Roto-Rooter Plumbing & Water Cleanup

The basement floor drain (by washer) did not drain well. Roto Rooter responded the same day I called and was on time. The representative was courteous (placed footies over his shoes) and did the work in less than one-half hour. We were charged $209 after a senior discount, The representative was there for no more than thirty minutes. He also said the hose going from the washer to the stationary tub may need "snaked" but this would not be included in the $209 charge. I asked him how much more it would cost...his comment was "you don't want to know". When I questioned again, he said it would be another $209 at least. In asking why it was so much, the comment was..."if I touch it, I have to charge you". I know these comments were made in the friendliest manner and the rep was nice but $209 for a 15 minute job...really? And then it may not even be a complete job. We are disappointed in the policy and the costs charged but the response was the same day we called and they were on time. Overall, maybe a D+ rating.

What a nightmare! We had a sewer leak in our 3-family rental property. Called Roto-Rooter at 6 pm, they promised they'd get someone there by 11 pm. Three families-with small children-waited. We called twice and were told we were on the list. At 11:01 we called again and were told they couldn't find anyone to take our call. What??!! Never, ever again. What a horrible thing to do to us, the paying landlords, AND the 3 tenants dealing with a mess. Furious.

The work was completed fine at the time although the problem recurred again soon after and we then rented a rooter machine from the Home Depot ourselves and cleared the blockage for a fraction of the price. We have now been problem free for months. Roto Rooter staff always push for a follow-up call where they put a camera down the drain and then say that you need new pipes, at a cost of thousands of dollars.

got number from neighbor and called to fix draining problem. no need to wait long.

Therefore I refused their service.

The Roto-Rooter service technician, Anthony, pulled the toilet up and used a jet pump to fix the clog down the sewage drain. it was done within a couple hours The cost was overpriced, but everyone knows roto-rooter is over priced; you're paying for speed of service and a bathroom covered in fecal matter was not something I wanted to delay fixing. After the technician left, we realized the toilet would not stop running. We tried a quick fix, but we realized that the refill tower was cracked. This happens often when doing work on a toilet and normally it's is a $15 part and takes minutes to fix. We explained to Roto-Rooter what happened and asked them to send someone over at their convenience for the simple fix. This was over a weekend, where we were unable to get a cleaning crew in, so when the new technician walked into a room covered 6" up every wall with human fecal matter--and explained that someone else must have broken the toilet since the last technician left, we laughed because we were certain it was a joke. It was not. "I don't know what happened, but we didn't do that" The technician went to the car to call his manager. He was on the phone for longer than it would have taken to fix the issue to come back and say his manager wouldn't allow the $15 fix on a $1100 service call. This is where it starts getting strange from a customer service stand-point. Roto-Rooter built up some good will by sending someone on a weekend. But they squashed it over a $15 part. missing two important, but obvious factors. No one was going to use a bathroom covered--entirely, in human feces so it must have been broken during or before the technician came to fix it. The technician left without the toilet being fixed. So I sent the 2nd technician away and call Roto Rooter. A nice woman named Patty, who was obviously trained in customer service, heard me out and explained that this would be taken care of immediately and her boss would be calling me shortly with a solution to the problem. I called back a while later to finally get ALDRIN LEONARDO, Patty's boss, on the phone. I explained the ordeal. Saying this was obviously a communication failure and the 2nd technician may not have wanted to work in the room with human feces all over the place. So if someone would just come fix it, all is forgiven. But when Mr. Leonardo kept asking me the same questions over and over, I realized that he had not already sent someone to fix the problem yet, and that he was pretty sure that after we paid $1100 for our toilet to be fixed, that we somehow broke it again and were trying to screw them out of a $15 part to fix it. Leonardo asked me if the technician pulled the toilet to do the job. I explained that the technician did, and its quite clear that is what broke the little part on the toilet. Leonardo, needed more proof to approve such a hefty claim. A $15 part and 10 minutes of a technician's time is not something to be dealt with lightly. Mr. Leonardo said he would check with the technician who did the job to verify my claims--which alone was insulting enough to have kept me from ever using them again, but it gets better. Aldrin Leonardo calls me back and tells me that the technician, Anthony, told him that he never pulled the toilet. He caught on to my clever ruse of wasting 4 hours of my work day getting a free $15 part from Roto-Rooter. Unfortunately for Leonardo, the work order that his technician filled out says he "pulled toilet." Unfortunately for me, Leonardo did not look up this work order, and apparently his technician, Anthony, lied to him, because Leonardo forced me to scan and send my copy of the work order where the Anthony wrote "Pulled toilet" on it. I asked Leonardo to call me back when he received it so we can go over it together and verify that I wasn't the world's lowest aiming con-artist. He sent me an email that a technician would be over in a couple hours. I do not believe that his technician lied to him about the job, but I also have problems believing that this guy was more comfortable accusing me of lying than looking up the work order for himself. Two hours later I send him another email asking where the technician was. He replied that it was somehow Patty's fault that the technician was late and that I was not informed about it. Let us all pray for poor Patty.

