AMERICAN PLUMBING

I bought a water heater from Lowes and this company it the one you are to use for any repair work under their warranty. The water heater started leaking and I called them per instructions from Lowes. Each time they told me they would call back in 40 min to set up an appointment. In 3 days time and several calls later from me AND from Lowes they NEVER returned any calls. Each time I was given an excuse that the appointment person was busy, hadn't come in yet, was out to lunch, etc. I still have a leaking water heater. They also told Lowes I had told them I just wanted the water heater winterized. I don't think "I have water running across my basement floor, Lowes is sending you the paperwork authorizing repairs" means "I want it winterized"!

I give this company a B score overall mainly due to the confusing interactions I had with the plumbing office personnel, although the plumber was extremely professional and did a great job explaining the job to me and answering all my questions, and eventually, replacing the toilet. Under the warranty, the plumbing company is required to look for parts to fix the problem and if they cannot find them or if the job is too expensive to repair, replace it. the problematic toilet was an old fashioned wall hanging tank, and the parts are difficult to find. It seemed to take forever for them to "find the parts" and they could never give me a definitive answer as to how long they were going to search for the parts before deciding whether to repair or replace. One of the office people blamed the delay on the warranty people, and then said they couldn't find the parts. I eventually took it up with the warranty people, who handled communication with the plumbing company. In the end, after two weeks, I have a new toilet. Fortunately it's a basement toilet, so the delay was a non-issue. I also was not told the entire story by the office personnel, who said the parts could not be found. The plumber told me the parts were found but fixing a toilet of that age would be too expensive with labor and parts and replacing the toilet was cheaper. I did not hear this from the office workers, who told me the parts could not be found. Fortunately, I didn't care one way or the other what was down there, but it would've been a different issue if the toilet had been in the main part of the house. I don't feel the plumbing company is bad, I blame the warranty for delays, but a new toilet for $60 was worth the two week wait and having to manage the process as much as I had to. The plumber did a great job and once the decision was made to replace the toilet, the office workers scheduled the job right away and were very pleasant. The plumber did a great install with no mess. all the trash was removed and I could hardly tell he'd been there. I imagine this company would be great to deal with if a warranty were not involved, and even with it, they were pretty good. In my opinion, they need to learn to deal better with the warranty, since they've contracted to be a provider with the warranty company.

After looking at the problem, the plumber went out to move his truck into the driveway and get his equipment. He came back and told me that he couldn't get the key out of the ignition, so he couldn't open the back of the truck to get out the big piece of equipment he needed. He proceeded to drag in an assortment of hoses and hand held snakes. He went to work on the floor drain, snaking out about 100 feet. He had me fill the washing machine and run on spin, and the drain overflowed even more. He tried to get in to snake the pipe that the washing machine drains into, but his snake was too thick. He kept insisting that the blockage was between the washing machine and the drain and that he'd have to cut the pipe and replace it. I pointed out that the water was obvioulsy getting from the washing machine to the drain, since running it caused the drain to overflow, but he disagreed. He could not fix the problem after about 2 hours of work and I was told that because of the holiday they couldn't come back until next week. This was a Wednesday,so that meant that I couldn't use the washing machine, shower, dishwasher or TOILETS until Monday. I called another company this morning and they arrived promptly. The plumber immediately asked where my bathrooms were located and found the main "stack". He brought in a professional looking piece of equipment and went to work to unclog the blockage. It took about an hour to get the job done. The American Plumbing technician wasn't even trying to clear the correct pipe. In effect, he tried to fix a "symptom" rather than the "cause" of the overflow. He didn't fix the problem, but I guess I'm lucky that he didn't damage anything since he obviously didn't know what he was doing.

For AHS claim, company came three times because of leaking pipes. They didn't find the leaks, and gave ridiculous reasons why the drop ceiling in the downstairs bathroom was soaking wet and ruined (said the steam from the shower was being absorbed by the ceiling tiles). Given that the damage occurred over 2 weeks time, and half the ceiling is damaged to the point of buckling, this seemed unlikely. When we pointed out the leak after we located it, they said they couldn't fix it that day because they had to order parts. When the office called to schedule another visit, the person said there were no parts to be ordered. When they came to do the actual repair, they said they couldn't totally fix it because the sub flooring was too close to the drain, but they could tighten the ring. They said it will likely leak again. When asked how much to permanently fix the problem, they shot a figure of $250 but did not write up any estimate or breakdown the estimate by expense.

We scheduled an appointment on Monday 1/15 from noon-4pm for the plumber to come out to fix the seal on our toilet. The office kept calling to say he would come later and later until finally they called to say the plumber would not make it and we would have to reschedule. I rescheduled for Wed at 8-11am, because the woman at the office said as the first appointment of the day the plumber was sure to come. Again we waited. At 11am I called the office and was told by a man, who had trouble finding our appointment, that they had no way to know when the plumber would arrive since their computers had been down for a week, which contradicted the woman who had told me as the first appointment of the day the plumber would arrive first thing in the morning. We told them not to bother coming since they had now missed two 3 hour window appointments and used another company. The woman was pleasant on the phone (as she lied to me) but the man was very rude.

The technician was professional and responsive to questions. The office was awful. I called three days in a row to check the status of the claim, and they never called me back. I finally called the home warranty rep.

Due to a delay in a prior appointment, they were later than we had initially anticipated, but they were within the window of time they gave me. Despite the fact that I had previously given them information on the fact that they were to work on an incinerator hot water dispenser, they did not have parts. However, the technician was immediately able to discern the issue with the flow to the ice maker. He informed me that he would have to order parts and come back. We await his return to complete the job.