I am not a active yelper, but I felt the need to share my experience with Paul from Ace Plumbing. I will be as detailed as possible so you can be the judge of his professionalism and quality of work. I have never met him in person, but only through phone conversations. I would say the 1 star would be for showing up fairly on time for the 2 times he was scheduled.
I called Paul for tenant of mine. There was a leak coming out of the kitchen faucet handle and under the sink. I scheduled him to go see what the problem was. I also chatted with him saying I was annoyed since this was a new development and the faucet was only 2 years old. Told him I was going to bring this up to the builder but since it takes time to schedule a builder rep to come out, I needed to get this looked at first since the leak was ongoing.
I was never there to see what kind of work he actually did. Once he was there, he called me and said that the leak was from the handle causing it to leak through the body of the faucet leading to under the sink. He told me the cartridge in the handle was bad and the whole faucet needed to be changed as he was unable to get the part. He said he would turn off the water first and I should bring up with builder if they could replace it. Billed me $65 which I thought was fair.
After meeting with builder and was told it was past warranty already, they directed me to where to get the part to replace. I called Paul and he said he could repair it if I had the parts.He did tell me that replacing the part may not guarantee it would stop the leak. I was assuming he meant it could be leaking elsewhere. I decided to get the part and take the risk hoping that would solve the problem.
I scheduled him out to replace the part. After installing the new part, the leak became worse from the handle. Again, I was not there to see the work done, but my wife was there and described to me on the phone what was happening. Now he blamed it on the new part being defective. So he put back the old part and said he tightened it more and guess what. The leak stopped. This time the bill was $120, but seems like all it took was tightening the original cartridge in the handle.
This is where his professionalism and attitude comes to play. I asked him if he could give me a better deal and his response was if you don't like my prices Ill need to go find somebody else. I said I am going to pay him but was little unhappy with the service and if he cared to listen. He said he doesn't need to hear why as he rendered his services. I told him this problem could have been fixed the first time and all he said was I wanted the builder to replace it. Obviously if it just required a tightening of cartridge, he could of fixed it since I already need to pay him for coming out. I told him I was going to bring it up to the builder because he said the cartridge was bad and recommended the whole faucet to be replaced. But at the end, it just required tightening of the part which could have been done the first time. He decided he didn't to hear from me anymore and ended the call.
I just take it as a lesson learned, but this is definitely one I will never use again or refer.