Roto-Rooter Plumbing & Water Cleanup

They wanted $542 just to install a basic kitchen faucet! Ridiculous!

Installation was solid. The labor price was a bit high. The main concern was the materials markup. The picked up a shower stem from Lowes. Those are normally about $50. The tech said that the stem wasn't $120 but they charge them extra when they use their contractor code. That seemed weird since normally get discounts since they purchase a lot. I should have questioned it but it didn't register to me until after he had left.

Arjan was efficient and knowledgeable and was able to do the job well and quickly

The plumber who did the work, Jerry C., was very courteous and professional. He explained the issues, answered my questions, offered options to resolve the problems, and got the work done efficiently.

Called on Sunday am to schedule a 'non-emergent' appointment for anytime the upcoming week. Was told that they had an appt. available that day between 11-1 which I accepted and received an email confirmation. Received a call from Roto @ 1145 saying they would be there around 1pm. At 2:30pm, nothing, so I called Roto and the dispatcher said they were finishing up a job and I was next. At 3:50pm, nothing, I called Roto again, and the dispatcher said she would check and call me back in 10 minutes. At 4:25, no response so I called again and was told that they would be at least another hour. I cancelled the appt. I had been nothing but patient and pleasant with each interaction but asked how they could miscalculate over 5 hrs. At that time the dispatcher proceeded to provide me a lecture on how unpredictable jobs can be, 'sometimes they take 30 minutes, sometimes they take hours'. I have 3 suggestions: 1. Don't add on a non-emergent appt @ 11 am if the preceding job is that unpredictable. 2. Provide updates to the customer to keep them posted, especially if there is an extensive delay. 3. Do not lecture a pleasant, patient, NEW customer after they have waited from 11am-4:30pm for an appointment your office offered. Unfortunately, after the last interaction I went from frustrated for wasting an entire weekend day to being angry at the lack of respect from the dispatcher.

PLEASE BE AWARE!! DO NOT USE ROTO ROOTER!! THEY ARE SCAMMING HOMEOWNERS!! My son and his fiancé just purchased their first home on Thursday, they noticed the utility sink in the basement was backing up which seemed to look like brown paper towels or cardboard when they would flush the toilets on Saturday, we called Roto Rooter to come out because we assumed the lines were clogged from the material. Roto Rooter advised it would cost $689.00 to snake the line, if they could not get the line unclogged it would be a charge of $200.00. This includes a camera to look at the pipe to make sure nothing else was damaged. The gentleman gave me a discount and charged $500.00 to snake the line, He was able to unclog the pipe. HERE IS WHERE THE SCAM BEGINS!! The Camera Man “Doug” arrives to use the camera. Immediately on arrival he says to my son, OH you just bought this house. He forces the camera down the pipe from the inside of the basement. He tells my son he has major problems, there are rocks coming inside your house through the pipes. I have a recording of the camera and we did not see any rocks whatsoever. He told us the pipes needed to be excavated and replaced. He told my son there was no clean out outside his home so that would need to be installed as well. He quoted my son $8,000.00 to dig up the yard, replace the pipe and install a clean out!!! Dough told my son he could not stay at his home; he could not run any water at all, or it would cause major issues. My son and his fiancé had not even slept one night in the house yet, they had just purchased their home. I told my son to take the estimate and tell them have a nice day!! We received a second opinion and ROTO ROOTER was totally lying!! There was a clean out right on the outside wall of the home, there was absolutely nothing wrong with the pipe besides it was slightly off which most likely has been that way for 60 years!! The second opinion we received placed a camera down the pipe, the camera went in the pipe very easily. “Doug” had to force the camera down the pipe and manipulated the camera to remove the ball so it would show there was damage when there was no damage. A day my son and his fiancé should have been happy about purchasing their first home turned into the worse day thinking they just bought a house they could not even use at all because this company wanted to try to get money out of a young couple that just purchased a new home. PLEASE DO NOT GET SCAMMED BY THIS COMPANY. There have been several lawsuits against this company for the same exact thing over the years in different states as well.

They were excellent, timely, polite, efficient, and cleaned everything up very well when they were done. I had a great experience with this company and I would definitely recommend them.

