In 25+ years of general contracting home repairs, home remodels, etc. I've never had the displeasure of working for such an unprofessional, unethical, dishonest, argumentative, overcharging, rude, stubborn, and frankly immature individual as Rex and his company. Long-story short'ish...
Rex was hired to install a short gas line from our gas meter to our new heater for our pool. Rex was very aggressive in both insisting that it would be a 1" pipe and had to be buried underground. He tried to overcharge us for digging the short trench ($2K!), so we insisted on digging our self. After it was dug, our pool contractor, the city inspectors, and two other plumbers all said that we needed at least a 1 1/2" pipe, and it should NOT be buried (it creates a dangerous hazard if it is ever cut underground.) Rex rudely insisted on burring the pipe (I assume because he was upset that he wasn't overcharging us for that work) because running it against the side of the house would be "ugly" (never asked us our opinion or gave us an option). Any insisted his "calculations" correctly showed a 1" pipe would "probably work", which is what he installed. After arguing with him for days, I sent him a letter from the pool company which included the manufactures specifications detailing a minimum of 1 1/2" pipe. Why this is a big deal? If the heater shuts down because of inadequate gas flow (which will eventually happen), the entire pump, filter, pipers and pool could freeze and cause $50,000-$80,0000 in damage! Note, a 1 1/2" pipe would only have cost Rex at extra $100. Rex was motivated to pad his pocket with an extra $100 at the risk of costing me upwards of $80K.
I politely informed Rex of this situation and asked him to please correct it. If he didn't want to correct it, I offered to pay him to whatever could be salvaged from his work, but someone else would fix his mistake.
Note, I did this after he lied and insulted both my wife and I, refused to communicate to my wife because he only like talking with "men", yelled at our pool construction company, made my daughter cry because she overheard Rex's men calling my wife "incompetent" and laughing at how they were overcharging us, and instructed his office staff not to answer the phone if my wife called. When my wife expressed her concerns over the 1" pipe issue to Rex's onsite foreman, his answer was "Why are you concerned? Soon you'll be floating in your new pool enjoying a cocktail while people are starving in Haiti!"
Rex never responded to my email. Instead, Rex yelled and threatened our pool contractor with legal action. He also said he was going to call the heater manufacture and tell them they also were wrong in their engineering specifications and didn't know what they were talking about. I assume Rex was not successful in convincing the manufacturer their specifications were wrong and "plumber Rex" from Fort Collins was smarter than their entire engineering team. The next thing that happened was Rex trespassed on our property, ripped out the work he had done, damaged our air conditioner in the process, and quietly slipped away like a thief without any of us knowing. See picture of Rex's vandalism attached.
There are lot of reputable, honest, fair, and mature plumbers in the area. I recommend you keep looking and stay as far away from Rex as you can. The good news is it would be very hard to find a worse plumber than Rex, but finding someone better, is easy. read more