Roto-Rooter Plumbing & Water Cleanup

It took them a year to do what they were supposed to do. They practically destroyed my house We had to call them weekly. They would say "We will be out on such and such a date", and just didn't show. My whole sewer system collapsed from one end of the house to the other and they had to dig it up. They damaged so many things and left so many things unfinished. They did such a poor job. The actual plumbing that they did was ok. They kept putting the pipes in the wrong place in the downstairs powder room. They kept putting the pipes right in front of the toilet, the stack pipes right in front of the toilet. You couldn't even sit on the toilet. There has been no leakage or stopped up plumbing or anything after they finally finished but they did not protect the rest of the house while they were working. It was like a fog in the upstairs when they were working in the downstairs. The dust infested everything, and it ruined the furnace motors. They did not protect the furnace from all their jackhammering and their diamond saws. It got into the ball bearings of the motors, which cost five hundred dollars each. Their dust destroyed our computer, which cost over two thousand dollars. Their constant lying seemed as if they were just trying to put me off in the hopes that I would give up. After we had signed the contract with them and they started work, we got quotes from other companies and they were a half of what this company was charging. Wherever they re-cemented the floors they left big gaps. The were supposed to replace the reed bar and they didn't, I had to stop them from cementing and tell them to replace it because the house is built over old mines and that's why the floor is so reinforced. We debated it and settled on some kind of fence screen over the reed bar. A reed bar is a thick steel rod as thick as your thumb. The fencing is as thin as a coat hanger. The cement cracked over the footer, which was to be expected because there was no reed bar. One guy was told by his boss; his boss got sick of me and they finally were going to do it right. They basically split my house in half in order to replace my pipe. When they replaced the stack pipe in the bathroom, they kept putting it in front of the toilet. It was so stupid of them to leave no room for anyone to use the toilet. It was supposed to go back into the corner where it was. Under the direction of the supervisor, the guy who did it moved towards the wall beside the toilet, so there was only room for one leg and not the other. He did not do what his boss told him. So when he had to come back the next day to do it over again, he ran his truck through my gates and broke it instead of opening the gate. He was mad at me because I complained that he put the pipe in wrong, and mad at his company for sending him to do it back again, because he scratched a whole side of his truck. I suspect as an act of passive aggression he dumped gravel in the drain. The next day the plumbing was all backed up again and when I reported it they came out and he knew right where to go to blow it out and I had no trouble since. It's an awful coincidence that it backed up the very day that he had to put the pipe in the right place. This flooded my cellar, game room and laundry room. I wouldn't use them again if they were the last plumbers on earth.

He put the snake down a couple feet and said it was stuck. He explained the issue and said the work would be $4,000. He was very rude once I said I would not be moving forward with it.

The plumber worked very hard was very nice and gave helpful hints to prevent clogs again. He was also very friendly.

They came out in the evening for a water pipe break. Stayed 5hrs until it was fixed. They put in a new piece to that pipe and a new shut off valve as mine didn't work properly. Then two days later they were back, after I got the water turned back on, they checked the pressure regulator, which they found to be bad, and replaced it. They provided a number for a clean up company so I could get the walls dried out. At each step of the process they explained what needed to be done. Each tech the came out was very professional and performed up to my expectations.

The plumber came on time and was very efficient. It was a very difficult problem because we tried to take out the dish cloth but only managed to make things worse and push it farther down the pipe. But after working tireless and making many attempts with an electric snake, he managed to get it out piece by piece and we did not have to do anything major. He cleaner up the mess and was cordial the entire time

The total price was 1550.00 and they let me put down $500.00 and write 2 post dated checks for $525.00 each which was greatly appreciated the only problem was that they put all 3 checks in at once which caused a problem but they took care of the stop payment on checks and 2 new post dated checks was issued...

A clogged sewer line is no fun on Labor Day weekend. While other local plumbers did not want to come out on Friday afternoon or Saturday, Roto-Rooter promptly showed up within their two-hour window on Saturday. Both Ed and Lou showed a high degree of professionalism while diagnosing the problem and fully explaining what caused the issue. The line was cabled, and this promptly resolved the issue. While the cost was slightly higher than anticipated, we appreciated the fast service and thorough explanation about how the plumbing works in our home. We will not hesitate to use Roto-Rooter again in the future.

They did a nice job. It took 3-4 days for them to complete the entire job.