Ridiculous. The tech came promptly. That’s the last good thing I can say. With not even an investigation he spits out “at least $650”. I start making some inquiries about if that includes a camera scope and thoughts about source of the problem, distance covered etc. I ask if we can diagnose the problem before we agree on a price - he says camera scope is $150 I say great let’s start with that. He goes to his truck, comes back with a device to show me he can’t tell where my sewer line goes. So we wander the yard he has some beeping magnet on a stick device. He can’t find anything. He goes up to the nearest manhole and opens it and shines in a flashlight and concludes the sewer doesn’t run there, his best guess is to a line around the corner. Now he’s running all kinds of huge numbers past me so I return to well let’s just get in and see what we can see but now he tells me he won’t put the camera in for less than “at least $450”, and that I’ve already spent the $150 since he had to open the manhole cover and walk around the yard. He continues to tell me this could be this many thousand etc. meanwhile admitting he has no idea because he has no idea where the drain line goes, what condition it’s in etc. I finally just paid the $150 even though that was supposed to be for the scope and we never had any discussion of him charging me for walking the yard with the magnet or opening the sewer ahead of time. He just did those things and turned that into the $150. He brought up all kinds of stomach churning possibilities but it was all just conjecture as he never figured anything out - what kind of pipes I had, where they went, what the issue was. The way numbers appeared at random and shifted was disconcerting-especially when coming with no information. He left with no idea where my line goes, distance, condition, problem just guesses and numbers he would change on a dime. Apparently the minimum charge for any real diagnosis was going to be $450 and I doubted he would know at that price so I just put the brakes on.

I was really disappointed with Roto Rooter. I’ve called them before and was extremely impressed with their technicians. Unfortunately my last experience was not the same. A technician came out to provide a quote for cleaning the main drain pipe. He provided a quote that was quite frankly outrageous and more than 4x the average cost for similar services based on my research and subsequent quotes. This service, which was non-emergency and no clean up, was somehow going to cost more than our previous service with RR which was an emergency with significant clean up. When the technician asked what I was expecting to pay, he scoffed at my reply. He deducted 30% from the price he was offering, good, but still too high. Also made me feel like I was being taken as a fool with the original quote proposal. As I was considering his new offer and asking for a breakdown (which he couldn’t provide) he started fumbling with my door. I asked “are you leaving?” to which he scoffed a second time. At this point I thanked him for his time and said “here’s the door”. Called another plumber who got the work done for 1/3rd of the price RR proposed. Don’t waste you time and money here.

These guys quoted me a price for $922 to snake a minor kitchen drain clog and repair a leak seal on the basket drain of my kitchen sink. I told them that was too high. I went to another licensed plumber that was local who cleared the drain and replaced the basket drain and the trap for a total of $422. Unbelievable.

They responded quickly to my call for an emergency drain cleaning. The backup occurred at 7pm and a crew was on site by 10pm. A "supervisor" came by about 10:30 to discuss full service options, i.e., providing cleanup (mitigation) and restoration (through a subcontractor). This sounded great at the time, but turned into a nightmare. The sewer line cleaning was not covered by homeowners insurance, and was very expensive in my opinion ($600). Their video inspection of the line after cleaning showed root intrusion, and they gave two quotes, one to repair, one to replace the whole line. Both were excessive (yearly maintenance annually, even at $600 a pop, for 10-yrs would be cheaper). The mitigation was completed in 4 days, including carpet and drywall removal, cleaning and disinfecting, and drying with 16+ portable fan units. The subcontractor they use for restoration, Three Rivers Builders, and their associated subcontractors, were a nightmare. It took 5 months for them to come to an agreement with my insurance company, Allstate (who themselves were not blameless in the delays). The quality of the work was generally poor, and took months longer than the original estimate of 4-weeks. Finally, work crews used materials from my garage that they did not supply, and subcontractors would damage existing conditions and/or work done by the prior contractors, and it would never be repaired. I finally kicked them out of my house and completed the "punch out" myself. I would definitely NOT recommend Roto-Rooter, particularly their restoration services performed by Three Rivers Builders.

The contractor was able to perform the work immediately. He was professional and the quality of his work was very neat.

All went well, Plumber was right on time and effecient. Sump pump hole was cleaned out and a new sump pump was installed.

The technician was here for 90 minutes and charged us $599 and it did not solve the problem!! We had to get another company to complete the job. When we complained about the cost and asked for a partial refund, this was denied. I would NEVER use this company again.

Arrived quickly after contacting them to clear clog on a weekend, and the next day they did the cleanup of spill in basement. The pipe hadn't collapsed but since other neighbors have had their main sewer pipe replace in the last couple of years I had the pipe replaced the following week to prevent more problems.

