Business ProfileforTowne Plumber

I called because of a puddle in the bathroom. I paid $45 for a plumber to tell me it was a problem with the bathroom sink. The next morning I had a bigger puddle and a second puddle in the back bathroom. I flushed the toilet and saw it coming out the back. I did what the plumber should have done the day before and checked the relief valve in the back yard. There was the problem. Towne sent a second guy who made one excuse after another and then charged and outrageous amount (nearly $400) to reseat two toilets and wanted to charge me an extra $150 for a flange. I don't even know if the flange was broken before or after he pulled the toilet. When I said no, he jacked up the toilet bad enough to where I had no choice. This could have been resolved much easier and would have resulted in a much higher rating had the company accepted some responsibility and compensated me by rolling at least part of the second toilet and the flange into the fee for one. Their response was that they felt they were doing what needed to be done to fix my problem or they could just leave the house and I would have no toilets. That isn't a choice, it is extortion.

We booked an appointment for the customer whom is out of our service area, costing the $45 trip fee. We did find a leak coming from the faucet in the same bathroom as the toilet. The leak was dripping down the counter top. When our plumber showed this to the customer, customer had admittedly been trying to fix this himself. Our plumber along with the customer flushed the toilet numerous times, and showed no leaking coming from this, and the toilet was flushing with no problems. Customer was advised he needed a new faucet and would need to purchase and call us back to install. On the following morning at 6:15am the customer called and left a message stating both bathrooms had flooded. We asked him if he would like to have another appointment to which he responded, yes. We sent another technician out. When the tech showed up the customer had a septic service company there pumping his septic system. Our company does not do any septic service. When the septic system backed up, it seemed to blow out the wax rings on the toilets. The cost to pull the toilets and replace the rings are the above cost, in which are an estimation without looking further. The customer called our office and spoke with the office manager, in which he was upset with this cost. Our Manager asked him if he would like to proceed with the work or would he like to deny it and we could leave. He stated that wasn't an option and to proceed. Our plumber started the work. As with many cases when you get working on things, and pull out the toilets, you may find more issues. This we did find and advised the customer, to which he responded with profane language to our technician but did agree to the further fee of $150 to use a camera to look more in to the issue he was having with the indoor plumbing. The customer agreed. The bigger issue was not found, therefore in order to find the problem our technician explained to the customer if he would like to look further in to his issue we would need to jackhammer the floor to find the issue. The customer again using profane language yelling at our tech. The customer then called our office and let our manager know that he was upset our technician wanted more money and, "He wanted him out of the house". Because of the belligerence of the customer, this caused many issues, and our Office Manager called the technician and asked him to leave the home as the customer requested. Towne Plumber did not charge this customer any money after many hours of work as we did leave under his request. This was a case of a very belligerent customer who had no respect for anyone doing work for him.

I never used profane language to the technician. He told me the additional $150 was to fix the problem, so I said do so. I never yelled at the technician. Again, I never used prfane language any time I talked to the plumber. I had a discussion with my wife behind closed doors were I vented my frustration at the unprofessional work being done.

The leak they found the first day was inconsequential. My mistake was trusting the plumber based on the referral source. As a further point of fact, the septic tank did not back up. There was a clog in the pipe leading to the septic tank ( I found this out the next moring when I opened the access point). Pumping out the septic tank was immaterial to the project as it turned out. Had the first technician taken the time to open the access point (removing a cap that is three feet above the ground) he would have seen the water that shows a leak had occurred. I was told by my septic company that technician number 2 told them he would clear the clog. He told my wife that would be another $160. We said no and called the septic company back, They cleared the leak as part of the original service.

The second tech went so far as to offer to set the toilet knowing it would leak.

The office staff was frustrating inept in working with me. There was no written estimate, just a floating price that kept going up. The author of the above response lied about my use of profanity and raising my voice. This is not surprising given the incredibly low standards of service that this office maintains.

My mistakes were as follows:
1. Not closely supervising every bit of work by tech 1 and demanding he check the access pipe.
2. Not demanding a written estimate.
3. Not putting my life on hold and continuously supervising tech 2 while he broke my closet flange to create more work.
4. Not filming every aspect of this sorted affair for my lawyer.
5. Most significantly, hiring this incompetent and unprofessional excuse for a plumbing contractor in the first place.

The really sad thing is that this could all have been avoided with more honesty and understanding by the office manager who only saw one solution, leave me without a working toilet and walk away. They didn't get paid because they didn't accomplish any work.

Further update. Without using a jackhammer, and the help of a friend, we did what Towne Plumbing could not or would not do. We fixed the problem.