It didn't go they never showed up

Fox Glen Road across the street from me is now a subdivision. It is a dead end; a cul-de-sac. All of the water from their sewers and their road flows under the road, Hunting Ridge Road, into a catch basin on my side of the street and then into an eight-inch culvert which runs right underneath my property. We had big heavy rains. There was so much water coming in that it blew up through the ground and so forth and I thought there was something stuck in there so I called Roto Rooter and he said he could fix it but then he wanted seven hundred dollars. He hemmed and hawed and just tried to jostle me for a little bit more. He was a young guy; a cocky character and I just told him to get out of there. I found him useless. It was just one particular person in that company who came by and he was young, about mid-twenties.

He charged a lot of money for the clogged sink which took him 5 minutes to clear. I asked him if he could do another since that went so quickly and I was paying a lot. He said no he would have to charge another $300.00. It felt like a total rip off deal.

They were good. They cleaned up after themselves, and everything. When they took the old toilet out, they drained any water that was in it so they would not leave a track of water. Overall, they were very good.

They replaced no more than a foot of copper pipe and a new shut off valve. I live out of state and hired them to fix this leak for my mother. The materials that they used could not have cost more than $30.00, but they charged me $495.00 for generous 1.5 hours of work. I called to file a complaint and the manager called me back in about an hour. He said they did not charge more for coming out on Sunday. When I asked him why they charged so much for such little work, he bragged about how good of a living he makes and wasn't going to feel bad about that. I do not have a problem with the plumber that came out and did the job, he did the job correctly in a reasonable amount of time.

They were terrible. They were supposed to fix a little leak and it ended up cloaking. I was really disappointed. I was overcharged and it was lousy.

They seemed very nice and did the work quickly at a reasonable cost. They kept with the timeframe. They told me when they were going to be out and even though when they're out of town; they were here within the timeframe, on the same day as I needed them right away. They have a 30 day guarantee on their work, which is great.

I scheduled an appointment for an annual drain cleaning for 4/16/12, and received a 10 AM to 12 PM window for service. At 11:05 AM, a dispatcher called to say that the service technician would be arriving closer to 12 PM. At 12:50 PM, still no technician and no follow-up call. I had taken time off from work to be home for the appointment and couldn't wait any longer, so I called the company and was transferred to the dispatcher, who told me the technician was just finishing up a job in Florence and would be on his way over. Florence is at least thirty minutes away from our house, so even if he had finished right at that second and headed over, it would have been close to 1:30 by the time he started here, and probably at least 2 by the time he finished. My boss is flexible, but not that flexible. I had really high hopes for this company based on the reviews and the initial call to schedule the appointment, but when a company schedules a service window and fails to meet it like this, I have to grade accordingly. I definitely understand that schedules get delayed from time to time, but I think Roto Rooter should have called me at noon to let me know what was happening and given me the option of rescheduling, rather than just waiting for me to call. I should add that I know there are a lot of cranky people out there who like to write nasty reviews just for the heck of it, but I don't consider myself one of them. I would much rather be spending my time writing a great review for great service as I have in the past. Unfortunately, I don't think what's I got from Roto Rooter.

My experience with this company was very good.

We have been very satisfied with Roto-Rooter Plumbing & Drain Services Company. We have used this particular franchise for number of years. They have always been very prompt. Their price is reasonable; it was a big job. They had to use specific equipment for this job. They came when they said they would. They completed the job within a reasonably short length of time. They were courteous. They are dependable. We have used them for our septic tank. With all this mess, they had to dig up the septic tank. They did so and covered it all up. When we left, we could not even make out that they had been here. They had to drive over our lawn. They are a quality operation. We would call them again in a minute, as we have, over the years. It is supposed to be a tough business to be in and they do it well. They really are dependable and that is what one really needs when one is in a mess like that. I do not know if their pricing is good because I just do not have anything to compare. It seemed good to me because I did not have anybody else complain. Everybody was in demand after the big storm. They did not charge us any more during this big demand period. They did not take advantage of the situation and charge us more. The quality of their work has always been satisfactory. We have never had to have them back to redo any work they did. They responded very quickly once we called and that was very important. They were very professional. They never came into the house. They could have left a big mess but they did clean up well and that is being very professional to me. Their response when one calls for service is excellent. We got a call back right away and they showed up the next day.

The tech was very friendly and courteous! He went straight to work and tackled the problem right away! I just wish that Roto Router was not so expensive!!!! Good job overall!!!

