I'm sick of my plumbers [semi-long rant]

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Well, I’m sick of them being in my house, anyway.

We just bought our first home, and about three weeks ago, I called them asking them to replace a shower pan that was leaking. Our hope was to have them take care of this before we moved into the house (we were painting and scraping wallpaper and such, but not living there yet). They gave me an estimate of about three days, but they were going to have to wait about five days to start because of another job they were doing. Fine. That scheduled them to start work on our house on April 27th. Our moving day was going to be May 5th. No big deal.

We met them on the 27th, and the officially started work on the 28th. It is now May 11th, making it Day 14 of work. At the absolute earliest, they won’t be done before Friday.

The good news is this. First, the work they get done is solid work. They do the extra things that others probably wouldn’t, and they don’t charge extra for them. Additionally, we had a set price for the work, so the extra time they’re taking isn’t costing us any more. In fact, we got a great price from them because they were really hurting for work at the time we called.

The bad news is…well, everything else. I don’t think there’s been a single day they’ve gotten to our house prior to 3pm. The delays have happened since Day 1. They have absolutely no sense of time. They estimate they’ll be at my house in 20 minutes, and they arrive an hour or two later. They can’t find parts at the store. They forget the keys to my house and have to go back. They’re having trouble with the van’s ignition switch (I actually had to jump their van a couple of times). They’re having trouble with the van’s transmission. They’re called away on someone else’s emergency plumbing issue. Etc. Any of these problems by themselves would not be a big deal, but they have added up to what looks to be a three-week-long headache.

One of their workers is incompetent. The head plumber had determined with me that the shower head should be raised up a few inches, so we agreed to make it 7 feet high from the shower floor. A couple of days later, this other worker comes in to raise it, and he asks me how high it was supposed to be. I told him about the 7 feet. He says OK and goes away. About a half hour later, he comes back to me and says, “Sir, 7 feet is going to be in the attic. I can’t do that.” WTF? So I follow him to the shower, and he measures, and the guy is measuring seven feet higher than the current shower head! These are people I’m entrusting with the keys to my house?

Anyway the point of all of this is that they’ve been here too long, and we can’t enjoy our new home because there are still people coming into our place, there’s still signs of construction around, they work until 9 or 10 at night, and I’m afraid to tell them to leave any sooner because that’s only going to delay how much longer they’re in my house. I’m sick of it.

2

I kinda like the idea of a 15’ high shower. Design it right and you get 2 showers for the price of one. When you need to shower up in the attic, you just run a board to stand on across the hole in the floor. You can even have the person on the ground floor shower off the drippings of the person upstairs. Hopefully that person doesn’t pee in the shower.

3

Are they doing the tile as well as the shower pan??

I can usually get a shower pan done in under an hour, if I have to replace the shower valve I can still get the job done in a morning.

That being said, when I had my own business, time was one of my weak points. First call was 9ish (I am not a morning person!) and I like to talk to people so I would bill 2 hours, talk another 1, then head to the next call. I rarely billed 8 hours in a day for all the BSing I did with people. When I’m working, I’m great…but don’t let me stop!!

4

Can I join in the plumber rant?

We have a fridge with an ice maker…to make a long story short, a few months ago we found water damage and discovered the hose to the ice maker had burst. Now that it is getting hot outside, I want the ice maker fixed.

Called the “official GE” repair person:
“How much do you charge?”
“It is $74 to come to the house and then we can see what you need. We don’t charge by the hour, just by the job.”
“Great, so how much does fixing a broken hose usually cost?”
“We have to see it.”
“Well, ballpark figure…I mean, I know exactly which hose burst - how much does that usually cost - approximately?”
“We have to see it.”
“But I need to know how much it will cost so I have the cash to pay you.”
“We accept credit cards.”
“Yes - but can you give me a slight hint as to what this will cost?”
“We need to see it.”
“So, I am paying $74 to have someone come to my house, and THEN tell me how much more I have to pay?”
“Uh, yes.”

I was so pissed off I just hung up. I mean, that guy could take the $74 and say, “Oh, it will cost you $204,620 to fix.” and off he goes to the next house - to get another $74 for showing up.

So I called a local, union plumber who will be coming tomorrow. They charge $87 per hour and said he has never had to work on an ice maker for over an hour. He estimates parts could be as little as $3 if it is just a hose, up to $40 if he needs to put in a new kit. He will bring everything and show me when he does the repair.

So, at least I have an answer from him - about $100 or so, tops; exactly what I figured it would cost. And yes, I could probably do it myself, but after the huge mess and the severe damage the water caused, I think I would rather have a professional do the work.

5

Heh heh.

6

Just be glad they’re not using your bathroom.

7

Have you paid these guys already? I would seriously consider not paying. I had this problem with some guys I paid to tile my shower…they told me 1 day and then took a week, and when they were done they couldn’t get the toilet back on (it was a tight fit against the shower to start with, whent hey were done it would not fit) and so I had to spend hours more myself moving the toilet.

Like an idiot, I paid them to get them out of my house. I should have told him to stuff it up his ass.

