We (my wife and I) discovered that our water heater was leaking from the bottom and given its age, a replacement was required. On a Saturday afternoon, my wife was able to get Roto-Rooter to agree to send a technician out to our home. A Matt Torre came to my home and after an inspection, wrote up an estimate specifying $1524.00 plus parts (water heater, drain pan, shut off valve and sundry items)."Parts" are marked up at a rate of 1.4 times their cost to Roto-Rooter, so a $400.00 water heater from a supplier will add $560.00 to the bottom line, plus all of the others, including inspection. Mr. Torre also clearly stated that he and another plumber would take "all day" to do the installation (an effort to justify the labor charge, or so it would seem.)
Roto-Rooter would cost me easily over $2000 dollars, probably in excess of $2100.00, after all the extras (the parts and inspection) were added on.
We wisely did not go with Roto-Rooter, but chose Home Depot instead. Our iniitial estimate for parts and labor was under $1000.00. When they came out with the replacement heater they added about $500 to the estimate, based on the difficulty of the installation. About $600 cheaper, and the HD techs took under 2 hours to do the installation.
I'm grateful that we dodged the bullet of the price-gouging practices of Roto-Rooter.
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