Pafumi

As luck would have it, our water heater sprang a leak the day before our house was scheduled to go on the market. Pafumi replaced it on very short notice; we called them in the morning and they did the work a couple of hours later. The workers were pleasant, professional and did a good job. We knew their rates are substantiality higher than most, but since we had just finished moving out and were ready to leave the state, we felt the quick response made it a fair trade-off. BUT .... cut to 6 weeks later: we've moved to No. Carolina, have a buyer for the house, and closing is scheduled for the following week. Our realtor meets the certificate of occupancy inspector at the house and at some point he asks about the permit for the new water heater. She calls us to inquire about it, and I'm dumbstruck. I called Pafumi and asked if they'd applied for a permit, and the lady says indignantly, "OH no, that's on you, that's on the homeowner." I said no one had even suggested that we'd need to apply for a permit after the installation, and asked if they normally mention that detail to their customers. She said, again with what sounded like a lot of attitude, "I know I don't, and I don't think my techs do either. That's on YOU!" I suggested that they might want to start telling their customers in the future, since water heater permits/inspections are evidently required, and she replied "Most people don't want to bother with them anyway." Huh? I don't WANT to, or for that matter to pay taxes either..... it's just the law! And now I'm a 10 hour drive away and can't sell my house without that missing permit. I explained that to her and she did get somewhat more helpful at that point. She offered to ask Mr Pafumi to fill out the paperwork, but said that wouldn't be till at least Monday (it was Friday afternoon). The clock was quickly counting down for settlement, so I called the permit office to see if I could do anything to get the process started but they said until the contractor filled out 'the jacket', there's nothing the homeowner can do. So obviously even if we'd known about the need for a permit, Pafumi still had to initiate that process. The whole mess would've resulted in a postponed closing date if it wasn't for our incredibly resourceful realtor, Lynn Stambaugh at Cardinal Realty, who greeted Pafumi at their office door first thing Monday morning, hand-carried the application to the W. Deptford code office, begged/pestered/cajoled and somehow got it processed, paid for, inspected and approved in record time, and then coaxed the CO inspector back to the house on the very last business day before settlement. Of course it did pass inspection; like I said, the workers had done a good job and did it quickly. Hence the mixed grades in my review here -- the actual work performed was good, but the company really fell down on the job with their attitude about basically ignoring permits. By playing dumb about the need for permits they added a ton of down-to-the-wire tension to what was already a stressful situation.