Complaint Review: Mr Rooter Plumbing

I read your report on here and am an ex-employee of Mr. Rooter Plumbing who's home office is located in Waco Texas. Mr. Rooter corporate allows individuals to buy into a franchise agreement to operate a business name DBA: Mr. Rooter Plumbing. Most of the Mr. Rooter Franchises do teach the service techs to "Work the System." We are first taught to be decent in appearance. If you smoke chew gum to clean up your breath, have your foot booties ready and knock on the door. Why? Because the expert has arrived, and remember we are not your ordinary plumber. We also have a manual that has our pricing guide in it. We place a mat down to put tools on, and are clean and professional in the job we do.

Each task has different prices attached to it according to whether it is the main task, or an additional task. For Example: In the price book if i pull the toilet an auger/ snake the main sewer line, if it is the main task I would bill just say $160.00, if it is an additional task I am doing the bill would be lesser for that one, just say $89.95, as an additional task. Then there is a column over more with the main task and additional task that has another discount if you are a preferred customer on what is called the "Customer Protection Plan." Now the service tech will point out this reduced rate to you that you could have if you buy the protection plan. They sell different types of protection plans, a one year, three year, lifetime, etc. The life time will usually run you around $300.00 or so, depending on the franchise and what their rates are. The Company pays the services techs on commission, usually 25% to 30% depending on your experience and time learning the system. The system is to find problems and charge as much as you can. If you turn in invoices under $250.00, on a regular basis per call, you may find yourself called in to explain to the boss why you are not charging more. The flat rate billing system that Mr. Rooter uses is usually around double to triple the amount you would pay an hourly company. If the Service tech finds problems in the main line and it requires a dig, if the company is big enough, the under-ground crew is called out and they get a percentage of the dig bill, could be anywhere from $500-and up to thousands and thousands depending on what the issue is. I remember the guy who trained me would laugh after over charging someone and brag how he took them for a ride.

The customer Protection plans, bio choice and different things they sell you are called add-on sales. The Service tech usually gets 50% commission on the add-on sales. This is why most of the service techs will push for you to buy some type of customer protection plan. It is all about money. They are in business to make money. Some of the service techs on purpose, rip people off and are taught too. It all depends on who owns the franchise and how they personally deal with their own ethics. I would not suggest that corporate encourages for service techs to be dishonest, rather I believe the problem may lie in the individual owners of the franchises. What I can say, is when I have heard of it being reported to the Waco Office that a franchise owner is acting dishonestly, I have never heard of corporate pulling the franchise out from the dishonest franchise owner. Instead Waco (Corporate) tends to still stand behind the franchise owner and not really give a s**t. This is a powerful statement but it is true. Over the years Waco Office has become more and more distant to the consumers and prefer complaints go and stay with the franchise owner, and not them.

I would also like to take this opportunity to apologize to all the people over the years that I may have ripped off. I am sorry, please forgive me.......

I ended up getting a small check to compensate me. Mr. Rooter said it was a mistake in billing that they made. Instead of adding on an amount, their guy added it like it was a new job. It still was a high price to pay for plumbing.