Strange happenings with my plumber

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

The toilet in the guest bathroom is leaking back where the shut off valve is so we called a plumber. He was scheduled to come today at noon. At about 15 after he called to confirm the address and let us know he was on his way.
(I’m using the royal we here as I was at work and only learning about this by calling my husband who is home today)

I call at 3:00 to check on the plumber. Nope, he hasn’t shown up yet. I suggest that possibly a phone call is in order since he called at 12:15 and said he was on his way and now it’s almost 3 hours later.

So, my husband calls and talks to the owner who says he’ll call the guy who was dispatched to our job. Brian, the guy who was dispatched to our job, calls my husband back immediately and says “but I was there, I fixed your toilet!”

To which my husband replies “no you weren’t because I’m the only one home and I’ve been home all day”.

Disbelief, bewilderment and WTFs ensued.

Now, we live in a condo. Apparently there was a typo on the work order and Brian went to the wrong apartment (there are 8 apts in each building) where he knocked on the door and said he was the plumber there to fix the leaky toilet. One of my neighbors let him in, he fixed their toilet and they paid him and he went on his way. :eek:

And until we called he had no idea he’d gone to the wrong job. Sure the name on the work order was different but he was used to that. Frequently there are roommates or renters so the name of the person at the job is often not the same as the person who called in the order.

Later, he came by and fixed our leak, for free because of the mix up.

But I’m left with some nagging questions. Do you think that just by chance my neighbor (I have no idea which one) called the same plumber? Did another plumber knock on her door later and try to fix the same leak? Maybe she never called a plumber and just thought the universe was helping out by sending a plumber her way.

Very strange indeed.

Meanwhile, out toilet has a crack. He gave us an estimate of $450 installed if we buy the toilet from him. Do you think that’s too expensive?

2

If you’re at all handy, you can save about $350 by doing it yourself and you’ll probably end up with a better-quality toilet.

I’ve swapped out a few of the things through the years, and they’re not particularly hard to do - just a bit bulky and awkward.

3

I won’t comment on the strange happenings (although that is kind of funky), but I myself would not pay $450 for a toilet, installed or not. You can get them for $70 on up (to about $200) from Home Depot, and it’s remarkably easy to install yourself. Took me about an hour the first time I ever replaced one. Make sure to get a wax gasket to go with it.

Not to say that there aren’t plenty of valid reasons why you wouldn’t want to put one in yourself. But it you’re willing to take a little time and have the tools and a good back, it shouldn’t be too hard.

4

Thanks for the toilet installation advice. I’ll take that into consideration. Not sure if hubby and I are up to it. I’m pretty handy but he’s all thumbs when it comes to home improvement.

Meanwhile, I learned when I got home that Brian the plumber went to the wrong building. Even though he called to confirm the address he ended up at the building next door. Said he fixed a toilet for an older woman with a little dog who bit him (the dog, not the old lady). I know this neighbor and she’s just loopy enough to accept the services of a plumber whom she didn’t call. She must think the universe was looking out for her today.

People are strange.

5

Wow, that sounds like the place where I used to live (the older lady with the bitey dog).

Another vote for installing the toilet yourself. The sense of accomplishment you get from installing your own plumbing fixtures is really quite nice. :slight_smile:

6

Not to hijack my own thread but I’m dying to replace the faucets in both bathrooms. I’m fairly certain they’re the original faucets from when the place was built back in 1986. How difficult is that?

7

Plumbers are almost magicians in my world. I just don’t get it. They earn every dollar from me. I have helped two plumbers with computer problems in exchange for a discount. Hey, it works for me.

8

If you can afford the $15 tool, you can do it fairly easy. It’s called a basin wrench. Okay, it’s a PITA, but it’s better than paying a plumber $200 to do it, plus fixtures.

It all depends on your level of mechanical competence, or - your adventurous spirit :slight_smile:

Effort level, I’d say replacing a toilet is more messy but less difficult. YMMV.

9

I suspect that the condo he went to also had a leaking toilet. The roomate or whoever, said “sure fix it” (Thinking someone else called, or perhaps some property management if it’s rented).

Toilets are a walk in the park to fix with simple tools. It sounds like it may have been just a shut off valve that was leaking. Though in a multi-unit, like a condo, all water may have to be shut off for a few minutes to replace the valve.

10

It’s just curious that he accidentally went to the wrong building, they just happened to have a leaky toilet. The condo assn./maintenance guy doesn’t fix stuff inside the condo, that’s the reponsibility of the owner. I mean, if you had not called a plumber and one showed up at your door, would you let him in? I’m not sure I would because that would just be weird, even if I did have a leaky toilet.

But if it’s the lady I’m thinking of, she lives with her adult son who’s disabled and home all day (recovering from a very serious accident) so it is possible that one thought the other had called.

I wonder if another plumber (the one they really called) showed up later to fix their toilet.

