This was a fairly accurate report. I do very much appreciate her honesty and feelings concerning the situation. From "her view" I can see where she thought what she thought. But I feel like some VERY important things were left out. First of all, the city of Charleston is NOT allowed to go onto personal property and "unclog" others sewers. I do not know how she talked them in to that. And I am glad she did. I mean, they have $50,000 pieces of equipment for city mains. We, nor does any other company in this city have such equipment. But to use that as a negative against us is truly not fair at all. Because she was able to persuade the city to come onto her property and take a whack at unclogging her sewer, should not equate into meaning WE did something wrong.... Second, and the main point I would like to address, was her problem is still NOT solved. Because they got it unclogged....by no means represents that her problem has been fixed. Whatever problem caused her sewer to back up is still present, is not fixed at all and will cause this problem to happen again. She has a broken pipe, at the street, downtown, 1 foot off of a very large city owned sidewalk. What we offered to do was to permanently cure her problem from ever happening again. Not only were we going to dig it up and replace this section, hand digging it, tunneling under the side walk, but we were going to do this work on EASTER SUNDAY. Yes, I am sorry, to put that kind of a large job together, with last minute notice, we are going to charge a good amount of money to do so. We gave her a price. She said she would have to "think about it and get other estimates". So on one hand she is wanting an estimate to do the work now and tomorrow, on Easter Sunday, but on the other hand, she is wanting to get other estimates? Which means, then why are you asking us to give you an estimate based on Easter Sunday work, if you have time to get estimates during normal business hours? We are offering to do this work on Easter Sunday for you because you have an emergency and you cannot use your toilets, we CARE about that situation!!! Our estimate is based upon Easter Sunday work. Though she never came out and said it, she made enough innuendos to make me feel as though we had tried to con her, to sell her something she did not need. She felt the price was excessive. I told her I am sorry she felt like that, but doing a job like this on Easter Sunday, at last minute notice was going to be expensive. She did offer to dig the hole with her and some friends. So of course, with that circumstance, we would have done the job for $400 because we would NOT have had to even show up on Easter Sunday, but during normal working hours and as such, could do the job much cheaper. ONE man during normal working hours. OR THREE MEN, spending all day digging a massive and deep hole on Easter Sunday, tunneling under a sidewalk. Yes, we would have charged her about $1500 to do so. If you want to equate that to a $1500 hole, you may. But it's not quite that simple... Apples are being compared to oranges here. Then, after saying she needed to get other quotes, at 5:30 am, on EASTER SUNDAY, she WAKES ME UP with the following "go ahead and proceed with the job today and charge my credit card from last night the 50% deposit" I am sorry, that was just downright rude. It was near impossible to put together a 3 man crew at 9:00 on a Saturday night for a hand dig job on Easter Sunday, but now, she wants me to put it all together at 5:30 am??? No aplogies for waking me so early, no nothing. Just very indignant. Just get it done and get it done now. I told her I would get back with her after church, we are a Christian company afterall.... and it IS Easter Sunday.... Then she sends me a text at 12:45 pm that says "never mind, city fixed problem, no longer need your services." That's it???? That's really it???? No thank you for your excellent service? No thank you for locating a clean out that without, the city would not have been able to unclog my line to begin with? No I am sorry for waking you up on Easter Sunday at 5:30am? No thank you for not charging my credit card as I asked you too for the deposit? No do I owe you anything, as MAYBE since I asked you to proceed at 5:30 am and it has been 7 hours later, that MAYBE you have been spending hours of your time on a holiday trying to assemble a crew, do I owe you anything? No nothing. Just a flat, no longer need you. Again, VERY indignant. Very non caring. Non concerned about our time, as we were VERY concerned about hers. Ya know, it comes down to this. We at Servant Plumbing will not ever be able to please everyone, no matter how hard we strive. There are always going to be customers that simply do no like us, or trust us, for one reason or another. Someone once said "you can please some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can never please all of the people all of the time" I / we really do care about our customers. Right now, statistically, we please 99% of our customers. Our Angie's List graph shows 95% A's and 4% B's. I think that is an exceptional rating for the 6 plus years we have been on Angie's List and with the 100's of reports we have received. Of course, we were in business well before Angie's List came to town and have always been the exact same way. I am just glad that now we have a way to prove it :) We are, by far, not the cheapest company in town. And we are, by far, not the most expensive either. We are on the upper end of MIDDLE tier pricing. We consider ourselves to be the absolute best of the best. That does not mean we are the most expensive. We return all calls promptly and within 15 mins. We show up when we say we are going to show up. We work until the wee hours of the morning and will not go home until all of our customer emergencies are taken care of. We work on EASTER SUNDAY'S when you can't even find another company to answer their phones. We do the best plumbing work on planet earth. This is why we give lifetime warranties on the vast majority of our work, because we are not afraid of our work. In short, we provide world class service AND perform world class work, without the world class price tag. That, is how you grow a company. Yes, you can get it done cheaper. These are the same guys and companies that don't return phone calls, don't show up at the appointed time and do sloppy work when they do show up. And when it leaks again 3 months later, they won't return your call.... No, we are not cheaper than them, but we are better than them. We sell "peace of mind" because we will be here 20 years from now to honor our work that we do. I thank you for your time. UPDATE: No, Charleston water is NOT allowed to come onto private property and unclog sewers.....if they COULD, then Roto-Rooter and others would have been out of business decades ago. I mean why bother calling plumbing companies when you can just call the city and they will do all your drain cleaning for free :) So that is simply not correct. They MAY have done it, I do not dispute that, but I promise you, they are not SUPPOSED to do it. I will gladly provide the name and number of the head of the Charleston Water to verify this information. Once again, they City had ALREADY come out BEFORE we were even called and said there was "nothing they could do for her." That's why she called us. That proves right there, they do not fix those problems or they would have and we would have never been called out to start with. It was only after we located another clean out on her property that they did, but ONLY to verify if it was on her property or city property. There is something VERY shady going on here in downtown Charleston and I suspect it's because she is threatening the city with legal action, because the city has a city cleanout at the street for her house and it was DRY and not clogged. When they came the first time, they checked that clean-out and because it was dry, said the problem is on YOUR property and there is NOTHING we can do for you, hence why we were called out. We also verified the city cleanout was not full and empty, which means AUTOMATICALLY it is on homeowner property and is NOT a city problem, as the city themselves verified prior. Now....all of a sudden, after the city said NO to her, they are now, according to her, going back out and saying now it IS on city property? When their own clean out is dry, proving it is NOT a city problem? And now saying the problem is on the city side? When the city side clean out is not clogged proving it's not a city problem? Hmmmmmmmmmm. Something is fishy over there... I give up at this point and do not wish to get into a sparring match with a customer, so I will respond no longer. But I AM going to call the city and find out what kind of deal they have going on with this customer, because it is NOT RIGHT. Thank you, Louie