All Volvos in this market from '93 year model and later have R-134a in them, the earlier stuff originally came with R-12, the so called illegal stuff. I think there must have been a communication break down when you shopped the price on the a/c service as nobody is going to service your a/c for free. Unless you have some kind of bleeding heart liberal program in your area that uses public money to pay for your conversion it is highly unlikely that a shop is going to do it for free out of the goodness of their heart. Either way though your car came with the supposedly ozone friendly stuff in it already so it will not require anykind of retrofit.

Mark