--- title: "HVAC LSA Missed Call Charges: What No-Heat Calls Cost" url: https://tailwindsops.com/insights/hvac-lsa-missed-call-charges description: "Google bills unanswered LSA calls held past 20 seconds in business hours. After-hours no-heat calls cost you the job instead. How HVAC shops size both." lang: en --- HVAC # HVAC Missed Calls on LSA: What a No-Heat Call You Don't Answer Costs Google bills unanswered business-hours Local Services Ads calls, but a no-heat call at 8pm falls outside that rule. What each missed call costs an HVAC shop, and how to stop both losses. Sonny Round, Co-Founder — Tailwinds Ops November 10, 2026 ## Key Takeaways - Since October 1, 2026, Google bills a missed business-hours LSA call as a valid lead if the caller stays on the line more than 20 seconds (Google notice, via Search Engine Roundtable). - A call that reaches voicemail or an automated greeting during business hours is charged after 20 seconds whether or not the caller leaves a message (Google help page). - That rule covers business hours only. An unanswered no-heat call after hours isn't charged under it, and the cost is the lost job. - In June 2025, 14.1% of inbound calls to residential HVAC shops arrived outside business hours, falling to 9.8% in October (ServiceTitan, summer-framed data). - Median search cost per lead for heating and furnaces is $129.02 (LocaliQ, April 2024 to March 2025). That is a search-ad figure, not an LSA price. It is 7:40 on a cold night and the furnace quit an hour ago. A homeowner taps your Local Services ad and calls. Your office closed at 5, the on-call phone is in a truck cab, and the call rings out. Nobody charges you for that call. The homeowner phones the next company on the list. ## Does Google charge HVAC companies for missed Local Services Ads calls? Yes, for calls during your business hours. Since October 1, 2026, Google bills a missed call as a valid lead if the caller stays on the line more than 20 seconds. Calls outside your listed hours fall outside that rule. The notice went to advertisers in August, and Search Engine Roundtable published the details (https://www.seroundtable.com/google-lsa-missed-subsequent-calls-41940.html). > **Missed-call charging** is the Local Services Ads rule, effective October 1, 2026, that bills an unanswered business-hours call as a valid lead once the caller has stayed on the line for more than 20 seconds. Google's How leads work page (https://support.google.com/localservices/answer/7195435?hl=en) adds three details that matter to an HVAC shop. A call that goes to voicemail or an automated greeting during business hours is charged once the caller stays past 20 seconds, whether or not they leave a message. If your phone menu asks callers to press a key, the 20-second timer starts after the press. And business hours are the hours in your Google Business Profile. The roofer's version of the math is in our breakdown of LSA missed-call charges (https://tailwindsops.com/insights/lsa-missed-call-charges-roofing). This post covers the HVAC difference: heating-season calls that arrive after hours. ## Are after-hours no-heat calls charged? Not under the missed-call rule, which covers business hours only. Google's help page still lists a voicemail from the customer as a valid lead, so a message left after hours can land on your bill. The caller who rings out costs you no fee and the whole job. | Call outcome | Charged? | What it costs you | | --- | --- | --- | | Business hours, rings out, caller holds past 20 seconds | Yes, under the new rule | The lead fee and the job | | Business hours, voicemail or greeting, caller stays past 20 seconds | Yes, with or without a message | The lead fee, and the job unless you call back fast | | Business hours, caller hangs up within 20 seconds | Only if you call back and connect | Possibly the job | | Menu asks for a key press, caller never presses one | No | Possibly the job | | After hours, caller leaves a voicemail | Yes, a voicemail is a listed valid lead | The lead fee, and the job unless you call back fast | | After hours, rings out, no message | Not under the missed-call rule | The job | Google adds that if your ad schedule differs from your business hours, unanswered calls are charged only inside the active ad schedule. ## How many HVAC calls arrive after hours? ServiceTitan, which publishes call data from its own customers, found that 14.1% of inbound calls to residential HVAC shops arrived outside business hours in June 2025 (https://www.servicetitan.com/toolbox/state-of-the-trades/trends/hvac-summer-after-hours-call-spike). The