Rooter-Man of Austin TX

January 2022, I noticed what appeared to be mold on the wall outside my guest bathroom. I paid for service calls for several plumbing operations throughout town to seek bids, and the consensus was I had a slab leak. I decided to go with Rooter-man Austin to fix the leak. The bid was for $2,592. About two hours into the job, one of the gentlemen working said he needed to talk to me. He appeared panicked, breathing hard and sweating, and stated that he tried everything and was unable to locate the manifold in the bathroom. I felt scared and pressured, and knew I had a mold remediation job ahead of me, so I told him to do what was necessary to fix the leak. I trusted and believed him. Big. Mistake. Within moments, the $2,592 job had become a $9,017 job due to their inability to find the manifold in the bathroom. It also resulted in 7 holes in my walls/sheetrock in my garage, dining room, bathroom and hallway. To add insult to injury, after the work was done, I essentially had to threaten to turn in Rooter-man Austin to code enforcement in order to get them to agree to pay for the permitting for the work. Fast forward to the mold remediation project, which was delayed many months for financial reasons. (It ended up being the black toxic mold, too.) Much to my surprise, during the demo, the mold remediation contractor uncovered not one - but two! - manifolds in the very bathroom where the slab leak was located. How Rooter-man Austin was not able to find them is beyond me. I have been assured by other plumbers that the manifolds are operable. To make a long story short, I urge you not to hire Rooter-man Austin. I'm not sure what went wrong that day - was it a matter of incompetence, or something worse? What I do know is it turned an already stressful situation into an extreme financial hardship, and many extra months of breathing in toxic mold. Thankfully, the mold is gone, but the stain of Rooter-man Austin's negligence will stay with me forever. Feb 2024 update: Because this company refused to work with me to resolve to any of my complaints, I filed a small claim against them. The company at fault, Tru-Flo LLC (Rooter-Man is a DBA -- note the owner has opened and closed multiple businesses over the years - you put two and two together), dissolved as/of 1/5/24. Do not work with Rooter-Man of Austin. The risk is too high. If something goes wrong, they use smoke and mirrors to avoid any kind of accountability, or dissolve the business entity and open the DBA under a different name.

They installed a water heater for us. Without asking, they added a large safety shutoff device on the heater - for an additional few hundred dollars - that doesn't operate without power. They left our house powering the device by running a twenty foot extension cord out of the water heater closet into the nearest outlet. I asked, "Is this thing really necessary? I used to have a simple leak detector unit that didn't need to be plugged in." "Yes," they said. "This is what the current code requires." "So my hot water will shut off from now on whenever the power ever goes out? I used to still have hot water during an outage." They shrugged. I then paid several hundred of dollars more to install an outlet inside of the water heater closet to power this stupid device. I tried to learn more about this device. Maybe there was a battery backup option. I couldn't learn anything. Turns out Rooterman installed a discontinued device that was no longer under warranty or customer support by the company that made the device. David at Rooterman also didn't know anything about it. More shrugs. Our hot water kept turning off. The device was triggering for unknown reasons and shutting off the water heater. David came out to look at it. Had the gall to require a $75 trip charge. In the next year, the water heater turned itself off at least once a month. We are constantly relighting the pilot light. Yet Rooterman insisted this stupid thing was necessary. Guess what? It's not necessary at all. I've had multiple plumbers over to finally resolve the water heater issues. They took one look at the safety box over the water heater and say, what even is that thing? It's not necessary. It's not required. They've never seen this device before. Rooterman charged me to install something completely unnecessary and defective, put me in a position where I had to pay more to install an outlet to accomodate it, then *lied to me about it* and now I'm paying even more just to get rid of it.

