contractor figures and that vendor claim, not on a census.
| Your renewal rate | Where it sits against published figures | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Under 65% | Below the 65% to 75% pre-SmartAC baseline Teekell reports (vendor claim); near Midwest’s starting point of about 60% | Run all six field checks on every agreement due in the next 90 days |
| 65% to 74% | Inside the 65% to 75% pre-SmartAC baseline Teekell reports for his customers (vendor claim) | Fix the two failure points with the largest counts |
| 75% to 83% | Between Midwest’s about 80% and DiFilippo’s 83% | Tighten notice timing and pre-booking; review price-rise notices |
| Above 83% | Ahead of DiFilippo’s 83%; only SmartAC’s vendor claim of about 95% is higher | Grow sign-ups: Teekell says only about 20% to 25% of homeowners join a traditional plan |
Which failure point should I fix first?
Failure point 1 explains 34 of the 108 lapses in the worked example, so it goes first there; in your own book, fix whichever row has the largest count, because a diagnosis ordered by frequency beats one ordered by how embarrassing the cause feels. Three fixes recur in the trade press. DiFilippo pre-schedules the next visit during the current one, borrowing the dentist’s habit, so the calendar is known in advance (ACHR News). Baggett Heating & Cooling, with around 850 agreements, visits twice a year to build the relationship. Getzschman Heating, with about 4,000 agreement customers, rewards technicians with a spiff and a prize dart board to keep them selling plans.
The value recap is the cheapest fix. A member who got 20% off parts and labor, the discount DiFilippo’s plan includes, should see that dollar figure on a one-page summary before the renewal ask, not discover it later on a competitor’s quote.
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Auto-renewal, expired cards and price rises: the notice problem
SmartAC’s June 2026 guest article by Eric Proos of Next Era Legal recommends sending renewal reminders about 30 to 45 days before an annual renewal, with the renewal date, the amount and simple cancellation instructions (SmartAC). It also advises giving a price increase its own notice rather than a line in a general reminder. It names California, New York, Massachusetts, Minnesota and Virginia among states that have updated auto-renewal laws.
At the federal level, the FTC’s 2024 “click to cancel” amendments to the Negative Option Rule were vacated by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit on July 8, 2025, before taking effect (Custom Communications, Inc. v. FTC, No. 24-3137), and the FTC published an advance notice of proposed rulemaking to restart the work in March 2026 (FTC business blog, March 24, 2026). Rules vary by state and keep changing: this is general information, not legal advice, so have your agreement terms checked for the states you serve.
What does fixing HVAC renewals in-house cost?
At an assumed 10 minutes per renewal call, working all 400 agreements in the example takes about 67 hours a quarter, before texts, card-update requests and rebooking. That is our assumption, not a published figure. The method above needs no new software if your FSM records visit dates, expiry dates and card expiry, which most do; the hidden cost is that renewal work competes with peak-season dispatch, which is exactly when the 30-to-45-day window falls for spring and fall agreements.
Do it in-house when one coordinator owns the renewal list and the six fields are already clean. Hand the outreach to someone else when renewals pile up during peak season or lapsed members are never called back at all. LeadsNow books appointments for home-services businesses using AI calling, SMS and DM follow-up, paid on results through a revenue share, a fee per appointment, or a mix of both (see lead generation for home services in the USA). For members who have already lapsed, the steps in how to run a database reactivation campaign apply, and the seasonal win-back maths for lapsed agreements is in how to get more HVAC leads in every season.
Sources
- ACHR News, “Contractors Share Maintenance Agreement Best Practices”, Herb Woerpel, July 18, 2023
- Contracting Business, “Beyond the Tune-Up: Rethinking the HVAC Maintenance Agreement”, Nicole Krawcke, September 8, 2026
- SmartAC, “Auto-Renewal in HVAC Maintenance Contracts”, June 24, 2026
- FTC business blog, March 24, 2026
- U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, Custom Communications, Inc. v. FTC, No. 24-3137, filed July 8, 2025
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