The job was completed this past week within the promised 3 day window. The garage floors was jackhammered open along the pipe lines, the sewage lines were replaced, and all of the men working were professional and polite. The work was inspected and they cleaned up everything well. Ryan was excellent and he did a great job answering my many questions. I appreciated him coming back the second time before I committed to having Roto-Rooter do the work.

Beware of these franchise companies, they'll lowball an initial call for a small job but club you over the head if it's a real problem. Call a local plumber, lesson learned.

It started with a basement dampness problem that another company sold me a French drain sump-pump system to solve ($7910). This is the subject of another review. Suffice to say that that solution did not work, as became evident on July 22nd when we had a torrential rainfall that came precisely as the sump-pump installation was nearing completion; to everyone's surprise water was leaking in over the inside of the basement walls - not covered by the sump-pump system warranty. I identified two badly clogged drains that were spraying water directly around the outside of the basement walls; I called Gillece (subject of another review); they failed to show up as scheduled (I lost 4 hours in this wait) and then I called Roto-Rooter. They responded promptly. Ed came the next day and diligently used a water jet device to clear the drains; some drains were not readily accessible and he went to great lengths to open them so that he could get his jet device inside; the following day a person (Dave?) came equipped with a fiber optic camera that can look inside the drains; he identified regions of blockage; later that day a team of 4 persons came to dig in the vicinity of the blockages; they identified faulty construction (a drain pipe was simply hanging there instead of being connected to the main pipe, resulting in water being directed at the basement walls); it took them the better part of that day, and the following day one of them returned early in the morning to complete the work. I was very impressed by their thoroughness and sincere desire to solve my problem and not just sell me their convenient solution. I was also impressed by the numerous calls I got from their switchboard informing me of the status of my call; when to expect someone at my house, any changes in schedule necessitated by other emergencies, etc. They are expensive but not as expensive as throwing money at a solution that does not work (as happened in my case); my advice to anyone with a basement water problem is to look at the outside first before installing a sump-pump. Especially when you are on a hill (typical of this area) where ground water is expected to be less of a problem than rain water.

Sewer backed up into the basement. Called roto rooter said they would be out within 3 hours. That is the only thing that was good about this experience. Tech (Patrick) came to the house ran a snake about 50 feet and claimed he could not go any further that was where the clog was. Wanted to break up basement floor and wall to get to the trap said clog was before the trap so he wanted to see if he could "break through" the trap and then he could run a camera the rest of the way through the line out to the street. Never did he give an accurate estimate of what that would cost, so we had to apply for credit since he was just saying thousands. Well, to make a long story short, we paid $265 for him to snake and trace the line. Long story short, I brought in another plumber and he snaked the line, through the trap that Roto Rooter didn't want to do and said it was before the trap, and the second plumber found the clog almost to the street.... These guys are liars and take advantage of people in desperate need. Pretty sad

They were out here numerous times to correct an issue that we had with our plumbing where either from the pipes or simply the pipes not having the waste out the main sewer line. They will come every six months and check it out for us and do the warranty that they have. We only have to pay for it half the price so it made life a little bit easier for us to kinda get us through and that we were able to put the money down at a deal. So we were really, really thankful for them for being able to do that for us and did a great job. At first, they gave us two initial estimates back when we first realized we had the problem which was about two years ago. At that time, they seem to be doing a lot less work and the estimate was about $3000. I guess they have brought in a master plumber the second time and he was able to get a better feel for what we have done and the cost of the work.

We purchased a GE diswasher and was installed by C.Provenzo last summer from Roto-Rooter. It has a nightmare since then. He had to come twice since the water doesn't drain and just sits in the botton of the dishwasher after running it. He had a bad attitude when he was working in the installation and after 1 year we still have the same problem. Do not hire this guy. GE company says the problem is due to a bad installation. He covers a big area like New Kensington and Blawnox Fox Chapel.