share fell to 9.8% in October, the lowest month of the year. ServiceTitan counts anything before 8 a.m., after 5 p.m. on weekdays, or on a weekend. ServiceTitan says the data is not nationally representative and gives no shop or call counts. It is framed around summer, and I found no published heating-season figure, so the winter share is unknown. ServiceTitan also sells an AI virtual agent. Your phone log gives you your own number. ## What does a missed no-heat call cost an HVAC contractor? Two numbers, and they point in different directions. One is the lead fee on business-hours calls nobody answered. The other is the revenue from after-hours calls that rang out. Google doesn't publish LSA lead prices, so the figures below are round-number assumptions. Swap in your own call log. - **Fee side.** Say 50 business-hours LSA calls a month and 60% answered. That leaves 20 missed. If half of those callers hold past 20 seconds, you pay for 10 leads nobody spoke with. At an assumed $130 a lead, that is $1,300 a month. - **Job side.** Say 15 LSA calls a month arrive after hours and ring out. If 5 of those callers would have booked at an assumed $500 average ticket, that is $2,500 a month in jobs that went to a competitor. In this example the lost jobs outweigh the fee, which is the point. The new rule gets the attention, and an after-hours gap can be the bigger leak. The inputs that matter are your after-hours call count and your average no-heat ticket. Two published numbers give the example some footing. LocaliQ's benchmark of 3,211 home services search campaigns put the median cost per lead at $129.02 for heating and furnaces (https://localiq.com/blog/home-services-search-advertising-benchmarks/) between April 2024 and March 2025. That is a search-ad figure and says nothing about LSA pricing. Invoca's 2026 report found that 52% of calls to home services businesses are answered by a person (https://www.invoca.com/reports/the-invoca-home-services-lead-conversion-benchmarks-report-2026), with sub-industries ranging from 32% to 74%. The page does not break out HVAC in its text, and the figures are averages across Invoca's own customers. ## Does the winter forecast change how much you should worry? Only in the first cold snap. ACHR News's October 26 roundup of three forecasts calls for a very strong El Niño (https://www.achrnews.com/articles/166894-2026-2027-winter-weather-forecast), and the forecasters disagree by region. AccuWeather expects temperatures a couple of degrees below average in Texas and 1 to 3 degrees below from December through February across the Southwest, and several degrees above average around the Great Lakes. The Old Farmer's Almanac calls Texas warmer and drier. Don't staff to a forecast. Even a mild winter has a first cold night, so set up the after-hours path before it. ## How do you stop losing the no-heat calls you can't answer? Make someone reachable for the hours you advertise, and text back missed calls within a minute. Most of this takes an afternoon. - **Put one person on the after-hours phone.** A ring group that tries the on-call tech, then the owner, catches the calls a single desk phone drops. - **Match listed hours to staffed hours.** Edit them in your Google Business Profile, and check your ad schedule against them. A mismatch decides which calls get charged. - **Send a text within a minute of a missed call.** Something short and human: "Sorry we missed you. Is your heat out? Reply with your address and a tech will call you." The response-time research is in our speed-to-lead statistics (https://tailwindsops.com/insights/speed-to-lead-statistics). Keep consent and opt-out rules in view, covered in the TCPA rules for texting old leads (https://tailwindsops.com/insights/texting-old-leads-tcpa-rules). This is general information, not legal advice. - **Review charged leads every month.** Google says it reassesses charged leads over a 30-day window and may credit ones it judges low quality. Wrong-number and out-of-area calls are worth flagging. - **Save your LSA reports before migration.