ComplaintsforQueen City Heating, Air & Plumbing

• Initial Complaint

  02/13/2024

  Complaint Type:

  Service or Repair Issues

  Status:

  Answered

  More info

  On 2/8/2024, we called Queen City Heating, Air, and Plumbing to unclog a drain line. The first plumber they sent attempted to open the line with a snake but stated that there was too much grease in the line, and they needed to call in a special truck to hydro-jet the line. We have had lines clogged with grease in the past and a hydro-jet has never been necessary, but we agreed to their recommendation. The second plumber came with the hydro-jet equipment and initially stated that he would need to cut open a wall and take apart more plumbing lines to unclog the drain, but later that night, he stated that he was able to unclog the drain without cutting into anything.On 2/9/2024 (less than 24 hours later), this line backed up again. We called a different company (Dr. ****** and this plumber was able to open the drain with a snake. This plumber explained to us that there was a large amount of grease in the line, but he was able to unclog it by taking apart the p-trap under the sink and running the snake 3 times, letting it run for a while each time. He also ran a large amount of water (regular water, no hydro-jet) to ensure that the drain was clear. The drain has not backed up again since Dr. ***** worked on it, which is what we would expect.I contacted Queen City on 2/12 and 2/13 and explained the situation to their office manager, **************************, and asked for a refund. This line should not have backed up the next day if they hydro-jetted the line. The service we paid for was not received or was done very poorly. Queen City has refused to refund our money and has stated that they do not guarantee their work for this kind of service, yet they do claim that they would have come back for no additional charge if we would have called them again. I doubt that they would have sent a third plumber to work on this line for free, but at this point I doubt that they would have done the work properly since they already had 2 plumbers work on it.

  

  Business response

  02/13/2024

  ****,
  Standard cable drain cleaning machines are not always sufficient to clear a grease blockage and certainly not when the lines are fully packed with grease build-up. This is why jetting is recommended since it does a better job of breaking down the grease build-up and simultaneously flushing the lines with high pressure water. There was limited access to this line and opening the wall for better access to perform the jetting was denied by your company. We still performed the jetting service to get these tenants back up and running and the lines were tested for functionality before leaving the site. These lines were draining and performing as they should. We do offer warranty on drain cleaning services but only if the lines are free of defects and foreign debris, this line was not able to be camera inspected since your company would not allow our technicians to open a section of piping to accommodate this service. In this instance, if the line would have backed up within the timeframe you specified in this complaint, we would have happily had a technician return to perform additional drain cleaning to remove any residual grease/blockages that *** have settled over time from the jetting service. Instead, your company decided to contact a different plumbing contractor without ever notifying us of the issue then requesting a refund from our end. Our technicians spent 4+ hours drain cleaning with a cable then with the jetting machine to clear the line that was fully compacted with grease. To say this service was not performed would be entirely misleading. We have denied the request for a refund because Queen City Heating, Air & Plumbing was never notified of this issue and was not given the opportunity to remedy this. The only reason this second plumber was able to clear this line for the price and timeframe that they did was because of the multiple hours of prior drain cleaning on our end.
  

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