My bathtub drain stopped draining 4/11/2013 I made an appt. that evening for the next morning. I was given a window of 11 - 1 PM at 1 I got a call changing my window to 1-3, at 3 they called and changed it to 3:30-5PM. AT 4:30 a plumber arrived. She was very nice but I was skeptical that she would be able to remove the cap from the old style trap. I was given an price of 265 and had to sign for that and a release that I would be responsible for any damage that occurred during the work. After about an hour of pounding on the cap with a hammer and a phone call for assistance,the plumber left the premises to borrow a tool. An hour later she came back with two tools she had purchased - one to try to clear the drain with an air blast and some sort of hand snake, neither of which could clear the trap after numerous tries. I was then given three choices - she could try to force the cap off possibly breaking it requiring total replacement of the trap,she could spray the cap with lots of WD 40 and come back another day or she could call another plumber who might be stronger to try to remove the cap. I obviously chose the last. After about 35 min. In the truck, she came back in sprayed the cap,packed up her tools and left. After not hearing anything by 8:30 I called the 1-800 number and complained. I was told it was a high-volume day and someone would call me right back. Never got a call, but about 45 min.later another plumber came to the door, wanted to know the situation,and was obviously put out about having to be there. After looking at the old-style trap and cap he refused to even try the cap saying it was sure to break. I asked him if he could just try as I had already signed the release taking responsibility. I asked how much it would cost and he made a call and said it was going to be at least $925 and there would have to an inspection. i asked him again to try.He again refused saying it was too late to start such an involved job.he said it was definitely going to break and it was going to involve knocking out a wall and the kitchen ceiling. He said they were not responsible for walls and floors, so after I got all those repairs done , it could cost up to $3000. He had my head swimming.i asked him what I could do, he suggested this product they sell called Pipe Shield. He said I should get a Wet Vac take out all the water (that the other plumber ran)follow directions on bottle and let it set for a day and it might move easily when they tried again. Well the stuff sat all weekend, nothing happened, they never called back. I found out $60 Pipe Shield is nothing more than surfactant(detergent) and good bacteria. We went 4 days without a tub, til I called a local plumber who removed the cap fairly easily, cleared it and replaced te pipe from tub to trap that was damaged by RotoRooter. Drain's running fine. When a manager responded to the negative survey I filled out, he promised to refund the price of the PipeShield and send a gift certificate. I got the $50 gift receipt for future work but I don' t see that ever happening. And I think the refund promise was just a ploy to keep me from canceling my check. It was cashed 4 days AFTER his call.

Overall, very pleased. They were so quick in dealing with our issue. Thank goodness because it was stinky.

We had a major work done like all the pipes were broken and none of the toilet would flush. And that was two days before Thanksgiving. Initially, they had a problem figuring out what the problem was. Mike, the guy who came, was superb and easy to work with. He has his camera and were able to make the drain work. Nothing was rushed. They were great and offered a fare price considering that it was an emergency.

Utility tub pipe broke on Saturday. However Easter was Sunday, so we lived with problem for one day. Roto-Rooter would have come on the Holiday but I did not want to be that person that HAD TO have done ASAP, problem was not that urgent. Called on Monday and Monday evening they were there to help. He was there for approx 1 hour, explained issue, told me the price, we had him go ahead and fix. SOME companies say OK I will be back tomorrow....he did right there and then. cleaned up his mess and was on his way.

Can't remember all the details.

About 6:00 PM, main sewer line in basement backs up. Placed a call and technician arrived promptly and snaked line. Very easy to deal with and considering it was 6:00 PM when this happened, drained was cleared by 8:30PM. Quick service and fairly priced

Not sure if this guy was a trained plumber or not but he was a highly trained salesman. While the techs used a high pressure jet to remove a partial clog, and one tech was going to leave it at that. We decided to do the video inspection just to be safe. Now our house is old and we knew that the sewer line wouldn't be perfect. There are two sewer lines that meet under our basement, and at the first inspection it was noted that the water on that line flowed right past the junction, so he moved out to the main city sewer, and near the main line he did meet with standing water. So he began telling us how we needed to excavate down to the street and we weren't going to like the price but we needed to do it. So we asked for an estimate. That took a bit but eventually he came back in with this song and dance, we told him we could NOT afford to excavate to the street unless it was truly clogged, it wasn't as once they guys did the water jet everything was flowing fine. But he kept going on and on about how we had to do this excavation. We said we in no way could afford it and what were our other options. Eventually he got to a point and suggested that since we didn't have a tap to access both sewer lines that we should do that so that we could jet the remainder of the sewer line going to the street. We agreed on that and I will say that the tech who did that work did very well, thank you Vince! The young man who used the water jet to clean the remainder of the sewer also did very well. He told me that it was flowing very well and he went out 150 feet. When the video guy, salesman, returned and I told him that the tech said it was flowing very well and he went out 150 feet his response was "we shall see" So we found some slight off sets, which he called really bad, but at this point I doubted anything he said. There was NO standing water in our sewer line going to the street. But he started again about how we really should excavate that line to the street. I said we couldn't afford it and he started pushing a liner option. We did find some standing water in the other sewer line going toward the toilet but while calling it "really bad" he didn't address that problem but kept pushing the liner to the street to the tune of 7700!!!!! I also saw him dip the camera down into the water at a high angle, when he didn't think I was looking, and say look how deep that water is. Also when he came back with the estimate for the liner, he didn't write it out, and he said the price was good for only 7 days. Then he told me that I needed to make a decision today because if we wanted it, it had to be started before they finished installing the sewer tap, because they'll have to go through that concrete again. Which I found a strange statement since the point of a tap is to access the sewer in the future, not sure why they would need to bust up my concrete again. Point here is that he was a very high pressure salesman, which I do not appreciate. After some research myself I learned that while the standing water and off sets are not perfect that if they do not cause us recurring problems there is no need to dig up anything. Nothing was broken in the lines or open in any way. FYI this was the first sewer back up we had and we have been at this house for 9 years. This will be the last time I use Roto Rooter, seriously it seems it's a gamble if you will get good honest people or not. And honestly I think the amount we paid for this work was way too high, unfortunately we fell victim to the sales guy who told us we needed to do something right away. Fool me once shame on you fool me twice shame on me.

