Mike Howell & Son Plumbing

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Back in December 2010 I had flooding in the basement of a house that my wife and I had just bought. We went through several plumbers to figure out the problem. I actually paid another plumber $160 dollars just to tell me what was wrong w/ with the drain, because Mike Howell and Son (His son Curtis Howell did the work.) couldn't tell me the problem. That should've been my first clue that I should've went w/ somebody else to do the work, However, I promised that I would give Mike Howell and Son the work because I keep my word. Once I found out the problem as promised I gave Mike Howell and Son the job. They did come in a timely fashion and replaced the line from the house to the main about 16ft. The job cost $2500 dollars and it was paid. Sometime around February 2011 my wife notice water on the basement floor. I called Mike Howell and Son the very next day. Curtis (the son of Mike Howell and Son) showed up that morning and said the line was clogged. Now this was less than three months after replacing the drain line in this exact same place was flooding. My wife and I do not put grease down the drain or large amounts of food for that matter. We do have a disposal and I have used it but for minor amounts of food. Curtis augured the line and charged me over $100 for his "service". I decided two things at that moment Curtis wasn't a very good plumber and I wasn't going to pay Mike Howell and Son for not fixing my problem in the first place since my basement was still flooding. I will admit that Mike Howell and Son did replaced a bad drain line but what they did I discovered after having another plumber come put a camera down the drain Mike Howell and Son didn't angle the drain pipe correctly from my house so I have low points that hold water and doesn't allow things to flow down the line. So every couple of months my line builds up w/ stuff that doesn't make to the sewer. I had thought that something else was wrong wit the drain maybe w/ iron pipes under house and maybe something further down and was prepared to have my basement cut up only to find out Mike Howell and Son completely blew the job. I called Curtis and explain the situation. Curtis response was "What do you want me to do about it?" I told him I wanted it fixed. He immediately got defensive and told me that three years later was too late. That I should've called him. I reminded him that I had called him couple months after he had drain the line and his solution was just augur the drain and charge me over $100 dollars and I still had a flooded basement. Now I didn't know exactly what the problem was until just recently. As I mentioned before I actually thought it might be something else besides the bad drain line from the house since the house was built in the 60's. But the other plumbers said everything looked fine under my house and that the drain line Mike Howell and Son replaced was my problem. I explained to Curtis on the phone that it was the work he had (supervised) done that was causing the exact same problem that I had hired him to fix. Curtis didn't want to hear it and told he had nothing more to say to me and hung up. Long story short 3 years of snaking my drain every few months, several more plumber visits and out thousands of dollars, I still have flooded basement. Mike Howell and Son are willing take money to do a job they had done incorrectly and not have enough integrity to fix or repay what is obviously their fault. It would not matter how much time past if something I had done incorrectly as a result of my work was causing the exactly same problem I was hired to fix you better believe I would go back and fix it or return the money.

We had discovered that our old hot water heater had quit working and was leaking badly on a Sunday evening. I called Mike Howell and Son Plumbing (based on a good BBB rating) the first thing Monday morning and was told that they would bring a new one out to install in one hour. The fact that they could fix my problem so quickly impressed me. About fifteen minutes later I received a phone call that it would be an additional 30 minutes; the job that they were working on before mine was taking a little longer than anticipated. Curtis and his helper showed up and immediately began working to replace the old hot water heater. In roughly an hour, I had a new hot water heater and hot water in the house. The installation was well done, they were very punctual, and I was impressed that they called a second time to tell me they would be later than they first told me.