Last Wednesday (4 days ago) I had my A/C serviced by an indie recommended to me by a friend.

I was getting no cold air at all, and it was cycling very frequently.

Initially he said it would be $150 to do a dye check and re-charge of the system.

Once he did the dye check, he brought me underneath the car and showed me where the refrigerant had leaked out & said the part had to be replaced (the accumulator). The bottom of this part was all sort of rotted (actually, it looked sort of "blasted out") and the dye had poured right through it.

So, he did a dye check, put in 2 lbs. of R134A, 4 oz. of oil (I guess that goes into the accumulator), and then charged me for 1.5 hours of labor and also for "A/C Service".
To conclude, the entire cost of the servicing was $391.

The A/C was working, although not as ice cold as I remember it being in the past (it was a 95+ degree day with high humidity), and continued to work until today.

While I was driving (today is mid 70's and low humidity) I had the fan set at "2" and all of a sudden smelled that smell you get when you switch off the A/C manually. I hadn't touched anything. Then I ran my finger along one of the tops of the vents and sure enough there was condensation.

I parked and idled while I tried changing the fan setting from 1 to 4, switching from recirculated to fresh, and switching the A/C from on to off. Nothing. I believe I heard the compressor sort of switch on and then off, but not like it was before while the system was obviously low on freon.

I turned my car off, waited a couple of minutes, then started it up. (The A/C had been left in the "on" position and the air to recirculated). I pushed the fan setting up to 4, and suddenly I'm getting cold air again.

What the hell happened? I take the car in tomorrow to the same mechanic to have brake work done, and I need to know what I should say to get this addressed -- this shouldn't have happened, and I don't understand why it did.

Thanks for any thoughts out there.