A Carrier factory authorized dealer near Leander is a contractor Carrier has trained, checked and keeps checking, and the way to confirm the status is Carrier's own dealer locator rather than the contractor's van. That is the credential a homeowner searches for, and it is worth understanding. But two other credentials are required by law for anyone who touches an air conditioner in Texas, and those are the ones to check first, for every contractor, every time.
What Carrier factory authorized dealer status requires
Carrier sets the requirements and publishes them. To become a Factory Authorized Dealer, Carrier says, technicians must complete extensive factory training on installation, maintenance, and repair, and the dealer must maintain all required local licenses, carry appropriate insurance, and consistently receive excellent scores in customer satisfaction surveys. It is a standard the dealer has to keep meeting, not a plaque earned once.
There is a technician requirement behind it as well. Carrier's page on NATE certification states that to achieve and maintain Factory Authorized Dealer status, at least 50% of the dealer's technicians must hold NATE certification. NATE is the largest non-profit certification program for heating, air conditioning and refrigeration technicians in the country, and keeping it means retaking the specialty exam or completing 16 hours of continuing education every two years.
How to check the status yourself
Use Carrier's dealer locator and read what it shows for the company, not what the company's website says about itself. Carrier's instruction to homeowners is to use the locator to find a certified Carrier Factory Authorized Dealer in your area; the Leander page lists each Carrier dealer with its address and any badges Carrier has attached to it. Comfort Pros appears on that page at 2002 Fall Creek Drive, which is the address on this site. If a contractor's name is not on Carrier's page at all, the claim on the van is just a claim.
The state license every Texas HVAC contractor must hold
In Texas the license is not optional and it is not hard to check. The Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation states that a person who offers air conditioning and refrigeration contracting services in Texas must hold an air conditioning and refrigeration contractor license, and that every technician working under that contractor must be registered or certified with the state. Getting the license takes at least 48 months of practical experience under a licensed contractor and a passed state exam; it is renewed yearly, and TDLR counted 19,163 licensed contractors in the state in fiscal 2025.
The number tells you what the contractor is allowed to work on. TDLR's format is title, class, number and endorsement, and the parts read like this:
- TACL is the title on every Texas air conditioning contractor number.
- A or B is the class. Class A covers any size unit; Class B covers cooling up to 25 tons and heating up to 1.5 million BTU per hour, which covers residential systems.
- The digits are the license number, searchable on TDLR's site.
- E, R or C is the endorsement. E is environmental air conditioning, which is central heating and cooling for people; R is commercial refrigeration and process cooling; C is both.
Ours is TACL# TACLB116912E: a Class B license with the environmental endorsement, which is exactly the license residential work requires. On TDLR's search it appears as TACLB00116912E under Christopher Freeman, Comfort Pros Heating and Air Conditioning, LLC, Williamson County, current through December 2026. Search by county as well as by name: the same TDLR search returns three different contractors in Texas doing business as some version of Comfort Pros, in three different counties, and only one of them is us. A contractor's license number should appear on their website and their paperwork; if it does not, ask for it and look it up at TDLR's license search before anyone opens your equipment.
The federal refrigerant card
Anyone who connects gauges to your system or adds refrigerant needs an EPA certification, by federal rule. The EPA's regulations under Section 608 of the Clean Air Act require that technicians who maintain, service, repair, or dispose of equipment that could release refrigerants must be certified. For a home air conditioner that means a Type II or Universal card. The credential does not expire, so a technician who has it can show it. A technician who cannot should not be charging your system.
Which one matters most
Check them in the order the law does. The state license is the floor: without it the company cannot legally sell you the work, and TDLR notes that a company without a licensed contractor on staff cannot even enforce the contract it signed. The EPA card is the technician's floor. The manufacturer credential sits on top of both and tells you the company has been trained on the equipment it is installing and is being scored on how the work turns out. A contractor with all three has given you three places to verify them, and that willingness is itself a signal.
How we handle it
We put the license number on the site because we would rather you check it than take our word. When you call about an AC replacement or a repair, ask the technician for their NATE ID and their EPA card; the answer should be immediate. More about who we are is on the about page, and the rest of the check takes five minutes on Carrier's and TDLR's sites.
Comfort Pros is a Carrier dealer serving Leander, Cedar Park, Georgetown and Liberty Hill, licensed under TACL# TACLB116912E. Verify it. Then let us earn the rest.