Waller Plumbing

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Fix a furnace and sump pump.

I have used Wallers several times over the years.  While I have never been disgruntled with their work, I have never been completely satisfied.  I do not know anything about plumbing, but in general, I feel that Wallers Plumbing seems to take longer than necessary to do any job, and charge more  than necessary (perhaps due to the length of time it takes them.)  It took practically all day to lower a gas line 3 inches when we got a new stove.  It took over an hour to switch the connections for the living room and family room thermostats (After we bought our house I realized that the living room heating was connected to the family room thermostat and the family room heating was connected to the living room thermostat.)  Now even I know that should have been a quick job!  We've had them out for other things here and there, too.   I've never had a problem with them not showing up.  But then, I only call them when the "other guys" are not available.

Having to wait weeks for them to show up, then having to wait hours and hours (they arrived very late) is not worth it. I complained to the owner, and he told me that the charges were fair (I thought that getting charged the first time to "fix" the shower and then again to fix it again was not fair, and that I should only pay labor once. His position was that the guy was there for that time, therefore I owe him the labor.  It did not matter whether the labor was effective or not.  Also, they should have told me that Kohler guarantees its fixtures, and I would have gotten the cartridge myself and saved $110 on the part.

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They came out on one day and examined the problem and ordered a part.
Replaced part two days later.  It went fine.

I I have made the mistake of calling Waller's twice. Stupid me. The first time was for an estimate to add a gas outlet for a clothes dryer. Noone showed up for hours. So I called and the next day a guy showed, never bothered to introduce himself, crawled around under the house but never bothered to give a bid.  I used a different plumber.
The second time the other plumber in town was really busy so I called Waller's again to install a new kitchen sink and disposal. Again, the technician did not show up at all. Finally I sent my husband to Metzgers and they sold him the parts he needed to install the sink and disposal himself. The next day a different Waller's guy than the first time showed up and I had him look over my husband's installation which meant checking that it didn't leak and the drain went in the right hole. Not rocket science -- took 10 seconds. Since I was in the middle of installing one of those cheap water filter kits that takes about 15 minutes to put on I figured the guy could spend the rest of the hour doing that. It took him two hours at $105 an hour plus a ridiculous materials fee -- I looked up the cost of the (unnecessary as everything was included in the water filter kit) valves and they were double the cost of any retail online hardware supply. After the guy left it leaked from the faucet and the valve he installed under the sink. Since Waller's does not guarantee their work -- says so on the receipt -- I sent the husband to Metzgers again and they sold him the parts to repair it.

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It went very well.  They tried to get out the first day it happened and they didn't make it due to other problems.  They made it the second day as they said they would, they were on time, he was there about an hour and a half and got everything up and running again.  We had to replace about 4 parts.  It was good service, clean and efficient.  It didn't make a mess, he explained everything he did, showed me the parts that were bad and they were very good.

We recently had all of our countertops replaced and also needed to replace the fixtures for the sinks.  We purchased all of the fixtures ourselves, for four bathroom sinks and 1 kitchen sink.  All fixtures are completely standard, nothing fancy or out of the ordinary.  We arranged for Waller Plumbing to send someone out on the day following the countertop installation.  An individual from Waller arrived promptly at 9AM, and we showed him the sinks, along with the fixtures, which we had set out next to each sink.  Each installation should have been completely standard, just hooking up the fixtures to the pipes.  The most complex task to do was to reinstall the garbage disposal in the kitchen sink.  The gentleman got to work and spent a couple of hours under the kitchen sink.  At one point, he went out to his truck for something, so we took a glimpse at what he'd been doing, only to discover that everything looked exactly the same as when he'd begun 2 hours earlier.  This was pretty much the case all day; we had assumed, given that there wasn't anything complicated about our requested installations that the plumber would be done by noon at the latest.  However, at 5PM, he was still working!  When he finally finished around 5:30PM, he handed us a bill in excess of $1,000!  For a job that should not have taken more than 3 or 4 hours!  We have no complaint with the quality of his work, but other customers should be forewarned to be sure to get a firm estimate before you call Waller Plumbing.  Otherwise, you may end up paying at least twice what the job should actually have cost.

The work went reasonably well. What I do like is, they had a guy and I don’t know if they still have him as he was the one who knew how to deal with our solar hot water system. Ours is an old system that was put in, in this town about 30years ago. So they had somebody who knew this business. I am not sure if he’s with them anymore. That’s what I liked the best. What I liked the least was that they did not want to respond to my sms. Next time I need somebody, I would not call them, but I would use somebody else.

In April 2009, they responded with an exceptional sense of urgency. They were very understanding of our situation on the phone and worked closely with us to establish a schedule. After exuming and examining the failed pump in less than an hour, they researched whether it was still under warranty-- unfortunately not. They ordered a new pump and offered to have it expedited (shipped overnight) if that would help. When the part arrived, they came in to do the job, didn't dilly-dally, and everything was working and cleaned up when they left no more than 3 hours later. Great to work with and very friendly on the phone.

No more than a year later the same pump failed. This was the third one we had them install after $7k to Wallers for these "simple replacements and repairs."  They claimed it was backflow from the street and that they needed to clear the feed to the street. We followed their recommendation to have them clear out the line. They proceeded to run a snake down the line until the snake equipment broke; and, then, they wanted to force us to pay $2k for their "broken equipment" claiming we "forced them" to do that work. We hired a lawyer to examine the case.

Suspicious, our lawyer spoke to the previous owners who had a pump installed just before we bought the house from them. This was the fourth macerator pump in less than four years. The owners gave us the receipts that they had from Wallers, which showed in excess of $30k of work having been done. We had an independent contractor who is an expert on the pumps come in and look at the work Wallers did. The inspector said it was not within code and that several items were installed incorrectly.

We paid someone else to do the work correctly and haven't had a problem in three years (knock on wood).