Our kitchen sink was clogged so we called them to come fix the problem. One of their employees named Dave came and told my wife that the job would cost $226.00. She agreed to this, but asked if he could come back to complete the task because she had to get back to work. He said that was fine. He charged her $89.00 for the service call, but told her she could apply that to the total bill when the job was complete. Mark came back to finish the job. The task that Dave had quoted was to snake the drain. Mark first tried to take a cap off a pipe in the basement, but stripped it and could not get it off. So he attempted to snake the drain from the pipe under the kitchen sink, but couldn't reach the clog. He then took my wife to the basement to show her how he could not get the cap off the pipe. He proceeded told her how all of our pipes were old and out of code. Then he starts shaking pipes to demonstrate how old they are and how they could burst at any time. Well, to nobody?s surprise, one of the pipes that he shakes bursts. He informs her that it is a main water line that has burst. We don?t have water in our house until it is fixed. So my wife tells him to fix it. His quote for this new problem is $415.00. He replaced two valves and 1? feet of copper pipe. This job took him 25 minutes. I priced the materials at a local hardware store for around $25.00. That means labor cost us $390.00. That is almost an $800.00 per hour rate. When my wife asks why he did not apply the $89.00 to the bill, he stated that the $89.00 was to go towards the original job that he quoted. However, he did give her a quote to fix the original problem (the clogged drain). This quote was $692.00. He wanted to run new pipe from the kitchen to floor drain, bypassing the old clogged pipe. My wife told him no thanks. We called Roto Rooter, who came to our house, removed the cap that Arnold & Sons stripped and couldn?t get off, unclogged drain, replaced the stripped cap for free, and billed us $70.00
Pros: none
Cons: expensive, conniving, unreliable
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