Lockmer Plumbing Heating and Utilities Inc

When I phoned this contractor I very specifically stated that I was calling to get my line shocked at the recommendation of the Water Company here in Butte. I even explained to the lady who answered the phone that I had already torn down drywall and put two heat guns to the pipe entering my home and, when that had not worked, I was calling around to find someone to shock my line. I asked if this company did this and she said yes. I explained that I had left messages with five plumbers and or contractors in town and I intended to use the first one that got back to me that said they could do this specific service I had asked for. Lockmer was the first company that called back—the very next morning—saying they could send someone out. When that service technician showed up at the residence, he said that he could heat the pipe but did not have the machine to shock the line. He stated someone else had that machine. My son who was at the residence to meet the technician explained that the only reason we had called was to have the line shocked and that he had listened to the conversation I had with the woman who had answered Lockmer’s phone the day before and that he felt I had been very specific about what service was requested. The technician called the shop and was informed that whomever had had the machine out had brought it back to the shop and he stated he would go get it. My understanding is that when he got back to the shop someone else had again taken the machine so the technician offered to go rent a machine—charge it to me and add it to the bill—and come back to shock the line. My son rightfully told him that he would seek service with another company. The technician also told my son that we would not be charged. Yesterday I received a bill from Lockmer saying: Description: Journeyman VS-Customer called for frozen pipes. Journeyman went to residence to look at problem then went back to the shop to get the thaw machine and it had already been taken out by another journeyman. When he called Cody back to tell him that he was going to rent a thaw machine, Cody told him he would get someone else because we were not reliable. The weather has been well below zero for days and this was not the only freeze up. We have a one hour minimum charge and we are only billing for 1/2 hour as a customer courtesy.” No mention here that we were told we would have to PAY for the rental—that that charge would be added to the bill… If this is how they do business then I am surprised that they are still in business.

Employee sent out Thursday to scope job and estimate costs. Said he would return next morning (Friday) with parts and do job. Estimated about 3 - 4 hours. Friday morning another employee showed up. Had to scope out job again with him. Then he left to purchase parts, returned and did job. Was charged for first employee's time and second employee's time, even though I had to explain job twice. Total time 4.5 hours. Not my fault. Job poorly coordinated, costing me extra half hour expense. At $82 per hour, costly !!!

It went well. The work was neatly and efficiently completed

Lockmer Plumbing Heating and Utilities Inc have shop charges, you know what I mean? By a unit scale, they pay their plumbers so much and then there's the shop rate, you know, so they need guidelines or whatever you wanna say. For quality, I think they're very good. Good responsiveness.

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Awful. Their website and front office both claimed to know how to work on wall heaters, but that was obviously a blatant lie. Within the first 10 minutes of his arrival the worker was dumbfounded and had no idea what he was doing. After trying to reference the owners manual and calling tech support he still had no idea what was wrong and just stared at the heater for a good 15 minutes. There was a lot of back and forth on what it might be and then he finally concluded that it must be the transformer. He didn't have one in stock so it would have to be ordered. The visit lasted from 10:30 to 11:30 and somehow I was billed for 2.5 hours at $79/hr. That was on May 3rd. A month later he came and replaced the transformer and quickly discovered that it was not the issue...another hour of time billed. The next action he took (a full month after the second visit) was calling Tech Support and talking to them for an hour and half trying to figure out what the problem might be. I was billed $118 for this phone call; a call to train this so called "professional who knows how to work on wall heaters" how to do his job.  Finally, on August 1st, he returned to replace a couple of switches. This again failed so he replaced the thermostat and it seemed to fix the problem. Again, this visit only lasted from 9:30 to 11:00, but I was billed for 3 hours...totaling $237. When I received the bill and saw how outrageous the total was for everything and all of the overages in time I was appalled. I called the office to complain and the lady just laughed at me and said that the extra time was travel time to and from the office (still extremely over-exaggerated) and that it is "standard practice" to pay the labor time required for calling Tech Support. She was not understanding or polite about anything so when I told her she would not be getting anymore business from me or my family she just happily sighed and said "that's fine". I find everything they did very unethical and would never recommend them to anyone!

They show up when you want them to and they do what they tell you they are going to do. They are very professional. They just go and do the job they were hired to do. They got it taken care of quickly and I felt that the price was reasonable.