
Pohlman Plumbing
About us
We are a family owned & operated business. We pride ourselves at doing great work at a reasonable price. Our motto is we will beat any written estimate by an licensed and insured contractor. We won't be undersold. Get To Know Us You'll Be Glad You Did. We offer free estimates and 10% off for 1st time customers. Any charges will be given up front. Additional DBA - Pohlman Plumbing.
Business highlights
Services we offer
Plumbing, faucets, hot water heaters, sump pumps, toilets, vanity & rough ins., water and sewer mains
Amenities
Emergency Services
Yes
Accepted Payment Methods
- CreditCard
Number of Stars | Image of Distribution | Number of Ratings |
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85% | ||
0% | ||
5% | ||
0% | ||
10% |
I am an American home shield customer who requested a contractor to replace a broken faucet. Someone from Pohlman plumbing came to my house and informed me that I did not just need my faucet replaced, which would cost $100, but that?per Maryland state code?I also needed to have my valves inspected to ensure that they were lead-free. The extra inspection would at most, the plumber assured me, cost me an additional $50, and the rest of the bill would be footed by American Home Shield. I explained that I would prefer to avoid the inspection if at all possible since the valves were in good working order and my only need was for the faucet to be fixed.
After the plumber replaced the sink in less than fifteen minutes he told me that the work to inspect the valves would be more involved than he thought, so he was willing to forego the inspection and waive the extra fee. I was relieved and grateful. He charged me the $100, the total price listed on the work order, which I then signed. I had a new faucet.
This good experience took a sharp turn for the worse when the office manager of the company called me the next day with a surprising question: ?Would you like your additional $100 co-pay to be paid now through your card or later through American Home Shield?? Caught off-guard, I explained that I had already paid the $100 agreed to with the plumber. The office manager told me that the plumber had also inspected my valves and that an extra fee was involved. I explained that he had made it clear to me that no extra inspection was done and that the fee would only be $100 instead of $200. I might as well have been talking to a brick wall. The office manager refused to acknowledge that I had a legitimate complaint, insisted that the $200 had been agreed to in the contract (I checked it later?it had not), and basically implied that I was an idiot for thinking the plumber had not done what he said. I asked to speak to the plumber in question to work things out since the manager obviously didn?t believe me. The office manager refused my request and again repeated her question about how I would like to pay the extra money. I was then shuttled to another secretary to arrange my payment. I tried to explain my situation to her. Brick wall. After I mentioned that I would write a negative review on Angie?s list if my concerns weren?t addressed, she hung up on me (?You go ahead and do that.? Respect for the sass factor, but not exactly award-winning customer service!).
I get that Pohlman plumbing is a family company and that they try to protect their plumbers from customers. Maybe the office manager understood me as implying that the plumber, which happened to be her brother, lied about the work he said he did. (If someone called a member of my family a liar I would be rude to them as well). Of course, I wasn?t actually saying this. All I was saying is that there had been a serious miscommunication since the plumber told me that that there had been no extra inspection of the valves and that the fee was $100 on a work order which I then signed. The whole situation with the valves, which were absolutely necessary, but then turned out not to be necessary, felt a bit shady to me, like the company was trying to up-sell. I don?t know if this is true or not?the plumber may have just been doing me a favor by not doing a routine inspection of the other valve?but I definitely know that I would never do business with this company again.
"To Whom It May Concern, Unfortunately This customer's complaint is completely false. This customer has an insurance company that sent us out to his home to replace his kitchen sink faucet. The insurance has a fee we have to charge for coming out which is called his deductible. After collecting the deductible we can proceed to diagnose the problem. After diagnosing the problem we found that the kitchen sink faucet had to be replaced. In the process we also found that the kitchen sink faucet was being fed through lead valves. When we find this we have to replace these valves with lead free valves per the insurance code requirements. At that point we have to call the insurance to find out what is covered and not covered per his contract with them. After speaking with an associate from his insurance it was brought to our attention that they will pay for the faucet replacement but not the valves. We relayed the info to the homeowner and he immediately tried to get us not to do the valves because he had to pay for them. In our contract with the insurance company we can not lie to them or mislead them in any way. This is where the other charges came from, 1 was a deductible through the insurance and 1 was the charge for the new lead free valves that his insurance did not pay for. Upon trying to explain all this to the customer, he became very impatient and did not want to understand. At that point he became argumentative and the best action was to let him go. Thank you for the opportunity in getting the truth out. Have a great day."
Jake and his workers did the work professionally and neatly, cleaned the area when completed and came back in a timely manner to finish the hook-up once the generator was in place. Last night the electric service went out in our area and the generator came on within 10 seconds of the outage. We also called them when we came home on Memorial Day from a weekend away and found we had no hot water, since we have a contract with BGE home they recommended we call them, but Josh stayed on the phone and walked my husband through with checking the water heater and suggested some things we could do to get it running. We were unable to start it, but certainly appreciated the time he took with us to try and help (it turned out to be a major part, which Josh predicated was the problem)
This is a really great company, professional, friendly and thorough, the installation is great and well done, they even painted the PVC so it matched the wall the generator is sitting near, Great company to work with and we would definitely us them again for any plumbing work we would need to be done in our home.
It was a job well done.
My home warranty company suggested Pohlman Plumbing to locate and repair a leak from my upstairs bathroom. I was able to schedule someone to come out quickly. When TJ arrived I explained the problem and he said he would have to open up part of my wall to try to find the leak. He found that the cast iron pipe from the bathroom had a crack in it. TJ said that he would need to get approval from the warranty company for the work but would not be able to do the work today because it was a two person job. TJ called the warranty company right away to get the approval. I paid the warranty deductible and TJ explained I would not have to pay anything else when they came back to do the work. He said the office would call me to schedule the work. The office scheduled the work for the next time I could be home.
TJ and another person came out to do the work. They opened up the wall a little more to have better access to fix the problem. They replaced the cast iron pipe with a PVC pipe. When they were done they cleaned everything up. TJ explained that they would not be able to fix the hole they made but would call the home warranty company so they would send someone else out.
Everyone from Pohlman was polite and professional. I appreciated that they were able to schedule me quickly and at times that worked for me.
The following week, I had him come back for another leak, but it turned out to be a faucet that needs caulking. Since that was not covered by home warranty, he patiently explained how I could DIY to save some money.
"First of all the customer wanted two faucets installed in the kitchen sink which is outrageous. One would be for the sink while the other would be for the portable dishwasher. I kindly talked her out of going this route and pointed her in the correct direction. The right way to do this was to run the plumbing for the dishwasher underneath the cabinets and convert her portable dishwasher into a staionary(which she already had a space for). The extra 200.00 was going to be charged for the extra trip I had to make in order to convert her dishwasher into a staionary because she did not have the proper parts on site. As for the gas goes, I had to do some minor gas work in the house so I had to turn the gas off. When I turned the gas back on, I went and lit the pilots on the water heater and furnace. This is Plumbing 101: light all pilot lights as soon gas is turned back on. I left at approx 4:30 pm and recieved a call at approx 6:00pm from the customer stating her heat would not come on. I kindly tried to tell her all that needed to be done was to turn the swtich on the furnace pilot to ON and she turned it to OFF. Then I kindly tried to walk her through the steps of lighting the pilot light but she then got very rude. I then stated that if I were to come out there to do something as simple as lighting a pilot, she would have to be charged being that it was a 50 mile round trip. She then stated she was going to get someone else to do the job and hung up on me."
Licensing
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