curious, does it matter if its out of freon to get it repaired?

for your second question. normally they would want to test it out before doing the work. it wouldn't make sense to charge for you something that isn't broken. I'm i right??

example;
lets go with your scenario. they believe you and your guess of why its not working. they charge you for the freon recharge before they work on it. they go to charge it. once they finish, the A/C still doesn't work. but did the job as you specified. to remind you, your guessing what the issue is and they act on that, which is the lack of freon. so would it be fair to you to still be charged for a service that didn't fix anything per your request?
the next step would be for you to guess what else could be wrong and fix that "repair guess".
hmmmmm. kinda interesting right?...

or you could just pay them to see whats wrong first.