Breon's Heating and Air Conditioning made a Facebook post in April warning their customers that new federal tariffs were going to have an impact on their prices.
Maggie Mangene is the operation's manager at Breon's. She said their distributors told them increases were coming, and they wanted to be honest with customers.
“Any heat pump, water heater, valve pipe, and screws even. All the prices are gonna go up 5%," Mangene said. "So when we made the Facebook post, we wanted to tell people, 'Hey, equipment is just going to get more expensive. If you want to get into it, now is the best time so that we can avoid your prices increasing more than you want to.'”
Matt Breon, one of Breon's owners, said he's especially worried about supply chain disruptions during the heat of the summer.
"We could be looking at the same situation here where if your air conditioning goes down in the middle of the summer when it’s 90 degrees, you could be in a situation where you’ll be without air conditioning for a couple two weeks, even a month," Breon said.
Michelle McDonough, the other owner of Breon's, said the tariffs might mean having to downsize their staff to prioritize customers.
“I know in this economy we don’t want to do that, but to stay in business to be able to provide for our customers, and you know loyal customers that we’ve had for 30 years, to provide to this area, you sometimes have to make cuts where you don’t want to," McDonough said.
But if tariffs continue, Breon's owners said they might have to increase prices more in the future.