In September of 2009 we had a customer who had a small leak and asked us to come out and fix it. We evaluated the problem and began repairing the leak. In the course of fixing the original leak we discovered a separate leak that needed to be repaired as well. We explained the situation and gave our customer—Richard—our best recommendation. Richard decided to go with our recommendation and have us fix the other leak.
Later we came to discover that Richard was not happy with his experience and posted a review of Valleywide Plumbing at insiderpages.com. He said:
Came out to fix a small leak. Required parts not on truck. Came back, fixed leak but "discovered" new leak for which they had to get new parts. Finally fixed on second(third total) trip. A small leak that should have been repaired for less that $150 was converted to a $500+ job. I would pass on these guys.
As Richard said, the "required parts [were] not on [the] truck."
We carry in our plumbing trucks all of the standard parts for the most prevalent plumbing issues that we run into. It would be wonderful if we could stock every conceivable part in each of our trucks, but unfortunately that is just not possible.
We have suppliers with 100,000 square foot warehouses that do not carry many of the parts that we sometimes need and consequently we'll have to inquire with several different suppliers before we can get the part we need. With that in mind, wouldn't you agree that it is just a tad bit unreasonable and unrealistic to think that our not having his non-standard part available on our truck on the first trip is a failing on our part? We rarely run into a plumbing situation that requires the part that Richard needed. Maybe once a year.
To Richard's point about our having "discovered" a new leak—would he have preferred that we ignore the issue that was previously unknown and wait until it became a bigger problem and more costly to repair? He called us out to fix a problem that he noted. We came out and fixed the problem. In the course of fixing the original problem a different problem was discovered that Richard was not aware of. Our plumbers are not commissioned. They don't get a dime extra for selling any extra parts. But as Phoenix plumbing professionals I require that my plumbers make their recommendations based on what is best for our customers. We make them aware of potential issues and then let them decide what they'd like to do about it. This is what we did with Richard. We told him about the issue and HE decided that he would like us to fix the new leak. Richard implied that this leak was "conveniently discovered" as a way to rip him off and make more money. That simply is not the case.
I debated at length whether or not to post this commentary on our experience with Richard's plumbing repairs. I was concerned that we might run the risk of appearing defensive or possibly even callous towards our customer's view of events. In the end I decided that the risk was worth taking because I believe that our customers deserve to know the truth surrounding the situation. With the full story available our current and future customers can more accurately decide for themselves whether Valleywide Plumbing acted with integrity in this situation as is our assertion. We made our recommendations to Richard based on what we believed to be in his best interest. As is the case for each and every one of our customers, we left the final decision for Richard to make and only took action based on his direction.
