Gene Johnson Plumbing & Heating

A Gene Johnson - installed pipe in my bathroom failed after 2 years, causing damage to the ceiling below. I had them com back to repair, thinking they would do so free, but they charged full rate of about $650. Very disappointing.

I hired them to service my heating unit. The workman spent about five minutes in my attic. I highly doubt he did anything up there as he went up there without any tools. He didn't check the filter from below. They charged me $550.

Unfortunately, this review is to warn others so they do not experience what I experienced. When I woke up to the sound of running water on Christmas Eve, I knew a pipe had burst somewhere when the weather warmed up after a week below freezing. I immediately turned it off at the house and checked the meter to ensure it was not running and my shut off was successful. I called a few companies and Gene Johnson answered (on Christmas Eve!) and scheduled me for the following Wednesday. The technician who came out was wildly unskilled. He did not have customer service communication skills (he informed me the charge would be more than the $60 service call because “he had to go buy waders” and had to “crawl under my house”). Is looking for a broken pipe in the crawl space of a house not par for the course with plumbing? After returning from his shopping trip, he (maybe) crawled under the house but eventually came out whining about how hard it would be to get his tools in there, and I would need to hire another company to pump out the standing water (ok, so your plumbing company doesn’t do that?) and then produced an $1800 quote with random charge codes and generic language. I kept assuring him that the standing water was not from a leak (the water had been off for days) and was a result of recent heavy rains and ground water behavior. He offered no knowledge or understanding of hydrology or the behavior groundwaters, surface waters, water tables, etc. And his estimate containing random charge codes, included No narrative, no discussion of the standing water, no description of the break, type of pipe, length of pipe, etc. I certainly did not book with this company and was fortunate to get another plumber out on Friday. Wouldn’t you know it? The pipe break was in my detached shop; some pvc couplings had cracked. It wasn’t even under the house! This company and their technician charged me $343 for a leak detection service they did not provide and produced an $1800 quote for something that wasn’t broken! After days of waiting for a call back, I finally got an email from the guy’s supervisor saying that he reviewed the notes, and the techs performance wasn’t in line with company process and procedure and he would issue the refund. And I still continue to get impersonal and generic marketing outreach from the company “owner” welcoming me to the family and giving me a $20 gift card to refer others. Never would I refer someone to this company!

They charge $59 diagnostic fee whether service is performed or not. Service person arrived, quoted $562 to replace the valve, and $529 for "toilet partial rebuild". The going rate is ~$300 minimum and both repair should together be under $500. Avoid! Price gougers! Business model seems to be either rip off the customer, or collect $59 for the visit.

We returned home from a vacation to find a small flood in our dining room. We called Zoom Drain for emergency services and the dispatcher redirected us to the "sister company" GJ as Zoom did not handle the job I was describing. We received an appointment that day, and were told up front what the emergency day-of rate was ($450). Jose came during the appointment window and was courteous and professional. He eventually determined that we had a sewer line blockage in the bathroom above the dining room. He could not perform blockage removal services, and advised us to have a water damage restoration company dry out the walls, expose the plumbing and make the fix from there. After the additional toilet removal cost ($220), the total job was $725.

Not well. I was scheduled for 9 am. After a couple calls. They showed up after 11. So I was not at home at 11 to explain the problems. Why they sent two people, I don't know. They quickly went for parts, and didn't return until after lunch. The two repairs took about an hour each, and the bill was over $1200.

I had a blocked toilet, due to what I suspected was too much toilet paper flushed down (kids + upset stomachs=much flushing) I attempted to clear the blockage with chemical toilet unblocker and a 3ft toilet auger/snake. I called Gene Johnson Plumbing & Heating (AKA Zoom Drain) and spoke to an operator. I provided details of the problem and explained than I have tried to unblock using my own auger and what is required is someone with a longer one to remove a blockage of paper. I asked for an approximate cost. The operator informed me that my area (1 mile from their offices) has a $49.95 call out fee, however he would not be able to provide any costs. This is untrue as the services provided are listed in a fixed price menu (more on this later). On arrival I went through the issue and again stated that I believe a longer auger that the 3ft one I owned would do the job. This fell on deaf ears though when they pulled out their laminated menu and went straight to recommending that I should put a camera down there to see what the problem is. Cost of this? $595+tax. I turned this down. I was then recommended they remove the toilet at a cost of $700+tax. Frustrated at this point I told them all that is needed is an auger longer than the one I have. The menu cost of an auger was $190 + tax. I agreed to this and signed authorisation. They head off to their van to get their auger and come back with a home depot bucket and an auger not that dissimilar to my own $10, 3ft auger. I did mention that I did not believe that auger would do the job as it was no longer than the one I had already used and I was very surprised that as a professional they did not have something longer/more substantial with them. Apparently there is one, but this is on a different van. Given I had already signed authorisation agreed to give it a go. They spent about 2 minutes trying to removed the blockage with the auger. Unsurprisingly it did not work. So, they got the menu out again. This time they were recommending jetting out the pipes. There were several options ranging from $700-$1795 depending on whether I wanted certain chemical used to clean and clear the pipes. The house is a little over 12 months old. The pipes will not have any sort of build up . Fed up with the constant upselling I told them I wasn't interested. Paid $209.19 (with tax) for their attempt using their auger. I was asked if they could email the invoice to me along with a link to write a review. I agreed to both. I got the invoice but not the link to review (I suspect they knew it wouldn't be positive) When they left I went straight to home deport, purchased a 25ft auger at a cost of $30. They were still parked outside by the time I returned and removed the blockage with it. I feel these guys will gouge and upsell whilst taking advantage of what for some is an urgent situation. They are not transparent when it comes to costs when you call and ask; I suspect that once you've paid $49.95 call out and have a guy in the house ready to fix your problems it's harder for you to say no and easier for them to sell their service at exhorbitant prices. Avoid at all costs.

