Update: As The Sewer Pipe Turns

When we last left our frustrated homeowners, they were facing a second dig of their front lawn. 

The company did, finally, see it my way and agreed to go back down to the last piece of original pipe and replace it for free.  On the day of that dig, Derek arranged to leave soon after the show in hopes of seeing for himself what was going on down there. He arrived home shortly after 10 am to an obviously recently dug lawn, fresh backhoe tracks and a few muddy footprints in the basement but there wasn’t a plumber to be found. Neither was there a note or anything else to indicate how the job might have gone.

Customer service masters, they are not.

Derek phoned them and received a call back later in the day.  They did not remove the entire old pipe.  They took only about four feet of it and then “put a level on it this time” and it showed the proper “fall” of 2% or 4% or whatever the heck it’s supposed to be.  That’s the first we heard that there wasn’t a level put on it the first time!  We were assured that the “belly” was gone and that things would flow as they are supposed to.So, how do we know that? Well, so far there’s been no backup or any problem but …

I’ve written a letter to the owner with a factual account of what happened. I want his assurance that the job was done properly because all along his guys showed us via camera what was wrong. Now that it’s supposedly fixed, we haven’t been shown the result. Also, what if there is a problem in the future? Will they just blame the piece of original pipe that’s still there or somewhere else where they didn’t do work? Why did they cut the damn pipe instead of taking the whole thing out? I know the answer to that. That job was on their dime and they were trying to do as little as possible.

Derek took the emotion and blame out of the letter, but I’m angry and I want them to know it. As I told the owner, I’ve never spent that much money and not had proof that a job was done properly. You’ll notice I’ve never named the company, and I won’t.  But I will also never recommend them. If they had done a stellar job I would have happily shared their name on social media and given them a great review. All it would have taken was for one person to say, “I’m sorry Lisa, we obviously made some sort of mistake but we’ll go in there and fix it and make it right.”