Annals of Customer Service: The Tale of Two Plumbers

 

We have a few bathrooms in our house.  We mostly use the shower in our master bathroom the most.  A few years after we moved in, say sometime around 2012, the shower was not working properly.  The symptom was that water pressure was not strong.  We cleaned or decalcified the showerhead to no avail.  We called the plumber we normally used, let’s call them XYZ Plumbing, and they came out and diagnosed the problem as the thermo-element cartridge inside the shower faucet.  They replaced it and the problem was solved.

Fast forward ten years and we had the same problem.  We cleaned the shower head again.  It worked a little better but reverted to the same symptom shortly.  I called XYZ again.  When they came out, I explained the problem and what the solution was the last time.  They ordered the part.  It took forever because of all the supply chain issues due to Covid.  We were barely able to use the shower and moved on to another bathroom in the few weeks it took to get the part.  The same fellow from XYZ return and replaced the cartridge and we were back in business… for a week.

Then the low pressure, low water flow, symptom returned.  We called XYZ and the same technician returned and spent a couple of frustrating hours trying to diagnose the problem and cleaning some kind of goop out of the cartridge and shower head.  Again, it was good for a week and the issue returned.  I called XYZ and talked to the owner.  This fellow was the son of the founder who was running the show back when we first used XYZ.   He wanted to send out another plumber, a master plumber, with more experience, if it was OK with me.  I agreed but expressed my displeasure with the paying for any more hours of diagnosis.  He agreed to waive the visits of the second charge.

I was beginning to regret calling XYZ for this job.  I liked them for small jobs, like faucets and toilet innards and such.  My experience with them bigger jobs was not as good and this was beginning to feel like a bigger job.  Case in point, they installed new water heaters in 2009 when the old man was in charge.  It seems water heaters these days only last about ten years.  They installed the new ones in series, telling me that whoever installed them in parallel “didn’t know what the hell they were doing.”  What did I know?  After their “expert” installation, it took a lot longer to deliver hot water then the almost instantaneous hot water we were used to.  In 2019, they water heaters needed replacing again.  Given a friend’s recommendation, I tried another plumber, let’s call them MBP.  They were astonished that XYZ put our two water heaters in series and reconfigured the piping for a parallel installation.  They also put drip pans under the water heaters.  We were back to instant hot water.  I liked MBP and used them for both big and small jobs.  They were good but did not carry all the small job parts in their trucks like XYZ did.  They kept charging me their hourly rate when they went out to procure said parts.  Consequently, they charged more.  So, my policy became MBP for big jobs and XYZ for the smaller jobs.

XYZ sent their master plumber.  He was good but I found him a bit… um… well I will just say it, arrogant.  He diagnosed the problem as the anodes in the water heaters we most recently installed.  Based on the water chemistry, there are three kinds of anodes inside modern water heaters:  zinc, aluminum, and magnesium.  I believe all three are alloys of some kind.

Anodes?  What do they do?

The anode rod is made from a metal with a more active voltage and higher electrochemical potential than the metal of the tank, which is typically made from steel. This means the anode rod’s metal will give up electrons and corrode before the tougher steel metal of the tank will. As this lesser metal corrodes, electrons are distributed into the tank, creating a more favorable chemical environment that prevents the corrosion of the steel tank itself. ~ Empire State Plumbing

If you had the wrong kind of anode for the local water chemistry, the life of the water heater might be compromised.  Or as in our case, the water heater begins to generate aluminum hydroxide, the blue goop that was causing the shower low flow.  As the master plumber fellow was explaining this, I was googling the issue and found a Technical Bulletin that explained it all.  He gave me the phone number of the tech rep for the manufacturer of our water heater.  He suggested that I all the tech rep and provide the serial numbers of the water heaters.  The rep could then tell me what I kind of anodes I had and what I needed to replace them with.  I suggested that XYZ should call the tech rep, but the master plumber told me they would charge me their hourly for that and it would be cheaper if I called.  I was a bit more perturbed by XYZ’s wanted to charge for what they didn’t know.  But, as it was my money, I made the call.

As it turns out, we had zinc/aluminum anodes.  The rep said if that was generating aluminum hydroxide, we ought to replace them the magnesium ones.  OK.

Now you might think this is MBP’s fault as they installed the water heaters with the wrong kinds of anodes.  It was not.  My friend who recommended them for the installation is a general contractor.  To save me some money, he ordered the water heaters, and I paid his cost.  It was very nice, but in the end, he was as surprised as I was when I explained the whole aluminum hydroxide thing to him.

So, as I was already using XYZ plumbing, I called them back.  In the meantime, they sent me a hefty bill and, mind you, the problem was not yet resolved.  I was only dealing with the owner at this point.  I emailed him the Technical Bulletin with my notes on it.  I asked if could do this.  His response was, “Of course, we will take care of you.  I will order the parts and get back to you.”  OK then.  I paid the bill and waited.  I waited longer and then called the owner back.  He apologized for not getting back to with an explanation that involved personnel shortages etc.  He promised to get back to me.  He called a week or two later to say he had not forgotten about me.  We were into month three of this problem.  I have yet to hear back from him.

I decided to forget about him and XYZ plumbing forever.  I did however resolve to write this bloggy bit exposing their lack of customer service even though I am being nice and not using their name.

I called MBP and they got the anode and replaced them within two more weeks.  They cleaned out all our faucets though only one, the one closest to the problem shower, had a slightly diminished water flow.  Then, they had to order another new thermo-element cartridge as the one installed by XYZ was all full of aluminum hydroxide and almost impossible to clean.  That, believe it or not, took another month.  They came out again, replaced the cartridge, and we have had no problems since.

From start to finish, it took five months, three plumbers, from two different companies, and an outrageous amount of money to solve the problem. 

It has been five or six months since I last talked to the owner of XYZ.  This has to be one of my worst and most expensive customer service experience ever.  If they treat too many of their customers this way, I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that they went out of business.  MBP picked up the ball and finished the job expertly.