Due to the 5-star reviews on Google Maps, I let Five Star Plumbing handle a small job for me at my house, expecting 5-star service. The first problem was it took an hour and six call attempts to get through--every phone number, from Google Maps to their own website, was "not in service." Then suddenly the phone number started working. Full mailbox? Turned off? I have no idea. If I hadn't been so starry-eyed, I would have gone for another plumber, as a non-working phone number isn't a good first impression. Oh well, I pressed on and finally got through to someone who scheduled me in.
Very courteous. Very prompt. They sent out a man named Jose, who had a partner with him. Jose demonstrated that he knew what he was talking about--there was a slight "belly" under one of the exposed PVC sewer pipes that needed dug down a little to create the proper slope, and he said they could also easily fix a pipe fitting that was improperly attached. The latter is the reason I had called them out there, but I had not been aware of the belly under the pipe, and that explained some other issues we'd been having.
Great. I was impressed. I had already dug down to and exposed the 20+ feet of sewer piping, since I'm able bodied, have worked construction myself and don't need to pay exorbitant prices for someone else to do basic manual labor. All that was needed was a little bit more digging under the center of the pipe, and a better connection at one of the joints. When I asked for a price, Jose said, "A couple of guys, for a couple of hours, $400-600." I accepted, not because it was a great price, but because I trusted him and wanted it done well, and if they ran into difficulties and it got up to $600, they dealt with it. That was fine by me.
He came back a couple days later to do the job, saying he needed to get the right parts. He came back with just one extra set of hands. I was out at the time and my wife was home, because the time for him to come had changed multiple times over several days, so I wasn't able to be there, but no harm done--I was sure he'd do a great job..
After I got home, I looked at my security feed and saw that he had come and gone in just under an hour. "Wow!" I thought. "I guess it was even easier than he thought. Glad I spent all those hours digging up the pipes myself."
Then I got an invoice in my email for $600. $600 for one hour of labor and parts.
I called 5 Star Plumbing. Hannah answered and, when I expressed my concern, she first told me Jose was "someone extra we use when we have a lot of work." Then she said she'd send him a message to have him call me.
He called me a short time later. Two non truths came up during the phone conversation that really proved that he was not above board, despite him saying over a dozen times, "I'm not trying to cheat you," and they were these statements:
1. "The other day, I came and looked at it and said $600-700, so I told the office $600."
2. "I was there for an hour-and-a-half."
I reminded him that he had actually said $400-600, not $600-700. I had written it down and told my wife immediately after, as we discussed the price. Meaning he either truly did forget what he quoted me, in which case that shows complete disregard for the customer's wallet to be indifferent about a several hundred dollar memory error, or he straight lied, hoping I wouldn't remember. Neither scenario is acceptable.
As for the second untruth, he said he was at my house an hour-and-a-half, and that they rounded up to 2 hours. I stopped him right there and told him, "Well I have a security camera, and I clocked you in at 9:58, and you left at 10:56." Technically not even one hour. Yet he rounded up to two hours, at a rate of $189 an hour.
Ultimately he said he had charged me 3 hours of labor, and $50 in materials. At the end, he knocked off 30 minutes, so I paid for 2.5 hours of labor... 1.5 hours of that being for "materials collection" and the 15 minutes he spent diagnosing the problem the first day when he came out.
There's my experience. You decide if you want to hire 5-star plumbing. read more