What happens when you ring the after hours line
It is 11pm and my cool room is failing. What happens if I ring you? What will it cost me?
Published 30/09/2026. Written by the Pristine Cooling team, Kalgoorlie.
You ring one number, Brendon picks it up, then tells you when somebody can be there. Refrigeration gets priority over air conditioning after hours. You do not need an account with us, so a pub that has never dealt with Pristine Cooling can ring at 2am with a failing cool room and get a response. The cost is a flat call out fee with the first four hours of same day labour already inside it, anything beyond that we raise with you before it happens rather than after.
Here is the rest of it, in the order it actually happens.
One number, at any hour
The same number covers a Tuesday morning quote and a Saturday night breakdown. There is no separate emergency line to find, no different number on a different page, no call centre in another state taking a message.
It gets answered by Brendon, who owns the business and is a refrigeration tradesman himself. So the person asking what your room is doing has most likely been on the same sort of gear that week. That is the difference between a call that starts working the problem out straight away and a call that takes a message for somebody else.
That matters at 11pm, because the last thing you want is twenty minutes on a website working out who to ring while the room climbs.
What we will ask you
Short list, none of it difficult, all of it useful:
- What the temperature is now, against what it was when you first noticed
- Whether it is climbing or sitting steady a few degrees high
- What is in the room, plus how much of it matters
- Whether the fans inside the room are still running
- Whether the outdoor unit is running, plus whether it sounds normal
- Whether anything changed today. A delivery, a power cut, a clean, work on site
That last one matters because refrigeration rarely changes its mind for nothing. The others decide the order of the night.
How the order gets decided
Refrigeration ahead of air conditioning. A warm office is uncomfortable. A warm cool room is stock going in a bin, so it wins.
Then within refrigeration it comes down to what is in the room and how fast it is going. A freezer room full of product that is already softening is a different call to a drinks fridge sitting two degrees high overnight. Telling us plainly what is at stake is not being dramatic. It is how the right job gets attended first.
What to do while you wait
Four things, all free, all of which make the job quicker once somebody arrives:
Leave the door shut. Every look costs you.
Write down the temperature with the time next to it, then do it again in twenty minutes. Two readings tell a technician far more than one.
Move what you can, if it is a freezer and things are going soft at the edges. Another room, a truck, a neighbour.
Do not sit there switching it off then on. A compressor restarting against pressure over and over takes real damage, then the controller often loses the fault log that would have explained what happened.
What happens when the technician turns up
They arrive with diagnostic gear on the ute. Gauges, meters, leak detection, the things that show what a system is actually doing rather than what it looks like it is doing.
The first job is finding out what is actually wrong, which is usually quicker than people expect: a tripped isolator, an iced evaporator, a blocked condenser, a failed fan, a leak. The technician tells you what it is in plain words, what can be done tonight, what cannot.
If it can be repaired on the spot, it is. If it needs a part nobody carries on a ute at midnight, you get a quote for it plus a plan for getting the room through the meantime. Sometimes that plan is a temporary fix. Sometimes it is moving the stock. Either way somebody tells you, rather than leaving you to work it out.
What the call out fee covers
A flat fee, with the first four hours of same day labour inside it. That is for after hours attendance rather than for a visit during office hours.
Inside that fee: the attendance itself, a qualified technician, diagnostic gear, those first four hours of labour, plus a written report afterwards.
Charged separately, all of it:
- Parts and materials, quoted before anything is fitted
- Labour past the first four hours
- Refrigerant gas
- A return visit the next day, where one is needed
- Travel to any site more than 20km from our Boulder Road workshop
- Access equipment, if the job needs a scaffold or a lift
- Other trades, if it needs an electrician or a builder
One rule about that list matters more than the list itself. Nothing on it reaches your invoice without being raised with you first, on the phone or on site. No surprises at the end of a night that was already bad enough.
If you are out of town
Kalgoorlie-Boulder is a same day attendance for a commercial refrigeration breakdown.
Further out we give you a planned visit with an honest timeframe instead of a promise nobody can keep. Menzies, Kambalda, Norseman, Leonora, Esperance: these are real distances. A technician who says two hours when it is four has not helped you. Travel beyond 20km is quoted before we book it, so the number is agreed before anyone gets in a ute.
The honest version is more useful at 11pm than the optimistic one, because you can plan around it.
Afterwards
You get a written report. What was found, what was done, what still needs doing.
That is the thing worth having if the room was holding product you have to account for. Same if somebody above you is going to ask what happened. It is also what turns a bad night into a decision about the plant, rather than just a bill.
More detail on all of this is on the 24/7 Breakdown and Repairs page. What we look after is on the commercial refrigeration page. If you would rather have the conversation before something fails, get in touch.
Related pages
Ring us and we'll tell you when we can be there
Same number either way. Ring it if something is down right now or if you want a quote, a service or a maintenance contract set up.