ANJ Plumbing
About us
Service San Fernando Valley and surrounding cities in Los Angeles with both residential and commercial plumbing. Call us for a free estimate! As a family owned and operated business we are able to offer our customers lower rates for plumbing service. We do it all from drain cleaning and rooter to changing your garbage disposals.
Business highlights
Services we offer
Gas leaks, clean out installation, copper re-piping, drain & sewer repairs, drain cleaning, earthquake gas seismic shutoffs, faucets, fixtures, floor and area drain maintenance & video camera inspection., garbage disposals, hydro jetting, leak detection, pipe re-lining technology, sewer maintenance, slab leaks rooter, toilets/urinals, trenchless sewer replacement, water heaters
Amenities
Emergency Services
Yes
Accepted Payment Methods
- CreditCard
Number of Stars | Image of Distribution | Number of Ratings |
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78% | ||
0% | ||
11% | ||
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11% |
It was early to mid-afternoon on Sunday when I called, and Jose said he wouldn't be able to come out until the next morning, first thing, at 8AM. I said that was fine, we'd just use the plumbing minimally until then.
A little after 8, someone showed up to snake the drain. He was apparently subcontracted by Jose for rooting work. I was not told that a sub would come out to do this. He did his work promptly, utilizing the clean out in the rear of the house outside of the kitchen, since he said the clean out in the driveway was too small for his snake. He ran into a problem where the snake wouldn't go further, and it was hitting something that probably wasn't a clog. Pulling the snake out revealed one of the blades to be somewhat bent, and dinged up. He said that he suspected a problem with perhaps the line being broken, but we wouldn't know more until Jose came out with the camera/locator to see where the problem was exactly. I had expected Jose to be at my house by this point. I thought I had been told he'd arrive by 9, but it was 9:30 or 10 when he arrived. In the meantime, his sub had given me his own business card and asked me not to tell Jose, that I could call him direct for future simple plumbing work and save some money. This was definitely shady.
When Jose arrived, they went to hook up the monitor for viewing the problem and when it was turned on and the camera was in the pipe, something shorted and fried the monitor. Jose said the likely cause was that the ground wire from my electrical box was not fully secured to the copper pipe where it was attached. He'd need to have another monitor brought in from his office, and he'd be back in less than an hour to finish this part of the job. Before he left, he made sure the ground was tightly connected.
Two hours later, new equipment arrived. They sent the locator through the line, and found the problem was indeed under the driveway where that smaller cleanout was installed. He told me it was most likely that the connection there was no longer sound, and that they would need to dig up and replace it for a cost of $2500. The job would take about 6 hours, so he wouldn't be able to get it done today, but would come out tomorrow first thing at 8AM to do the job. It was around 12:30 by this time, so I could see why the work couldn't be started at that time on Monday, but was disappointed with all the lack of punctuality that led to this point. I agreed to the work and put $1000 down with a check, with the balance due when the work was complete. He told me they would also patch the hole in the driveway as part of the included cost, but my wife was concerned about the patch not matching the existing installation, and asked that it be left alone and that we would find someone to patch it on our own.
Everyone left the job site and Jose told me to use the plumbing in the house as little as possible. My family members still needed to of course use the bathrooms, but he said this would be fine as long as we limited the use, since the downstairs toilet would slowly drain back down over an hour or two. Several hours later, a family member used the upstairs toilet, and I heard a peculiar sound in the backyard. Nobody had replaced the cap on the clean out at the rear of the house when they left, nor did anyone tell me about this. I had human feces and toilet paper all over my back patio that needed to be cleaned up.
Two employees came promptly at 8AM the next day, but Jose was not at the job, nor did he follow-up with me on the work that was done. The work was finished by around 11:30, so the guys made quick work of it, however, the work itself was sloppy and created far more mess than there should have been. Since the hole was only about 2 feet from my garage door, I asked if I could close the garage before they started the work, in case there was a mess from cutting the hole. (I had opened the door to provide an outlet to plug in their tools.) They told me it wouldn't be necessary, the mess would all be contained. However, after they were finished, I noticed there were concrete spatters on items in my garage and on my wife's van, 6 to 8 feet away. I easily could have prevented the former by closing the garage door and still having the power cord run out underneath, and I would have moved my wife's van had I known it was too close. Fortunately, the van cleaned up rather easily. Cleaning the spatter off of the array of items on a shelf in my garage, my air compressor, my hand truck, etc. was a different story.
That wasn't entirely unprofessional of them, but I feel it should have been anticipated and could have been prevented. What I considered unprofessional was the following. First, they used several of my hand tools that were located at the front of the garage, without my permission. This included my shovel, my sledgehammer and my push broom. They had to clean off the shovel and broom before returning them, but they didn't do a good job of it. The sledgehammer was not cleaned, and had concrete/mud material up and down the handle. They put trash from their job in a small trash can in my garage which caused the whole garage to smell. Empty energy drink cans and water bottles were left on the shelf in my garage rather than being properly disposed of or taken from the job site. There was still a lot of mud, debris and concrete pieces around the area they had worked on after they hosed down and swept (I ended up going over it myself to clean it up better). Muddy bootprints were in my garage from where they had walked to the door leading to the house to let me know they had to pick up a part in the middle of the job.
The final work was done quickly, but it would seem, somewhat hastily. They kept the square cut hole small in the driveway, dug down about 3 to 4 feet to remove the old failed pipe (which was apparently some sort of heavy duty cardboard?), replaced it with new plastic and a larger clean out access. From what I saw online, the price was not unreasonable, though it still felt a bit high to me. For that price, however, I would have expected more professionalism in how the mess was contained and the cleanup afterward. And I would have thought I'd see or hear from Jose again.
Angie's List promptly issued a refund - which was very professional of them.
They sent me several other plumber referrals - but all of those estimates were more than double the price that AnJ charged me - although I did not know that at the time. Those other companies were larger - and I only spoke to an operator - not to the owner. I am surprised that Angie's List did not include AnJ in the list of referrals they sent me.
I had heard of AnJ from another online email newsletter. I did not know he was also on Angie's List.
I spoke to Jose Gonzalez directly - and set up a time for him to come over. He was about an hour late - understandable for an owner who deals with every job personally. He even had shoe covers - it is amazing how many plumbers do not bring shoe covers! He got the drain cleaned in less than ten minutes. I will definitely use him in future.
He does not accept checks or credit cards - only cash payments - but since his prices are so low - that is not a huge issue.
Licensing
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