HVAC in Nebraska has a hail problem sitting in the side yard. Ice dents condenser fins, closes off the airflow, and leaves a unit that still turns on while the house refuses to cool. People blame the filter, and sometimes the filter is guilty, but a coil that cannot breathe through mashed metal will freeze or short-cycle until something more expensive fails. Look at the outdoor unit before you argue about the thermostat. The dimples are the clue.
Eastern summers are hot and sticky, so a wounded condenser shows up fast in upstairs bedrooms. Western days run hotter in the sun and cooler at night, and wind dumps dust across the same fins hail just closed. Either way, ask what was ruled out before parts are named. A collapsed return, a buried filter, and a blocked coil can imitate a failed compressor. Matched indoor and outdoor equipment is a different scope from a new condenser hung on an old coil.
Heating is the other half, not the whole story. Furnaces and boilers still have to light when the plains turn cold, and a cracked heat exchanger or a flue that backdrafts is a stop-using-it problem, not a wait-until-Monday problem. High-efficiency equipment brings intake and exhaust pipes that ice, and condensate lines that freeze if they were run like an afterthought. Look at those pipes while you are already outside.
If the system is being replaced, ask whether anyone calculated the load for this house or simply matched the old nameplate. Additions, finished basements, and a porch that became a room all change the load. Ducts that leak into an attic waste the new equipment on the first afternoon. Filters, blower direction, and the condition of the evaporator belong in the same visit as the shiny outdoor unit. Efficiency labels compare a test procedure. They are not a promise about your bill.
Say heat or cooling, whether it died or merely went weak, and whether hail struck the outdoor unit. Name the town and the age of the equipment if you know it. If the house is uncomfortable right now, say that first. Nebraska will give you a hot week and a hail week and expect the same machine to survive both. Call the number on this page.