Problem is water is leaking when I take a shower on my 2nd floor bathtub, down to ceiling of the 1st floor garage underneath it. Plumber came and charge for 335/hr for leak detection/diagnosis. Initially he had to cut through drywall on 1st floor garage ceiling, but could not find leak. Then took out drywall on 2nd floor bedroom to access shower assembly. Plumber showed me leak happens when tub spout divert water to shower, and leak is running to back of tub spout and behind shower wall and down to 1st floor. Give me quote of 850 to fix it, which I accepted. After an hour and he showed me the work. He replaced copper pipe with plastic pipe starting from behind shower head and 3 feet down. But the tub spout did not get replaced. He only put a spoonful of caulk at back of tub spout, so the water leak is redirected to tub. Technically speaking the water leak is not going behind the shower wall and down to 1st floor. But I paid $500 dollars for unnecessarily replacing the shower pipe, and actual problem is still unresolved. Now have to find another plumber to replace tub spout. And find a different contractor to fix drywall.

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Representative was considerate and professional. They just didn't have the best price.

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He said that because there were 2 chambers, he would need to charge more. Several companies that I called said that it should be included to clean out both sides. I told him to leave and that I would find another company.

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Rooter-Man deserves an A++. We discovered that we didn't have working plumbing right after our small grandchildren were dropped off at our house for the day. We were about to take the kids and leave when David showed up so promptly. He quickly cleaned out the sewer line and showed us the problem area. He also didn't seem to mind that he was putting on a show and entertaining the kids. We can't say enough good things about Rooter-Man. After the city returns and fixes their part, we will be calling Rooter-Man back to make sure everything is okay.

Pierre helped fix the issue so we could turn the water to the house back on!

Pierre was very professional. He arrived promptly on time and did a great job replacing the thermostat on the gas furnace . He also did a great job explaining to me what repairs needed to be done. Lastly, he declogged the drain in the sink,at no additional cost. Overall, very reasonable pricing . Would recommend them again. Very happy with the work

Rooter-man of Austin came out as a service call through AHS. Originally I called my warranty company over a leak in the AC. The tech they sent out didn't even investigate, he took one look at it and said it was a plumbing problem, so I called AHS and asked for a plumber to come out. Emilio at Rooter-man arrived the following day. He was on time and professional, and although he could tell from the beginning that the leak was, in fact, coming from the AC unit, he still investigated thoroughly. Even though it was not a plumbing leak, he still provided invaluable service. He actually dug up the AC line that was leaking, just to make sure his suspicion was correct. Service at Rooter-man was stellar, and we plan to use them to install a water softener based on our service call experience.

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I had a water pipe break on the side yard of my house and had to turn off my water. I called on a Saturday and David was available to come over Sunday morning. He arrived on time and determined the location of the leak and replace the pipe while keeping the part of the yard to be dug up to a minimum. Took less than 2 hours. David was very professional and explained what had most likely happened (ground settling) and added a more flexible pipe to prevent the same issue.

He did a fine job. He was prompt and professional.

A simple job, and a quick simple process...Chris at Rooter-Man rocks! He took care of our two drain issues in record time, and gave us a fair price without shooting for add-ons....and was courteous and professional from start to finish. You feel comfortable having these guys in your home.

They came for 3 separate jobs; in each case they were prompt, polite, and knowledgeable. (a) First they cleared a clogged drain (b) Second they fixed a leak under the sink, even coming back a second time when there developed a second parallel leak. On that visit they identified our water pressure as too high. (c) They installed a pressure reducing valve. That turned out to be a much harder job than they expected, taking place over two days. After they left, we experienced vibration in our pipes, so they came back without charge to adjust the pressure valve setting, which fixed it.

Emilio arrived exactly on time. He examined the situation, wrote out everything that needed doing, then called the home warranty company. He convinced the warranty company to pay for a little more than they wanted to, then he went over the rest of the list with me. He explained everything that needed explaining. I agreed to the terms, we shook hands, and he got to work. He worked quickly, but he also paused at the end of each step to recheck that he wasn't missing anything. Thorough, fast, friendly--that was my experience. So call up Rooter-Man and ask for Emilio; he's the beeeeeeest!