I worked at a staffing company in Norman where our VP pulled the same thing, no apology, just "we take this seriously," after we mispaid about 60 nurses over a holiday weekend. It blew up on Facebook and we lost three hospital clients before he finally caved and wrote a real sorry note. The apology took me 20 minutes to draft and the whole thing went away, so yeah, push back early because the silence always ends up costing way more than the words ever would.

Having your AC go out in Austin summer sucks but a dead clutch is not the same as a dead compressor. Clutches wear out on tons of cars, that is just a normal part that fails eventually. You also drove on it for two weeks, which tells me it was annoying but not the end of the world. A recall usually means a safety issue, not just a part that breaks more often than people like. $1,400 from a dealer sounds about right for dealer prices, and if the fix turned out to be the cheaper clutch, you probably got off easy compared to a full compressor swap.