8

Uh…what makes you think they aren’t?

Yes, they will be, and I’m just waiting for that headache as well. We bought the tile ourselves (after they did some very poor math on how much tile we’d actually need). But they haven’t gotten to that point yet.

The demolition of the existing shower took over two days by itself; I actually don’t fault them for that. The shower is very old and was tiled from floor to (and including) ceiling, and the tile was about an inch thick. The amount of material that is currently sitting on our lawn from the demolition would shock you considering how small the shower is.

They’ve replaced the valve. They also added copper piping in the shower. Of course, the aforementioned riser added to the valve? They’ve had to take it down and re-do it because they later determined that the shower is so narrow that the shower head wouldn’t be able to point down sharply enough to reach a shorter person. Would have been nice if they’d thought of that sooner.

They also needed to fix some of the wood underneath that had been damaged by the previous leak, and they’ve added some plywood to the floor because they found out (and this I saw with my own eyes) that the previous pan and vinyl had been laid directly on top of the subfloor.

Today, they’re supposed to be putting in the new vinyl, supposedly. I say supposedly because they were going to be doing that on Saturday (they didn’t work yesterday), but they said they couldn’t find the corners for the vinyl (???) in either store they looked at. I guess the plan was to go shopping this morning to find that, lay the vinyl, let that dry, then tomorrow would be putting up the wall backing, which would also need to dry, then tiling on Wednesday, then grouting on Thursday. I think I have that very hypothetical schedule correct.

Oh, and I have to remember to check and see if they’ve patched the hole in the wall they punched through behind the shower when they were doing the demolition.

I’m not holding my breath.

9

We’re paying them in installments, but yes, they’ve been paid. However, that will not be the case if they don’t actually finish the work (which is apparently what happened to you). I’m not worried about them not finishing the work. I’m just worried about it happening sometime in 2009.

10

Dealing with contractors can be extremely frustrating. The thing is that they’re invariably working multiple jobs at the same time, something they have to do to stay busy in order to minimize slack time when no money’s rolling in. What I’ve found is you just have to keep on their case to show up and do the work promised. Unless you have some clause in the contract about penalties for not completing by a specific date, there’s really nothing you can do about it once a job has started. The problem is that if you switch to another contractor he may be worse!

11

I don’t have any plans to switch. These guys have niceness going for them if nothing else, and as you pointed out, I have no guarantee of getting something better elsewhere.

Today, they laid the vinyl and put up one of the hardibacker walls. Progress. Of course, we’ve also discovered some backup in the mainline, so them having to clear that for us will cause more delay. Oh well. I’m resigned.

12

And I was just about to give you my plumber’s phone # via email.

13

That was a joke, honey. :wink:

14

Holy crap! Er…poor choice of words. Anyhow, not sure how I ever managed to miss that classic thread!

If I find flinging stains on my wall, I’m taking vivalostwages up on his offer…

15

her offer. :smiley:

16

:smack:

I knew that, too! I can only blame the anguish caused by my plumbers! :smiley: :o

17

What about the inspection? Don’t the city/county inspectors have to come out and make sure the pan doesn’t leak?

Yes, I had my bathroom re-done (while we were living in the house) and I was bleeping amazed every livin’ day that some of the workmen managed to remember how to get to the house. Others were really, really sharp and did outstanding work (the tile guys were super). Our project started on Monday, December 4 2006. They told me - seriously, the project manager told me - that they would be done by Christmas. Mmmm hmmmm. They were not. We had bare studs and the entire room open to the street on Christmas, and the week after, since they took that week off (which I discovered when they didn’t show up the Monday after Christmas; that’s what I get for assuming). Anyway, they finished up at the end of March 2007.

The biggest thing I learned through our experience was “never leave the house while they’re working”. If you do, you run the risk of having a shower nozzle placed 15’ above the floor. Or worse.

Oh, and don’t ever let a plumber near your good towels. :eek:

18

Have I mentioned they broke into my house tonight because they forgot the key? I’m very, very close to firing them.

I’m also tired and stressed out about a lot of other things, so I’m going to sleep on it.

19

If they caused damage breaking in, they have to pay for it.

If they didn’t, look at it as a warning that you need better doors :slight_smile:

20

On the off chance that anyone here was left in suspense, the final tally on the plumbers was 7 weeks, 3 days. They “finished” on Thursday of last week (although they forgot to put the light fixture and fan back in the shower – fortunately, I was handy enough to handle that, at least). This past weekend was the first time we actually got to enjoy our new home in peace.

There were many more incidents of varying degrees that took place in the final month of their “work,” although none as dramatic as the day they broke into the house. They even brought us flowers as an apology at one time. I mean, they left the thorns on, but that seemed appropriate, somehow. And, of course, they reneged on some of the things they were initially going to give us for free because they “lost so much money on the tiling job.” Whatever. We paid them to get out of our house. And then we changed all of the locks.

I’ve officially decided that, should we ever encounter any other plumbing problem ever again, we will simply stop using that part of the house. Or we’ll move. Whichever is easier.

:slight_smile: