Ritter Plumbing & Heating Inc

PROS: The drain was fixed very well, so I give him good scores on that. Since he had spent much time, he included checking the tub faucet in the price. Good scores there too. CONS: Having only lived here a very short period of time, he should've seen things that I didn't. Within a week after he left I realized that the tub spout isn't installed correctly; this should have been obvious to a professional. Now I have to have another plumber come and/or do it myself. I don't think he noticed because he didn't do a very good job of inspection. $150 is not very much money I suppose – but it seems like a lot to fix a leaking drain. He said he fixed the water pressure by adjusting the scald guard; but having taken the faucet off myself, I found that it was not adjusted as far as he said. I should note that there are no children in this home. Just a mature adult who does not need a scald guard. After his "repair" I will give him credit for at least some improvement; instead of tepid water, I had warm water. Realizing that this was a fairly easy thing to do, I took it apart and adjusted it myself. Now can get to "hot water"!!! Still, the tub is not the biggest reason for the low scores. All of my plumbing is very visible from a large crawlspace. While he was down there, I asked about getting an icemaker hooked up to my refrigerator. He didn't tell me that there was already a water line in the crawlspace! Instead he talked about the necessity of running a line up into the wall and into a recessed box so that it was always available to turn off, if necessary. He asked if I wanted a written estimate. I declined, since he had made it clear that it will take at least an hour. That would be another service call and $150 that I didn't have. If he had told me that there was already a line run and all I had to do was put some new tubing through the floor, that would have gotten him great scores.

Todd did a great job. He was very professional and efficient and did high quality work. I look forward to using him when any heating or plumbing problems should arise.

Mr. Ritter installed my heating system two years ago and over time, I noticed the house seemed hotter than usual, even when the heater was off. Since Boulder can get pretty hot in the summer, and my heater was set to off, it took me a long time suspect the heater was malfunctioning. When I finally felt sure enough it was the heater, I called Ritter and he said it needed a valve to keep the hot water from spreading through the house when the system was off. He gave me a bid for fixing it an I approved the work. In hindsight, I should have told him at that time that it didn't feel right to be paying to correct a system that he set up in a way that didn't work. I worried about it for a while, asked the advice of some people I thought might know about this and finally told him that it didn't seem like I should pay to fix his error. I believe most contractors who stand behind their work would say, "Yeah, I did it the best I knew how at the time but I can see that my method didn't work and caused you a great deal of discomfort and the expense of heating the house all summer. Thanks for telling me my method doesn't work. Sorry about that and I'll correct it for free." Instead Mr. Ritter got extremely defensive, made personal insults, and said I was out of line for even raising my concerns. He said I waited too long to tell him about the problem and waited too long to tell him I didn't feel right about the charge. He said he had plenty of customers and didn't need my business. He probably knows his work and generally does a good job but he made a mistake like we all do at work from time to time. The truly unprofessional part came when he failed to take responsibility for it. It's really hard to listen to feedback, admit we screwed up, and get it done right. If there's a contractor in this area who has both expertise and a professional approach to fixing their errors, I would recommend using them over Ritter.