I had a bad experience with this plumber last year.
I had a leak from a drainage pipe which was buried inside stonework / cement so difficult to get at.
The cause seemed to be a blockage further down the pipe which led to too much pressure in the water which built up with nowhere to go.
He came out first to have a look, and gave me a quote.
His next trip was to make the first repair (patching the leak), which failed the pipe was still leaking.
When I told him this, he came back, rodded the pipe till it seemed clear, then patched the leak again.
However, this again didn't fix the problem.
I emailed him back to tell him this and then silence!
I tried phoning twice and emailing twice after this, but he had gone totally AWOL. I haven't heard a peep since.
I suppose he must have thought that this job was too difficult, and not worth spending any more time on but it's hugely unprofessional to be uncontactable. Thankfully, I hadn't paid yet.
After all this, I called another plumber (First Call), who came out and recognised immediately that the blockage needed specialist equipment he called out another plumber who had some hi-tech air blasting equipment, and this fixed the issue within half an hour.
The combined fee for the successful repair was less than the quote from 'Low Cost'!
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In response to Low Cost's comment below:1. This repair was to a pipe join accessible from outside. I don't remember Low Cost asking that I should stay at home while they investigated it.2. I didn't leave my kitchen tap running, tho I did have a dripping tap (as acknowledged by Low Cost's email to me at the time saying 'the taps on the kitchen sink are dripping away') tho actually there only is 1 tap in the kitchen sink.3. Low Cost's point about their estimate being for the whole job, but First Call's being only for the removal of the blockage, is fair enough as far as it goes.However, First Call recognised immediately that the blockage would need specialist equipment (and it was cleared within an hour or so), whereas Low Cost hadn't suggested this after several visits.My main problem with Low Cost is not any of these issues, but that they decided not to continue with the work without telling me, and were thereafter uncontactable as they put it 'we decided to cut our losses and walk away'.As I'm sure almost everyone would agree, this is 100% unacceptable. I've only ever encountered 1 other tradesman who has done this.It's interesting that Low Cost emailed me to say 'As for bad reviews disappearing of Qype, one email that is all its takes. But we will leave your one and will change our response. 'If it really is so easy for tradesmen to have negative reviews removed from Qype, then it's unsurprising that so many of them have high ratings! read more
