On October 18, 2014, I had water flooding into my home through the downstairs toilet. The technician came out and ran a camera down into the clean-out. He then told me that I had a separation in the sewer line between the clean-out and where the PVC piping goes into my 9-year-old house. He said to repair the break would be at least $2500.00, because they would have to excavate part of the yard to get to it, and if it turned out the whole line needed to be replaced, it would be around $12,000.
I explained I just wanted the minimum done to get the plumbing working again (meaning a repair, not a replacement). I am a single mom with 3 kids; I was laid off from my job in February and have just started working again recently and have not had a chance to put any money into savings yet, so I couldn't afford the $2500.00 up front. I asked if there was a way to make payment arrangements and the tech said he'd talk to the owners and would try to work something out. He left and I didn't hear anything back until the next afternoon when I texted his cell phone to ask if he had talked to the owners, and he said not yet. This went on for a week, and finally he responded with Call the main office and ask. I called and was told they do not do payment arrangements. I am fine with that if that is their policy, but why couldn't the tech just tell me that the same day he came to the house? I started calling around to other plumbers, and they had the same no-payments policy, but they told me this up-front right away. Someone suggested I hire an excavator separately to dig the hole, and then have a licensed plumber do the repair, as I could save money that way. It took me 2 weeks to save up enough money to pay someone for the excavation. I had the hole dug, and guess what? NOTHING WAS BROKEN. I called Service Plus back, and asked them if they could please check their notes and come out to mark exactly where the tech claimed the break was, or at least tell me how far from the clean-out the break was exactly, thinking it might have been further under the house than initially thought. Service Plus refused because I was not hiring them to do the rest of the work. I was simply asking them to give me the information from the time they were already out to the house. They told me they would not be doing anything else. On Nov 21, after an entire month with no plumbing, I had a plumber come out and he ran an auger with a cutter through my sewer line and the problem was fixed in less than an hour.
If Service Plus had not told me my 9 year old PVC piping was broken, I would have had enough money to have my line cleaned out right away. But because I was told I needed the yard excavated, I had to save up for 2 weeks to have enough to have the hole dug, then save up another 2 weeks to have enough for the plumber to come out. I still have no idea why the tech claimed my line was broken, or why he didn't attempt to run a cutter through it in the first place (I would have had enough to pay for that if he had done it that day).
This caused me significant stress considering I have 3 kids and had to drive them somewhere every time someone needed to use the restroom. I had to leave my job, drive 30 minutes home to take the kids for a bathroom break (school Fall break was during this time), then drive 30 minutes back to work every day. We had a run of some kind of stomach virus during this time, and I had to make over 10 bathroom trips a day for an entire weekend. I wasted a lot of money on gasoline, an unnecessary excavation, a second plumber, having to wash clothes at a laundry mat for myself and 3 kids for a month, and I had to pay for a membership at the YMCA so that we could have a place to shower daily (we have no family here). I had company come from out of town that had already planned their trip, but had not budgeted for a hotel because they were supposed to be staying at my house. They stayed at the house, but it was embarrassing to have to take them places to go to the restroom and use guest passes for them to shower at the YMCA. I had to go to food pantries several times for food because all my grocery money was used on gas and laundry. We had to eat microwave food for the month because without being able to wash dishes, we couldn't cook.
This entire ordeal could have been prevented with an accurate diagnosis of my plumbing problem. I will never use Service Plus again.