McClard Danny Septic Tanks & Drain Cleaning
Unknown to myself at the time I made a BIG mistake in calling McClards when my sewer backed up. McClard came to my home (in Bowling Green Ky) and told me it would be $225.00 to clean out the poo. After cleaning out the septic tank he told me it was stopped up from the house to the septic tank and he would have to rooter it out (I do not remember the added price). He was about to start the rooter work when I remembered I needed to make a phone call (I do not have a cell phone), I told him I had to make a phone call and would be right back. I met my wife just inside the door, she told me she had made the call for me so I stepped back outside to find him holding the rooter at about a 45-degree angle to the end of the pipe inside my septic tank. At that sharp of an angle, the only thing he could possibly accomplish would be to rooter a hole through the wall of the pipe itself. I found that he was indeed using the rooter as a drill to drill a hole starting from about 3 inches from the end of the pipe inside my septic tank through the pipe wall to just outside the wall of the septic tank into the clay soil outside the septic tank. When he noticed my approach he signaled his assistant to stop the rooter engine. He started by explaining what Orangeburg pipe was. His explanation was accurate, but I found a better one on the net and it is.
The Orangeburg pipe situation has been a financial boon for plumbers and a financial burden for homeowners. Named after the town of Orangeburg, New York, where it was first produced, the pipe has about a fifty-year lifespan. Since the last of the Orangeburg piping was put down in the 1970s, the most recent installations are going to be facing their expiration very soon. If ignored, they could result in an extremely messy and extremely expensive sewer line collapse.
McClard told me my Orangeburg pipe had collapsed and would have to be replaced with PVC. He even showed me the fresh clay dirt on the end of the rooter that supposedly came from the inside of my collapsed pipe. He told me he could have a crew out by noon the next day to dig up the old pipe and install new PVC. Of course by this time I was aware it was a scam but in order to employ his scam he had already destroyed the end of the Orangeburg pipe and I still needed a flush-able toilet so I let him think his scam worked on me in order to fix my septic problem as fast as possible, even without the damage he did to the Orangeburg pipe I needed the Orangeburg gone anyway! The first thing I did the next day was to remove the septic tank cap and take pictures of the pipe to prove to people he was a scammer. Eventually, I took the pictures to court.
McClard billed me for almost a thousand dollars. I sent him a check for $400.00. He called me on the phone asking various incriminating questions that I would not answer (I suspected he was recording the call). After the call was over he called me back to cuss me then quickly hang up the phone. McClard took me to small claims court. The judge believed McClards man when he told him you have to rooter a collapsed pipe at a 45-degree angle to clear it (any way you look at it this makes no sense at all). I showed the judge my pictures, he looked at the pictures but believed McClards employee. I believe the judge thought I was just another customer trying to dodge a bill. Gas - time - effort - pictures - court fee and the McClard scam cost me well over a thousand dollars! The only way I can get any satisfaction from this is to tell people / yelp it, and I did tell McClard I was going to yelp him!! read more
