I'm not much of a review poster, more of a review reader. I felt obligated to leave a review this time though. Bottom line up front: $129/hr for a plumber and helper and the person that answers the phone back at the shop is rude as hell.
I had a water main bust in my home after the cold freeze at the beginning of Jan. Water was pouring out of my ceilings, not a pretty site. I called around to a few people to try getting somebody to come out, city plumbing said they couldn't make it until the next day. As this was the soonest I could find, I took it. They showed up at my door 5 hrs later. Good on them.
I showed them the leak and asked if they could fix it. They agreed and off they went. The plumber, Todd, was a great friendly guy. He talked me through it all and gave pointers on how to prevent similar situation from happening. They ended up not having the correct glue, so they had to make a store run. They finish the job in about 3 hrs and then we do a water check. Still leaking. They work at it some more, do another water check, still leaking. Finally, they said we don't have all the parts to complete the project, so we would have to run to the store again and then we will be charging overtime. I passed on the overtime charges, they said but we will get you hot water before we leave. An hour, I have hot water with a slow drip. They put a bucket under and said we will be back first thing in the morning, around 9. They leave, I turn on the hot water tank and it starts spraying water out of the connections. I turned it off and made it without hot water.
The next morning around 10 they show up to tackle it again. They can't get the shark bite to connect because the floor joist is in their way. They keep connecting, checking, leaks, them retry. 2hrs later, they said they needed to run back to the shop to get the correct tools. My girlfriend asks me if they have tried using the access panel behind the dryer that she told them about the previous day. I chase them down in the driveway and ask them about the panel, and they said oh yeah, I remember being told that yesterday. 30 minutes later, everything is fixed.
They gather all of their tools and start writing up the invoice. I was guessing a $100 service call, $400 for fixing the broken lines (total broken - 2ft), but then I get a bill for over a $1,000. Parts were $130. The rest, labor! I paid the plumbers because I knew they had to charge what they had to charge, I figured I would speak to the office about maybe reducing the bill since there was a store run, hrs spent to get hot water that didn't work, having to rework the same issue multiple times.
My girlfriend is the nicest lady you meet, so I figured she would be the best person to speak with them. The gentleman at the office treated her like chopped liver. She said he treated her like a dumb rich girl, making rude replies and telling her to quit repeating herself. His main argument was the plumber didn't charge us for all of the parts he used and he didn't sum up the hrs properly so we were already receiving a discount. To rerun the plumbing in a few rooms deserved a price tag like that, not just 2 ft of broken of line in the ceiling.
To sum it up, Todd is a nice plumber, has some things to work on, but City plumbing is expensive and needs to work on customer relations.