** HVAC is named in Google's first migration phase, and performance reports don't transfer. Our HVAC migration checklist (https://tailwindsops.com/insights/lsa-migration-google-ads-hvac-checklist) walks through what to save. ## What should you do with last month's missed callers? Treat them as leads you already paid for. Every missed caller searched for an HVAC company, picked your ad and dialed. Download your call leads from Google, match them against booked jobs, and the callers with no conversation are your list. Work it with a short text first and a call second. Google's help page says your Leads page in Google Ads lets you download leads to import into your own CRM (https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/17213585), under Goals, then Conversions, then Leads. Some already hired someone else. Others may still be running a failing system. Our guide to re-closing unsold HVAC estimates (https://tailwindsops.com/insights/reactivate-unsold-hvac-estimates) covers the stalled quotes, and the HVAC database reactivation playbook (https://tailwindsops.com/insights/hvac-database-reactivation-playbook) covers older leads. We've found reactivation campaigns produce response rates in the 2 to 5 percent range, so count booked visits, not replies. If your jobs live in ServiceTitan or Housecall Pro, our guide to pulling unsold HVAC estimates out of either CRM (https://tailwindsops.com/insights/unsold-hvac-estimates-servicetitan-housecall-pro) shows how to build the export. ## Is LSA still worth it for HVAC in heating season? Yes, if the phone gets answered. If you can't staff after-hours calls, narrow your listed hours and ad schedule to the hours you can cover. Start with one report this week: every LSA call from the last 30 days, marked answered, missed in business hours, or missed after hours. That count sizes both losses at once. If you want the rest of your CRM sized the same way, our lead reactivation service (https://tailwindsops.com/services/lead-reactivation) starts with that count. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### Does Google charge for a missed LSA call after business hours? Not under the October 1 missed-call rule, which covers business hours only. Google's help page still lists a voicemail from the customer as a valid lead, so an after-hours caller who leaves a message can be charged. A caller who rings out and leaves nothing is not. ### What counts as business hours for Local Services Ads? Google defines business hours as the hours you set in your Google Business Profile. If your ad schedule differs, unanswered calls are charged only during the active ad schedule. Check both against the hours someone staffs the phone. ### Will a call that goes to voicemail in business hours be charged? Yes, if the caller stays on the line more than 20 seconds, with or without a message, per Google's help page. If your phone menu asks for a key press, the timer starts after the press, and a caller who never presses a key isn't charged. ### How many HVAC calls come in after hours? ServiceTitan reported 14.1% of inbound calls to residential HVAC shops arrived outside business hours in June 2025 and 9.8% in October. That is summer-framed data from its own customers and isn't nationally representative. A heating-season figure wasn't published, so check your own phone log. ### Should I text back a missed LSA caller? A short text within a minute is worth setting up, since the caller is likely dialing the next company too. Keep consent and opt-out rules in view, and check the TCPA rules for texting old leads (https://tailwindsops.com/insights/texting-old-leads-tcpa-rules) before you automate it. This is general information, not legal advice. ## Keep reading HVAC How to Pull Your Unsold HVAC Estimates Out of ServiceTitan or Housecall Pro The exact report to run in ServiceTitan or Housecall Pro, what to export, and which unsold HVAC estimates to work first before the heating calls fill your board.: https://tailwindsops.com/insights/unsold-hvac-estimates-servicetitan-housecall-pro HVAC LSA Is Moving Into Google Ads: The HVAC Contractor's Migration Checklist Google is moving Local Services Ads into Google Ads, and HVAC is in the first phase. What changes, what to save first, and how to work the leads you already paid for.: https://tailwindsops.com/insights/lsa-migration-google-ads-hvac-checklist Database Reactivation Database Reactivation Response Rates: What Home Service Campaigns Actually Get What response rate to expect from a dormant home service database, which published benchmarks apply, and which ones measure something else.: https://tailwindsops.com/insights/database-reactivation-response-rates ## Structured data ```json [ { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@type": "Organization", "name": "Tailwinds Ops", "url": "https://tailwindsops.com", "logo": "https://tailwindsops.com/og-image.png", "email": "info@tailwindsops.com", "description": "AI-powered lead reactivation for roofing, HVAC, and solar companies. 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