Foot surgery or just new shoes?

Okay... so the title is strange, but that's how I feel right now about our stupid heater situation. We've had a Heater guy out here on Wed, Thur, and Fri to try to figure out why the heater wasn't working all the time. It would work on occasion (only when the heater guy was trying to figure out why it wasn't working) and then would just lock-out and shut down at other times.

So to the foot surgery or new shoes comment. Dealing with my heater is like someone going to the doctor and saying that their feet really hurt and trying to get a solution. They run a bunch of expensive test to try to find the solution and decide that surgery is the best option. Then to come and realize that you really only needed bigger shoes - a simple solution.

So it is with our heater. We had the guys out here on Wed and Thur and they replaced the thermostat, ignition module, ignitor - and after all of that it still didn't work - they recommended that we get a new furnace. On Fri we had a different guy out here to give us an estimate for a new furnace (from the same company) and he was able to find that we just had a build up of water condensation in our vent pipe that was keeping the steam from venting - causing it to intermittently work. So the guy made a simple adjustment in the pitch of the pipe and voila - problem solved.

So now I'm in the process of trying to recover some of the hundreds of dollars of parts that were unnecessarily installed. AARRGGHHH!

Anyway - we have heat and that's good!