My advice, get a second quote from another company. I wish I had taken my own advice but my tenant had been without hot water for a couple of days and I felt that this was an emergency (more on that later). The work took place on a weekday, during normal working hours, and it was a fairly straight forward job to replace the water heater. In fact, the job was finished four hours after the technician arrived. So far, so good.
The quote for the materials was high, but within reason. Here is where the fun starts. I thought that the quote for labor was an estimate, based on the job taking a full day with more than one technician. So, when the job was completed in four hours by one technician, I thought the labor estimate would be adjusted accordingly. Nope, Allstar charged the full $2000 for a four hour job. That is a hell of a shop rate. Then to add insult to injury, an additional 30% was added on top of labor and materials, essentially a service charge paid to the company.
The city inspection was scheduled for the following week. The technician returned the next morning to do additional work and drop off the permits. The water heater failed inspection because the overflow relief pipe was incorrectly installed, venting to the basement floor rather than outside the house as per code. I happened to be there when the technician was talking to his supervisor on the phone and he was instructed to install the overflow in this incorrect configuration, so this one was not the tech's fault.
So, the discrepancy had to be fixed and another inspection scheduled. Fortunately, we were able to get another inspection the following morning, but the process of two inspections cost me nearly four hours of my time, mostly waiting for the inspector. It passed the second inspection, but for what I paid I felt that it should have easily passed the first.
Also, be careful when going through the process of payment and paperwork at the end of the installation. The technician asked me to make a statement on the Notice of Three-Day Right to Cancel to the effect that this job was not an emergency. I should have given this request more thought but I was still in a state of sticker shock, so I stated that the job was not an emergency. Of course, this is patently silly, because this was not a planned replacement, but I just wanted to get finished because I had spent my entire day on this problem. The technician said that it was company policy for him to make that request, so that seems to be pretty shady.
The tl;dr version is that I felt gouged on labor charges, for an incorrect installation, along with some shady business practices. Next time I will take a bit more care in choosing a plumbing company. read more