Does your HVAC licence number belong on your profile?

What does Australian law require?

That the authorisation number appears in the advertising, as a condition of holding the authorisation at all.

Regulation 141(1)(o) of the Ozone Protection and Synthetic Greenhouse Gas Management Regulations 1995 makes it a condition of a refrigerant trading authorisation that the holder includes the number allocated to the authorisation on any advertising placed after 1 July 2009 for services the provision of which would not be permitted without the authorisation.

The Australian Refrigeration Council's own fact sheet confirms how widely that reaches. Advertising material typically includes radio and television advertisements, signage including vehicles, and webpages and online listings.

This is not a disclosure convention. It is a condition attached to the authorisation, and regulation 142 makes contravening a condition a strict liability offence carrying 50 penalty units, with a civil penalty provision alongside.

Why does an optimised profile trigger the rule when a bare one does not?

Because the exemption is defined by how little the listing says, and local-SEO advice exists to make listings say more.

The ARC states the carve-out directly: if the only element in advertising is a business name and contact number, such advertising is exempt from including the authorisation number.

A Google Business Profile straight out of the box is close to that description. Add a services list naming air conditioning installation and refrigeration repair, write a business description explaining what you do, publish Posts about seasonal servicing, and it has become advertising for services that require the authorisation.

The awkward conclusion is that following standard profile advice is what moves a business from exempt to regulated. Nothing about the optimisation is wrong. It simply carries an obligation nobody mentions.

Does anywhere else work the same way?

Texas, almost identically, which is what makes this a pattern rather than an Australian quirk.

16 Texas Administrative Code 75.71(h), amended effective 1 May 2018, provides that all advertising by air conditioning and refrigeration contracting companies designed to solicit air conditioning or refrigeration business must include the affiliated licensee's licence number. Seven exemptions follow, and one of them is directory listings containing only the name and number.

The definition is equally broad. The Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation's rules define advertising as any commercial message which promotes the services of an air conditioning and refrigeration contractor.

Two regulators on different continents arrived at the same structure: the number is required in advertising, and the only listings exempt are the ones carrying nothing but a name and a phone number.

Who would ever notice?

Anyone at all, and the regulator has built the form for them.

The Australian Refrigeration Council operates a page for reporting breaches relating to regulated refrigerants. Among the reportable breaches it lists are false claims of holding an ARC permit and advertising refrigeration and air conditioning services without the required permits.

Reports may be submitted anonymously, and anyone can submit one. In a trade where competitors can see each other's listings and read each other's service descriptions, that is a meaningful enforcement channel.

It also means the practical risk is not a regulator sweeping the market. It is a competitor with a grievance and a web browser.

Can you say you are EPA certified?

Not as a company, and this is one of the most common inaccuracies in American HVAC marketing.

EPA Section 608 certification is issued to individual technicians, not to businesses. The certification is earned by an individual who passes an EPA-approved test administered by an EPA-approved certifying organisation. There is no company-level equivalent.

So EPA-certified company, a phrase that appears constantly in profiles and business descriptions, describes something that does not exist. Our technicians are EPA Section 608 certified is accurate and says the same thing.

Great Britain inverts this, which is worth knowing if you operate in both. Under the F gas rules the certification is held by the company. Government guidance states that your company, including sole traders, must be certified by an approved body to service stationary equipment containing F gas operated by others. So in Britain the company is the certified entity and claiming only that your engineers are qualified describes the wrong thing.

What about efficiency and savings claims?

Substantiation applies with full force, and there is a recent ruling that shows the standard.

In a ruling published on 4 March 2026, the ASA upheld complaints about a British Gas advertisement promoting a heat pump with the line about saving up to a stated amount with a heat pump and an exclusive tariff.

The substance of the finding is instructive. British Gas's own modelling showed only 34% of 194 customers achieved the advertised saving, and some faced increased bills. An up to figure achieved by roughly a third of customers, with others worse off, did not meet the standard.

The lesson transfers directly to smaller operators. A savings figure in a profile description or a Post is a claim requiring evidence that a significant proportion of customers will actually achieve it, not evidence that somebody once did.

What does Google itself require of HVAC businesses?

More than of most trades, because it treats the category as urgent.

Google's business screening and verification requirements name HVAC directly. For HVAC in the United States the listed requirements include a business check, an owner check and a service professional check, along with general liability insurance and professional liability insurance, and both a business licence and an owner licence at state level.

Google designates HVAC an urgent category on the basis that consumers frequently need the service quickly, which is also why the vertical carries heavier verification than most.

For a contractor, that is worth reading as two separate compliance surfaces. The platform verifies that you hold the licence. The regulator requires that you publish its number. Passing one does not satisfy the other.

What should an HVAC contractor check?

Short list, in order of how likely it is to be wrong.

• Whether your authorisation or licence number appears anywhere on your profile, given that your services list has almost certainly taken you past the bare-listing exemption.
• The same for your website, vehicle signage and any paid advertising, since the rules cover all of them.
• Any use of EPA certified applied to the company rather than to technicians, if you operate in the United States.
• Whether you are claiming engineer qualifications in Britain where the certification actually attaches to the company.
• Every savings or efficiency figure, and whether you hold evidence that a significant proportion of customers achieve it.
• Where the number should sit. The business description is the field most contractors have available and rarely use for it.