Complaint Review: Mr. Rooter Plumbing and Geogia Waste Mgmt

The customer service manager at corporate will do nothing to help you.  Her main job is to convey to customers that they won't do anything for you because it is up to the owner to take action.  Even if you are describing to corporate a case that is representative of fraudulent misrepresentation, they don't care because they charge their franchisees a flat percentage and get that no matter whether or not the franchisee makes money or the franchisee makes a motion to reasonably address the issues brought up.  This is probably why franchisee owners take every step imaginable to ignore customers if there is a problem.  At least that is what I observed between interactions between myself and my Mother and the local and corporate Mr. Rooter locations.  To anyone who chooses to use Mr. Rooter, I recommend getting other opinions before you agree to their terms.  Also, if they ever present emergency forms to you don't sign them even if it is an emergency! Run far away because they want you to sign your rights away in order to not be held to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC)  standards.  Find someone else, if they tell you to sign those forms.  Only sign their invoice if you agree to enter a business contract with them and become familiar with your state's home improvement contractor rules.  Read the invoice carefully to be sure they have written what you agree to and ask questions before agreeing and signing.  It would be cheaper to stay at a 4 star hotel for a week than to choose them if you are facing a desperate situation because it is possible that you will have forked over tens of thousands of dollars to still be ankle deep in raw sewage.  

We should have had cameras placed at all angles to watch them similar to this situation: http://www.today.com/video/today/50886062#50886062.  Although they have set up a water heater scenario, it would be interesting to find out if Mr. Rooter employees or others are caught selling sewer line replacements to homeowners who don't need them.  

In my Mother's case, that is exactly what they did.  After putting the snake in the sewer line for about 60 seconds (not longer than 3 minutes), it was determine that the sewer line needed replaced WITHOUT offering the next less invasive option, which would have been to hydrojet the sewer line (they advertise they can handle years of accumulated grease with the hydrojetting procedure).  The hydrojetting wasn't done until AFTER a contract to replace the sewer line was written and on the second day of work during the period of service.  False misrepresentation occurred when my Mother gave permission to replace the entire sewer line for $10,000 over the phone and the employee wrote the contract with different terms after she gave permission for the whole sewer line to be replaced for that price.  She was also not aware that after getting off the phone that employees would require her to sign her rights away in order to do the work.  In the end, she paid them $19,500 to stop sewage from backing up in her basement; yet, it continued to back up from 12-30-2011 - 1-23-2012, with the local sewage authority removing the rest of the grease from the sewer line at no charge on 1-23-2012.  Mr. Rooter took ADVANTAGE of her!  They breached the contract!  They left her property a mess because that sewer line replacement was NOT NECESSARY!!!!  Her sewer line was not broken, collapsed, or misaligned, but rather the employees had a financial incentive to use our misconception that they were master plumbers and should have known more than we did at the time.  Not all states require plumbers to be licensed, so check your state's requirement!  PA and OH don't require plumbers to be licensed to play plumber as long as the unlicensed are working for a master plumber.  


If you go to https://dcr.alleghenycounty.us/ and enter Case ID:  GD-12-021144, you will be able to ascertain for yourself that even though I have told the truth about what they did to my Mother and based on what I have been witness to it would be reasonable for me to come to the conclusory opinions that I have.  So, instead of making the situation right with my Mother, they have decided to abuse the legal system to intimidate me and punish me for a reputation that they have had issues with long before I said anything.  Other responses the Pittsburgh Mr. Rooter has made can be viewed at Rip Off Report # http://www.ripoffreport.com/mr-rooter-plumbing-p/plumbing/cranberry-pennsylvania-f1ab0.htm.


It was corporate's idea, by the way, to abuse the Angie's List brand by distributing award won by one or a few locations to all of their locations (confirmed by Angie's List in communication with me).  To date, Mr. Rooter of Pittsburgh CONTINUES to mislead consumers.  The customer service manager is the corporate customer service manager, who told me she couldn't do anything about my Mother's situation.  I have evidence to show how Mr. Rooter deleted my comment when I told them they didn't win the Angie's List Super Service Award, as an Angie's List Member, on Corporate's Facebook page and they deleted my comment; however, a couple weeks later, corporate removed the faulty notice probably at Angie's List request.  So, you tell me, does the opinion of consumers matter to corporate?  To me, it is obvious that the impressions Mr. Rooter makes on customers or future customers does not matter, probably I speculate that there are a lot of unsuspecting potential victims of deceit out there.  My personal issue with the whole thing is that while their prices are ridiculous and 2 or 3 times the national average, it is the fact that my Mother paid $19,500 and continued to have the SAME problem that wasn't even remedied by the entity that all that money was paid to!

Hopefully the work you had done will last.   $3600 seems a bit ridiculous, but it would have been more reasonable in our situation as opposed to a sewer line replacement/slip-lining process we didn't even need.

originally i was told $195 for a clean out. then 2 baffles were broken and 36 inches of pvc were used. baffles are $15 each at home depot and 10 ft. of 4 in schedule 40 is about $15. That's about $45 for those materials. 6 gallons of commercial grade enzymes were poured in, they sell each gallon for about $49 each.

i know they factor labor, expertise, isurance and use of their equipment into their prices but just for those materials totalling $600, their price to install etc was $2595. the total job was $3600. the rest was excessive sludge, hydrojetting and pumping. the job took 7 hours and the job that was done, as far as i can tell was good. charging $590 to open 6 gallons of enzymes is a lot when the labor is already factored into $1335 for a 10 ft piece of pvc which only 3 feet were used. 

 if i hired a babysitter for $5/hour, i would not charge another $2/hour for every diaper change and then $4/hour because i drove my car and used my gas then another $4/hour for evey bottle feeding and then another $6/hour for reading a book and entertaining and maybe another $6/hour because i know cpr and how to do the heimleck maneuver and another $2/hour for nap time ....this should all be included in the $5/hour.

 

Hi, I am so sorry for your experience with our Georgia location. Please reach out to our manager of customer service, Stacie, at 254-745-2436. 

We're wishing you a world-class day!

How much was the quote/estimate that you agreed to before they started?  What did you have them do?