Water dripping from ceiling on Saturday morning. Called 3 plumbers. Answering machine on first. Second couldn't promise anyone until Sunday. Third - Roto Rooter was very helpful. The person on the phone gave an expected time frame and called back twice to let me know her progress in finding someone. Her last call was to tell me that someone was on his way. She could have improved the situation by telling me he was coming from the other side of the state -- two hours later, I was just beginning to worry that he was not really coming when he rang the bell. Before he started, he told me what the initial diagnosis would cost.and explained what he thought he would have to do to find it. He put drop cloths down to protect the desk and went to work trying to find the source of the leak. He seemed to be trying not to tear up my ceiling any more than he had to, but the water had traveled quite a bit. When he found the leak, he showed me where it was, explained what he needed to do, told me what it would cost, and went to work. When he was finished, he cleaned up. (Okay, there are still holes in the ceiling, but the leak is fixed and he vacuumed the floor.) He wrote up the bill and explained the charges. He left and called back a couple of hours later to tell me that he had forgotten to open the water valve completely. He walked me through how to do it. The new pipe still seems to hold.

Eight months ago, our sewage backed up into the basement. The first technician came immediately, snaked and camera'd the drain and said there was a second trap on the system that would eventually have to be removed to end the problem. He couldn't tell exactly where the trap was and thought we might have to jack hammer the foundation. As this was a daunting reality to face, we chose to rely on drain cleaners. Last week it happened again, the weekend before Independence Day. I am soooo glad they don't charge extra for weekends and holidays. The second technician seemed a lot more knowledgable and was able to pinpoint the exact location of the problem and offer a permanent solution. With this additional information, I felt more confident to undertake the job. Mike was honest that it would be difficult to set an exact time to start on Tuesday because he needed to pull the appropriate permits at Town Hall that morning. However, he sent his assistant at the agreed on time to begin setting up apemen and prepping the worksite. The job was done in the time allotted. At one point, Mike showed me an area at the removal site where a section of pipe was significantly worn more than the surrounding pipe and suggested it be replaced now, while the floor was open. I agreed and this was the only overage beyond the estimate. Mike and I discussed ways to keep the drain clear and the price of water-blasting the growing roots. He answered all my questions and left me with his cell number should there be any further problems.

Our home is on a slab so unfortunately on a sunday night when there was a drain malfunction at 10pm as I was doing laundry, it affected our laundry room, kitchen sink, and dishwasher so my household was in chaos. Gross stinky stuff started backing up out of our utility sink all over the laundry and kitchen floor. I shut off the water to prevent further mayhem, then called roto rooter in the morning. i had to take my little daughter to an end-of-year outing for school, so i asked them to come after noon. The scheduler said someone would be at my home between 1-3pm. WHY bother telling me that?! I pulled my kid out of the fun picnic we were enjoying so we could go home and sit and wait for the plumber who didn't arrive til after 6. He was nice, he did the job quick and it seems to have been a good job. It just strikes me that an enormous company, can't they do a little better job predicting when the serviceman will be able to show up? I'm not expecting down to the minute timing, but at least show up within 4 hours of the window that the customer was given? This ruined my and my kids' whole day.

The plumber was prompt, pleasant and did a good job. He provided advice to avoid the problem in the future.

Went well with the technician explaining everything as he went along, very professional and thorough until I received the quote for the new sewer pipe. At that point I was encouraged to have the job done right away. Aside from the price quote, everything went well.

Two men came, both personable and seemingly competent. After we explained that the malfunctioning toilet was part of original plumbing and that other bath downstairs was installed in later renovation, they decided to perhaps try to clear things from there. They were all set to remove the newer toilet ( which made no sense to us) when we pointed out that the main line out of the house left from the other side of the downstairs. So then they decided to try to root the main line (more logical!) but at this point they are about 45 minutes in to the house call. They went in first with the big rooter which would not go through a tangle of roots about 10 feet past the foundation. Then they went in with smaller rooter head and were able to get through enough that the problem would be "temporarily relieved." They left us with plumbing liquid to use if there was further backup before we did the "permanent" repair. They then said what needed to be done was to clear line down to city sewer line, a 60 foot run that would require excavation and replacement of approximately 60 feet of main house line to ciy sewer. Their estimate was $6875. After paying the $435 for the call, we called others for second opinion. The man we hired had a totally different, and more effective, approach to pinpointing the problem and charged $1200 for excavating and replacing the juncture of the main and secondary house sewer line which was where clog had occurred. Warranty and CD of camera run (before and after) down main line to city sewer.

Plumber arrived within one hour after my initial call was made due to a slow leak. He found leak that was caused by a small crack in the back of the tank and recommended replacing the entire toilet. He left and called from the dealer to suggest several available options based on water usage and color. He returned about an hour later with a replacement low-water-consumption toilet that we had agreed to by phone. Although he had a problem matching bolt holes in the floor to yhose in the new toilet, he was able to do a workaround and complete a very professional installation in a reasonable time.

I have had a lot of experience with them in the past. They have been very good. They are prompt and have reasonable rates.