On 11/28/08 roto-rooter techs charged me $280 to cable the main line of our house. The tech ran a cable with a 3 inch blade down my 4 inch clean out. (later that day I was told by the plummer that fixed our problem, that running a 3 inch vs. 4 inch is a good way to get the cable stuck in the roots on purpose) After getting the cable stuck in some roots. The roto-rooter tech informed me that the cable would be cut and it would be left in the line, and he would call his sewer tech who would have a solution. After cutting the cable it untwisted itself and became unstuck. Thank God, because they had said that we would have to dig it up if it had stayed stuck.By then the so called sewer tech had shown up. Funny, his card says excavation manager.
Anyway, I was then informed that he would need to run his camera down the line to find out what the problem was. While running the camera down, we could clearly see that though the line was older, it was still in perfect running condition, until the tech hit a spot about 90ft out from the house. Which so happened to be in the middle of the road. With green spray paint he marked the spot in the road, and said, "here it is, here is your problem". That was a $200 service for the camera. He then told me that if we acted quickly, he could get the permits just in time to be ready to start the excavation of the line by Monday. The charge to replace the line, $12,000!
So, after realizing that it seemed that the bad rep I had heard about the company was coming true. That they just want to get the excavation crew out to the site, so they can charge thousands. I called a different plummer I had used in the past. Once he got there, he cabled the line with a 4 inch blade, and cleaned out the line completely. He did pull up a small hand full of roots, and said that the roto-rooter guys should have blown right through it. He charged $100 and was done in under an hour.
Roto-rooter charged $580 for half a day of trying to scam us into spending an unnecessary and additional $12,000 to dig up our main line that was fine.
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