I am a young mother, aged 25, of two children. Me and my husband own a small, three bedroom, two bathroom house here in Tampa. At the moment, my husband is deployed over in Afganistan, and wont be back for some time. About two weeks ago a pipe burst in my daughters bathroom, flooding the bathroom, and spilling out into the hallway, ruining my carpets, and damaging all the dry wall. Usually my husband would handle all of this situation, but because he was gone this fell on me. I wont lie, I don't know much about plumbing, or who to call, so I kind of randomly selected Florida Cracker Plumbing. The incident happened around 7pm on a wed, and I called them. I honestly did not expect to see an employee come out that late, but the dispatch girl assured me a technician would be out to my house within the hour. I thought that this was too good to be true! And it was. I did not hear from Florida Cracker Plumbing for two and a half hours. They said they wanted to reschedule my technician coming out that night, and instructed me on how to turn off the water main, to avoid more flooding. I told them I would call someone else, but they persuaded me not to, claiming at that point (It being near 10pm) If I were to have a technician come out, it would cost an arm and a leg. They also said they would provide a discount for my inconvenience.
The next day a technician came out. Now, I am not one to judge a book by the cover, but I was expecting a reputable plumber, from a reputable company. But the man who came in was wearing a pair of torn up jeans, and a stained white muscle shirt. No uniform of any type! At this point I thought about just calling a different company, but I was frazzled, and in over my head. I explained that my husband was in Afganistan, hoping he would take pitty on me, and guide this puzzled woman to light.
I showed him where the damage was, and he began to work at once. It seemed as if everything was going well, at least for a bit. After about an hour of work, he took his lunch break. He walked through the house, and because of the wet floor, and how disgustingly dirty his shoes were when he came in, he was creating mud, and tracking it everywhere. I pointed this out to him, and he simply took his shoes off and went onto my patio. He spent an hour and forty five minutes on his phone, eating his food, and SMOKING on my patio. When he was done, he left all of his trash out on my patio, and went back to work.
He explained to me that due to the pipe bursting, it damaged my sink as well as the shower (once again, im not a plumber, im not sure the intricacies of how these things work) and that he would be able to fix the sink today, but would have to come back for the shower in the morning. He finished up on the sink, leaving it a war zone. There was dirt, trash, mud, and water everywhere by the time he was done. He did not even bother to clean up after himself. It looked worse than it did before he came! I (naively) paid him for the full job (The sink as well as the shower) and he left with promises of being back in the morning to finish the job.
That was about two days ago. Thats right, he never showed back up. My sink works great, he really did a spectacular job on it. But, my shower is still not working. At all. And I paid him! I called the main office and told them my situation, and they said they would get it fixed. They have since ignored all of my emails, as well as my phone calls. I called another plumbing company this morning and im hoping to have my daughters shower fixed by tonight.
I went into this situation a little ignorant. I was hoping because my husband was gone to fight for America, I would be treated with a little bit of respect. But I could not have been more wrong. I wont make the same mistake again. And hopefully you wont either. Florida Cracker Plumbing hires horrible technicians, and their staff at their office is no better. I can not believe how poor I was treated, and how disrespectful they were to me, my family, and my house!
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