On a scale of 1 to 5, 5 being highest I’d get a 2 for mechanical competence and a 5 for adventurous spirit. I do so want a new faucet. I may have to try it. Maybe I can borrow the tool from someone.

11

Your level of adventurousness should be tempered by the location of shutoff valves in your condo. If you can shut off the water solely to the fixture that you’re working on, go for it. If you need to shutoff water to the entire bathroom, or the entire unit, or the entire building, you may want to rething things. There’s nothing quite like the feeling of looking at the pipe you’ve just broken beyond your own ability to repair, knowing you’re foregoing showering/flushing/washing dishes etc. etc. until you get a plumber in. Especially if it’s Saturday morning and you’re balancing weekend emergency plumber rates against not getting it fixed for 2 or more days.

12

I recently bought new faucets to replace those in the townhouse I just bought. All the fixtures had individual shutoff valves, and I felt pretty confident in being able to do the work myself. I didn’t even need to get a basin wrench to take the old faucet off.

Unfortunately, the connections on the new and old faucets don’t match. The old faucet has three-inch-long threaded copper pipes with non-removable (at least I can’t seem to pry them loose) flexible plastic pipes attached to them which then screw to the shut-off valves. The new faucet has two copper pipes with only the ends threaded. So I’m going to take the old and new faucets to Lowe’s and try to figure out what else I need to buy to mount the new faucets. I’ll be damned if I’m going to pay a plumber to do it.

13

At work, I placed a call to a plumber to fix our toilet yesterday. Reason: Flapper needed replacing because the eyelet to which the chain affixes had broken off.

As a temporary measure, I hooked a paper clip through the top of the flapper and attached the chain to that. (This way the ladies in our office can continue to pee without walking to the other side of the building, until it’s fixed properly.)

The plumber arrived this morning and was directed by reception to the busted toilet. He flushed it, saw that it worked, and left - without taking the lid off the tank and observing that the chain was held in place with a freaking paper-clip poked through the rubber, or asking anyone (like the person who placed the service call) about the reason for the call.

He’d better not try to bill me for the first time he came out. :mad:

14

Can you post a picture? If they’re the type I’m thinking of, those flexible tubes should be removable; I’ve never seen any permanently attached to the fixture.

15

there are but a few things that I hate working with, but plumbing (all that water!!) happens to be one of them. Technically, I know how to replace a toilet, but if it came to replacing the toilet or taking a potty in a bucket because the toilet needed to be replaced, I’m afraid I might seriously consider how long it would take me to empty the bucket after each use.

There’s not enough money in the world to pay me to be a plumber. As far as I’m concerned, they have enough job security and I’ll pay them to fix whatever plumbing needs to be fixed.

16

I had to reinstall the old faucet because, in a fit of confidence, I had decided to start with the bathroom that gets used the most instead of the master bathroom (which has two sinks, so if one of them was out of service for a while it wouldn’t matter). I never got around to taking out one of the faucets in the master bathroom this week, and doubt that I will over the weekend either. If I do, and I still can’t get the tube out, then I may try posting a picture to see if you (or anyone else) has suggestions.

17

When I was living in a duplex with roommates, our dishwasher broke, so we called the landlady and she said she would send her handyman over to fix it. On the afternoon when he was supposed to show up (but hadn’t yet) the landlady called to say that he had fixed the dishwasher and the toilet, but she noticed that our front yard was looking a little overgrown, and could we take care of it (as per our rental agreement)? To which I replied that it was odd that I hadn’t run into him while he was there, as I’d been home most of the day, and our toilet wasn’t broken. I didn’t say that in fact, our yard looked great compared to the folks in the other half of the duplex. After some confusion by both parties, it came to light that she’d confused us with the tenants in the other half of the duplex. Apparently they also had a broken dishwasher, as well as a broken toilet. Because there were four or five people living there, whoever let the handyman in assumed that someone else had called the landlady about the problems. Our dishwasher was fixed the next day.

18

A guy in a service truck once pulled into my driveway and knocked on the door. He said he’d left his tools in my basement and tried to walk in. Scared the hell out of me–I hadn’t had anybody in to fix things. Was it some kind of ploy to come in and hurt me?

I blocked the doorway and told him he hadn’t been there. He said yes, he’d fixed my washer. I said, no, he hadn’t, and what address did he think he was at? Suddenly he peered at me, peered into the house, and said “Wrong house,” and left.

19

Why don’t you go ask her? I’d say you have a perfectly good reason to just pop over, introduce yourself, and say “the plumber that stopped over the other day…” and explain the situation.

Also, does she live in an apartment or a condo? In apartments, it’s not that strange for the building management to have repair/maintenance people over. Usually management will give you some notice or come over with them. If a plumber or whoever came to my apartment without me calling them, I’d just ring the landlord or manager up to verify they did send a guy over. But not everyone’s that cautious.