This already happens. The most common AC repair needed is a new capacitor. It's a $20 part.
Call your dad's business, you probably get a quote for $100-ish and it's fixed in ten minutes.
Call a PE owned shop and they are likely to tell you that your entire system needs replaced. Quote $5-$8k.
Reports like this are already common place, and the roll-ups of former small-businesses in industry like HVAC that the PE people celebrate will only make this worse for customers.
Think of them like a car starter motor or transmission (for old ICE vehicles).
Assuming we’re talking motor start capacitors anyway. For most of them, every time the compressor starts they see a dead short at 240v for a couple milliseconds, typically in the 10,000+ amps range.
And most people use their AC the most when it’s hot and nasty out. Which doesn’t help.
I guess from before the days of Unicode?
µF == the same thing, but tends to be the ‘more correct’ modifier used in electronics and engineering, rather than industrial parts supplier catalogs.