I accepted a free offer from Rescue Rooter to come out an drain my hot water heater for me and inspect it. I was planning to drain the hot water heater myself the next day as scheduled regular maintenance so I said, "Why not." Here's why not:
As the "technician" was draining the tank he asked me how old the heater was and I told him it was about 1 year old. He replied that I should probably replace the "anode rod" (a rod that attracts mineral deposits, preventing the hot water heater from becoming encrusted). As I recalled, anode rods were fairly inexpensive so I told him to go ahead and do it and he replaced the rod in about 10 minutes. He seemed like a nice guy and it saved me going to the hardware store to buy one.
Imagine my surprise when he gave me a bill for $253 and change! I wrote him a check thinking that maybe I remembered incorrectly how much anode rods cost. After he left, I looked on the internet how much it would cost for one from the manufacturer of my hot water heater and the price was about $38!
A couple of days later I called Rescue Rooter and told them that I thought that the "technician" may have given me the wrong price, but the service manager said that it was the correct price for that service.
I told him that the only tool necessary to replace the part was a wrench, the part cost about $38, and his "technician" took about 10 minutes to do the replacement. (It is something that anyone who knows how to use a wrench could easily do himself.) I pointed out to him that $200 for ten minutes of labor works out to over $1000 per hour.
His reply was to justify the price by itemizing their company's over-head costs. I told him that his overhead was his affair, but it was still ridiculous for a plumbing company to charge a consumer $1000 per hour for labor!
Believe it or not, he then actually asked me if I would be complaining if I went to a hospital and a doctor charged $1000 per hour for services! (I kid you not.) At first all I could do was to laugh. Then I said, "Listen my friend, that is about the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard. When you make it through medical school we'll continue this conversation."
I am rather embarrassed to admit that I got ripped off in this way because I actually have 25 years of experience in construction and am well trained in my trade. (Obviously I am not a plumber.) I also know that there are ethical companies around who do not rip people off.
So, what I did next was to accept another free offer from them, this time to do a camera inspection of my sewer line. This usually costs a couple of hundred dollars, so I knew that I couldn't go wrong as long as I did not buy anything from them. They sent the camera down the pipe and we looked at some roots that were working their way into the pipes. My sewer was not backing up at all, but I had suspected that there were roots in the line because I have to have it snaked every year or two to keep it clear. I wanted to verify this and see how bad the roots were was before deciding how to handle the situation permanently. Anyhow, sure enough, when the "free scope inspection" was done, the "technician" tried to sell me remedies ranging from $1800 to cut the roots out with a high pressure flush to around 15K to have a fiberglass coating installed on the inside of the pipe. It usually costs me $65 to have the roots cut out with a snake. The fiberglass coating is a very good, very permanent solution to the problem, but I am guessing that 15K is way over priced. Just a wild guess. I think that I remember another plumbing company mentioning it costing about 2K.
So, I got a free video inspection out of the deal to partially make up for getting ripped off with the hot water heater.
My advice to anyone using Rescue Rooter is to accept their "free" offers if you must, but watch the technicians every minute and don't buy any services from them before getting estimates from other local plumbers.
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