Slayden Plumbing & Heating Inc

To say that we were not happy with this company is an understatement. Andy, is the owner of this company and he came out and assessed our building in November of 2012, to see what it would take to complete the installation of our boiler, which we had already acquired. In reviewing all the parts and pieces of what we had on hand, he stated to us that we didn't need "anything in parts" as we had already spent the funds for this. In his review, he offered up that at X many hours at a rate of x,y,z, that the cost would come in at around the $2000 mark. At the time, I even stated to Andy, that his offerered installation price was within our allotted budget. Given that we had a budget in mind of $2500 this gave us a $500 cushion for anything that might be unanticipated. When we were told that it would cost around the that $2000 mark, to have that extra budget in place, really felt that we had already covered everything. (Including our private purchase of the boiler, we had spent almost $12000 in parts and the boiler, thus that labour estimate seemed to be in check.) After a number of different hours and plenty of back and forth by Daniel and one other chap (Andy didn't do the work), they finally had this up, installed and running in jabot a two week period. Given that the outside was rapidly falling in temperature (early November of 2012) having the base of our building heated was a top priority. Daniel was professional and responsive. After the first day of full installation, I noticed that the water condensing pump was running about every 7 secs and when I called him, he did come back out after the weekend to insert a check valve to keep that from the constant running. The other chap that accompanied him, had to make a couple of different trips as he didn't have the necessary parts. Then when the local gas company did come out, something else was not correct and they had to come back and correct it again. Fortunately the gas company did not charge us a second call out for the hook up there. The problem with writing a review is that while I would like to state that the hired guys seemed to do things correctly (or so it seemed), Andy is the final and main responsible party and owner of this company. He initially reviewed everything and offered his price. To be informed that we have everything and that we don't need hardly anything in parts and that it would be just the labour, is what we were planning on. Why else would one think otherwise, when you have been informed as much? So upon the final billing, in mid January, you can imagine our surprise when we reveiced a bill for $6456.60! There was $2787 for time and $3668 for materials!!! Never once were were informed in these two weeks that the were acquiring more parts. Never once did the mention that they were missing anything. Of course, this was a far great expense from the verbal, "around $2000" expected for this install. At some point, the hong man did mention to my spouse that he had to reconfigure the Loop on the East wall, as he initially installed that incorrectly. Although, it was his fault, they billed us for that mistake. Numerous parts were apparently purchased at our expense and on the itemized statement, the were not correlated with the actual installation. (i.e. billed for 24 nipples but only 8 were used.) Glycol is exceptionally expensive and yet the barrel 'leaked' for a couple of hours before they realized that it wasn't 'snow melt off' and that the barrel was actually leaking. Yet, somehow we were billed for all of that too and but we didn't transport it nor did we accept a sub par barrel of 55 gals of glycol to start with. This was actually another minor $500 expense that we weren't informed of to start with either. Worse, when the State inspectors reviewed the pluming installation the following six months later (we canceled any further work with this company, obviously) they then informed us that the gas line was too small for the boiler that was installed. This is something that they deliberately installed in a sub par and sub standard method. It would have been better for us to have had that piping changed out before the sheet rock went on the wall instead of a big ugly black gas pipe that now runs down the side of the boiler. Of course, we won't mention that this had to be changed out as well - to the tune of $1300 later from another plumber! So you are probably wondering why we asked them to come out and install this boiler that we already had on hand with all these parts... The gentleman working on the project who set this all up for us and was about to get the installation under way, unfortunately passed away very unexpectedly. Thus we had all our components before hand which is why we only needed labour anyway. Finally, (yes it gets worse) we were hunting for our 8', orange Wagner ladder in February and couldn't find it. It was a brand new one only just a few months old and it came up missing. We contacted them and they 'didn't remember taking it' but with the other chap helping Daniel, it was surmised that he probably 'grabbed it by mistake'. Either way, no other person was in the building and our ladder disappeared. That was about $225 and it just walked off and we didn't get it back either. In the end, we ended up paying them 5050 which was $1407 less than billed amount. This was our offer in light of not being informed of the additional parts, the mistakes etc. I did send a letter to them expressing my frustrations and the only thing we received back from them was a receipt from the billing of the credit card. Our letter and our concerns were never addressed. We cannot recommend this company at all. To say one thing and then bill for a difference of that amount, is just disgraceful. We also never received a bid in writing either, so again, highly professional. Spare yourself some anguish and heart ache here and keep looking for another contractor because this is not your local trusted plumbing company.

I would recommend them, but I guess they don’t do residential work anymore. They do very good work. The people I dealt with were very professional.