Roto-Rooter Plumbing & Water Cleanup

TLDR: roto rooter is a money hungry piece of shit company that will do anything and everything possible at the expense of the customer to get some extra bucks.

After having sewage water backflow through our pipes and completely wreck our basement, we did what most people would do and looked up companies to come out and help us out.  The first one to pop up with the best reviews was Roto rooter.  Now don't get me wrong they did their job just fine, however be ready for them to overcharge you/your insurance and for it to cause problems.  They charged us close to 800 bucks to snake, video camera, and jet out main sewer line and then scare the hell out of us by saying that we needed to replace to sewer line that day and it would cost over 8 grand for that 2 foot section. Or we could do the whole line for around 16 grand.  We ended up going with viper drain cleaning who had we had gone with in the  first place would have done all that for less than half.  And ended up replacing the entire sewer line under the yard (not including under the house or street) for 4.5 grand.

And as for the water mitigation, while they did a fine job, I'm having issues because they are charging my insurance almost 10 grand for the water mitigation cleanup which they are fine to pay but want to get an inspector out there first to make sure it was done properly since they are charging so much for the job when there are plenty of other companies who could have done the job for less than half.  My insurance company has so far paid 7 grand of that in the mean time, however roto rooter wants their money and they want it now, so they have decided to tell me less than a week before they want it to cover the different of over 3 grand or they will send the bill to collections, ruin my credit, put Liens on my house and do everything possible to fuck me over.  At the end of the day insurance will cover the costs but it's looking like they are just gonna have to reimburse me because roto rooter is just a money hungry piece of shit company that will do anything and everything possible at the expense of the customer to get some extra bucks.  I highly highly recommend you go with literally anyone else

I was very disappointed in the customer service at Roto-Rooter. I set up an appointment for an estimate and had to take work off in order to be home. They provided a timeline for when they would be at my home and they never showed. I had to wait three days to get a call back and explaination as to why no one came (due to errors in a new computer system). I had to initiate the calls and each time I called there were no managers available nor did they return my phone call after I left a message. They finally came out and gave me an estimate for $6500. I had three other companies come to give estimates for the same job and all three estimates were around $600. Roto-Rooter said they would match prices, but it seemed very odd that the prices would be that different. Needless to say I went with another company and will not be using Roto-Rooter for any future services.

Not only did they utterly fail in an emergency, but their customer service rep didn't even apologize for the inconvenience. We had an active, geyser of a plumbing leak flooding our basement, and they only said the soonest they could come would be Tuesday. That was on Thursday of last week. Bummer! We'll never call Roto-Rooter again.