This was a horrible experience from beginning to end. The two men arrived in the morning with a small backhoe to excavate. We have a corner lot. They could have driven straight across the yard from the street up to the house. Instead, they drove up from the corner of the yard. The tracks from the backhoe dug into the grass and made a mess across the whole corner of the lot. They excavated the soil and dumped it on the grass. They didn't bother to put anything under the soil. I would have happily given them a tarp. One of the men came to the door and told me had to leave the sight, but the backhoe operator would stay and fill the hole and then he would be back to check it. We were in the basement familyroom when we heard a loud thump and assumed it was just the nature of the backhoe. After a period of time we we went out to investigate since we hadn't heard the backhoe running and assumed he was finished. The backhoe operator had left the sight and we found the aluminum siding above where the hole had been dug had been hit by the bucket of the backhoe. It was dented in several places and the bottom of the siding was peeled up in an area about 2 feet high by 4 feet long. I called the man who was in charge of the job and had left earlier. He returned and I showed him the siding. He had no explanation for what happened. I told him the operator could at least have had the decency to come to the door and tell me he hit the siding instead of just leaving. It was reported to the main office and later that evening we found that the force of the hit cracked our drywall inside the house from the baseboard up about two feet. After a series of calls over the next couple weeks they sent someone out to repair the siding. They said they couldn't find the same siding to match since it was the original "aluminum siding". He patched the dents with what looked like the same material they use to patch dents in a car and bent the peeled up ends back in place. They were supposed to buy a gallon of paint to repaint the area. I happened to have half a quart of paint left from when we had the house painted, so I gave it to him for a color match. They never did buy the paint, they used my paint. It looks like a shoemaker job on the siding and a real eyesore. A week went by and they sent someone to repair the drywall. He replaced a large piece of drywall and taped and mudded and repainted the whole wall with a color match paint that he purchased. I had no complaints about this mans work. He told me he was a small contractor that did occasional work for Roto-Rooter. As a final note, my yard was left with huge chunks of clay and small stones. It has now been almost seven months and the dirt has been sinking at the excavation spot. We keep adding soil and it keeps sinking, especially after a rain. Right now the soil is sunk about two feet. We happily paid $4,200.00 for this. Live and learn.

I called on my way home from work. The technician was at the house within two hours, which was good. There was no charge up front for the trip or if they didn't end up repairing the problem. The only negative thing is that the technicians are not allowed to keep parts on the truck and since it was 9:30 at night, Home Depot and Lowe's were closed. We had to reschedule for the next evening. The technician was prompt, knowledgeable, and the problem only took her about half an hour to fix.

The plumber found the vent inside the drainpipe was not functioning correctly which he repaired. After completing, he inquired if we also wanted the drain snaked which we agreed upon. There was debris that was removed by snaking so we were pleased that we had made the decision to go ahead with snaking. Upon completion the kitchen drain was better than it had been for quite a long time. While he was working he explained all as he progressed. Very courteous & helpful. If need Roto Rooter again, would try to get the same plumber.

We were very pleased with the service. RotoRooter's Dispatch was very good at keeping us apprised of the technician's ETA. Our techncian, Matt, was extremely professional and fixed the problem quickly. We scheduled a free follow-up camera inspection of our sewer line and found that our line needs extensive repair. We plan to use RotoRooter for the repair.