Great! I would definitely work with this company again. The dispatchers are very responsive and let you know when someone is on the way. The technician that came out to the house was very professional and got the job done same day.

Better than anticipated. I thought I needed a new faucet and also would need some pipes fixed under the sink. The plumber was able to repair my existing faucet (in two different places) and that solved both problems.

When my water heater began misbehaving, they came out, diagnosed the problem, and ordered parts. Once the parts arrived several days later, they returned and installed the parts, staying late into the evening to deal with some unplanned complications. They also flushed and cleaned the system. They were able to take care of my problem without making me wait many days for available techs.

I went well and I am very satisfied.

We were deeply disappointed and have nothing good to say about our experience with Gene Johnson Plumbing & Heating. Our tankless water heater which connects to the hydronic radiant floor heating in our house went out last February. We researched and read a number of reviews online and decided to go with Gene Johnson because, although very expensive, we wanted someone professional with experience fixing this complex hydronic radiant floor heating system. I am willing to pay for expertise but instead I got a halfway-done patch job in which they charged around $4,000 for 3 hours of work -- and then came back asking for more money to fix their incomplete job. A rep came out the first day and charged a $95 diagnostic fee, and then came out again for a $708 "basic renovation service" that took literally 15 minutes. They claimed to have replaced 2 heat-exchanger seals (probably ten cents each) which did nothing so they decided the whole unit needed to be replaced. Jason and Chris came a couple days later to replace the whole water heating unit to the radiant floor system. They replaced it in about 2.5 hours and charged us $3,435. Note that the new water heater was 100% covered under warranty so the bill was purely for labor only. We are now $4,143 deep in labor costs but we figured hey it was fixed correctly and the $1,400 water heater was free/covered under warranty. Days go by and the radiant heat is working great but we notice the water heater box and hydronic pumps to the floors were loud and running 24/7 (even when no water was being used and the heat was off) which was not normal. We call Jason to return to inspect the constant, unending operation, of the units since we supposedly have a 30 day service warranty. Apparently Jason had flipped an on/off switch in the Heating Box that caused the unit to be in “constant operation” mode. We questioned if that was appropriate, since the manual discourages it, but he said it was a “topic of debate” among installers and that it was ok. When we called Navien brand company hotline, they instructed us to turn that switch off, which stopped the 24/7 operation but also stopped the hot water reaching our house. Jason told us that this was not covered under the service warranty despite having no former issues before his installation and wanted to charge us an additional $800 to look into this. At this point we were frustrated and already frazzled by the high costs since we paid $4,143 for 3 hours for purely labor. I would expect things to be professional and working correctly in the first place when we had already paid $1,831/hour. The system was not installed correctly from the beginning, and it looked like we were going to have to keep paying $800 per visit until it was fixed. Maybe it should have just been done right the first time, and if not, repaired at Gene Johnson's expense until it was? We consulted our neighbor who is a contractor and he solved the issue in about 10 minutes by replacing a check valve ($11 for the piece at Ferguson). I feel it is important to strongly DISCOURAGE using Gene Johnson as we were highly disappointed in professionalism and the predatory costs. You will not get the experience and professionalism expected from shelling out the big dollars. They won't do it right the first time, and they'll keep coming back to you over and over again to make you pay for their incomplete work.

I called these guys out to estimate a sewer repair job. When they showed up (three days late, I had to reschedule after they just completely skipped the first appointment), they didn't have the equipment needed to take the sewer video even though the appointment was specifically to take the video so they could give an informed estimate. They had to leave for an hour detour to go get the equipment from a nearby supply. They also refused to honor the price I was told the service would cost in the email from their dispatcher and they charged me six times as much as the price I'd been told it would cost up front. When I asked them about trenchless sewer repair they told me it wasn’t possible for sewers, which is just flat out wrong information. When they finally sent their estimate it was just insulting - not only was more than five times higher than the HIGHEST of the other estimates I got for the same job; when I asked them to give me an itemized list of where my money was going, their estimate suddenly increased by $10,000 with no explanation. Yes, you read that right, a TEN THOUSAND dollar increase just because I asked them to justify their estimate (which they still didn’t itemize). Their estimate also explicitly stated that they would not clean up the work site when they were done, which would have left my home in an unlivable state.

Professional and nice. We’ve used them for different projects over the last three years.

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Fabulous work - on time, on estimate, considerate.

They have been excellent. They have really, really excellent communication. A lot of “thank you for your business” and that kind of stuff. It is all so expensive.

They were prompt and came out the same day or the next day when we called them. They did charge extra on the weekend. Their charges were high. They seem to be a bit of a scammer and tried to charge extra when they came out. Seems a bit odd that they said a rag was in the pump and they will not guarantee the pump beyond that point.

They were prompt and came out the same day or the next day when we called them. They did charge extra on the weekend. Their charges were high. They seem to be a bit of a scammer and tried to charge extra when they came out.

They installed a simple faucet abd charged me $950.

Fine - very responsive and helpful

They were slow in coming. The price was way too high I learned afterward. I had trusted them to be fair but now I feel they were only fair to themselves.

Very well! Woody and his assistant were very creative in his ability to figure out a way to access a difficult location of this pipe, replace a portion of the pipe, replaced old kitchen plumbing under the sink. Cleaned up well. Didn't do more work than he needed to do.

They did a great job.  They were very friendly and helpful both on the phone and when they arrived. They also came out the day I called.