Had Roto Rooter come out to fix a clogged pipe in my basement. Service representative was Donald Smith. He tried for about 30 minutes and said he couldn't get the drain unclogged and I probably had a collapsed pipe... it seemed like he was giving up because it was hard. Sure enough I called another plumber who came out and fixed it with no problem, the plumber said he gets calls like this all the time where Roto Rooter said it's a collapsed pipe but in reality it's just a hard clog. To make matters worse he tried to charge me the full amount that he quoted me ($350+) to fix it, even though he didn't fix anything. I finally got him to only charge me to diagnose and attempt.. which was still $230. The other plumber (Pumphrey Plumbing) came out, fixed it in 20 minutes and only charged $200.

Followed up with camera in sewer line. Professional.

Our water heater stopped working suddenly on Easter Sunday in the morning. My husband called Roto-Rooter. A repairman came to our house about an hour later. He said that he needed to get another man to help him. The two repairmen returned to our house about 2 hours later. They drained the water from our old water heater into the sump pump, removed the old water heater, and they installed a new water heater. It took about 3 3/4hours. They said that the labor charge would be $285 an hour. We had a hot water heater installed 15 years ago by another company. It took them 2 1/2 hours and they charged $112.50 an hour. I thought that Roto-Rooter's labor charge was a little high so I called three companies several days after Roto-Rooter installed our new water heater. One company said that they charge $228 an hour for weekend and holiday service and it takes them about 2-3 hours to install a water heater. Another compamy said that the minimum charge would be $1500-$1800 to install a new water heater. The third company said that they would charge $1,260 to install a water heater. Our water heater died at a most inopportune time. Our son, daughter-in-law and two grandchildren were visiting us. We all needed to take a shower and we needed to run the dishwasher. We were desperate to get a new water heater. If we could have waited until Monday, I'm sure that we could have saved some money. The cost was $2,160.

Technician was excellent! Very professional, diagnosed the problem quickly and remedied the situation. This was my first time using Roto-Rooter and I'll definitely be using them again in the future.

The tech was on time(miracle), his appearance and tools all were very clean and taken care of, the work was quick and kept everything very organized and paid attention to our things not to damage anything, and was very personable. He gave us good information to prevent any future problems and shockingly backed up the work with a six month warranty. It was worth the expense and was very pleased with the customer service and the work oerformed. I def would hire without any hesitation again. I would suggest looking for any online coupons there were a few to choose from and with significant savings. We had one for $100

We had a leak from our kitchen sink that went through the floor and into our basement. Roto-Rooter sent a water restoration specialist (Joe) and a plumber (Al) within two hours of our call. We were fortunate enough not to need professional restoration services. However, the source of problem was quickly identified and Al repaired the leak quickly. From the beginning, from my initial calls with Elisha, to the final workmanship, we experienced professional, quality service from Roto-Rooter.

Very Well. The work was quick and efficient. The plumber cleaned the work area afterwards and left it sparkling. I would use them again.

The description of the work estimate and the work that the tech actually did where two different things. It was completely shameful the way that the tech talked about the problem and what needed to be done. I would say in the basement he earned his money by taking the toilet off the mount and undoing the clogged pipe. However, for the upstairs he did not do anything more than snake the toilet with the hand snake to an already slightly clogged toilet and charged the same price as if he had removed the toilet. I really felt taken advantage of and shamed into thinking that our practices are why it cost so much even if he didn't pull anything out of the drain of the toilet upstairs. This is a practice that we as customers shouldn't pay for at all.

It went okay. The serviceman explained the charges and the possibility his snaking the pipe (old, galvanized) would produce a hole. Of course, the pipe produced a hole. This was a separate charge from the cleaning to have the serviceman cut a hole in my wall and replace the pipe. He was clean and professional. Although it cost me more than I had initially anticipated, I am pleased with the service.

I came home late afternoon on October 17. I used my kitchen sink to wash vegetables and my dog's bowls. I went down the basement shortly after to find water running down the basement wall and dripping through the soaked subflooring. I had used Roto Rooter for clogged drains, but was uncertain if they provided plumbing services. When I called, they were very helpful, and said that they would have a plumber there ASAP. They meant it! When the first two guys, David and Will, came, I thought they were the plumbers, but they were restoration techs. They examined the issue, and recommended restoration work, as the wooden subfloor was totally soaked, and the leak was between the base of my kitchen sink cabinet and the kitchen floor. This area was inaccessible. I agreed to the restoration, and the team of guys got to work immediately. The plumber, Bryan, arrived soon after. After examining the plumbing and discovering that the vent pipe went through the wall to the back porch, he went to Home Depot to get additional supplies. He worked until after midnight. He did a fabulous job, and replaced the last piece of 60 year old galvanized pipe in my home. The job was excellent and thorough, and I could not have been happier with the result. When the fans and dehumidiers were removed on the following Saturday, there was not a trace of dampness left.