Perils of Plumbing

Friday night past, I found that my bathroom shower was beginning to drip, drip, drip, drip, and drip. I removed the handle, the stem and finally the seat, which is what was damaged.

Unfortunately my ability to complete the repair myself ended at this point. The copper pipe that the seat was attached to was cracked and repairing the problem called for a professional. To complicate matters it was necessary to turn the water off for the entire house because the cracked pipe was now leaking into the wall.

In an attempt to be proactive and realizing that the Saturday of a holiday weekend would be busy I called the plumbing company to schedule an appointment for Saturday. The gentleman I spoke to said that he could have someone at my house between 8:30 and 10:30 in the morning.

RIGHT!!!!

By 11:00 the plumber had yet to arrive and no one from the company had called to let me know that he would be late. I called the office and was informed that they were running behind but that someone should be at my location by 1:30.

RIGHT!!!!

By 2:00 the repairs had yet to begin due to the absence of a trained plumber. I still had not received a phone call from the main office so once again I called them. I was informed that they were still running behind schedule and that they hope to have someone at my house no later than 3:30.

RIGHT!!!!

4:00 PM and the plumbing company continued to live down to my expectations. No plumber and no phone call. Once again I called their office (at this point I began to feel like I was owed a frequent dialer bonus) and was informed without apology that they were still running behind and that they hoped to arrive in my neighborhood at or about 5:30.

RIGHT!!!!

This is when I reached the end of my proverbial rope. There was no way that I was going to wait any longer. My fingers took a walk through the yellow pages and I called a plumbing company that I had used previously. They informed me it would take about an hour for a plumber to get to my location and they promised to call when he was in route.

I called the first plumbing company “AGAIN” and informed them that I was canceling my appointment. And to my utter amazement, NOT, they informed me that suddenly a plumber was free and they were just about to dispatch him to my location. I told them not to bother and moved on with my life.

One hour to the minute from when I had called the second plumbing company they called me back and let me know their plumber was about fifteen minutes behind schedule and that they would call me when he was in route.

Fifteen minutes later they called back and informed me that he was on the way and within five minutes he was knocking on the door.

Getting the plumber to my house was half the battle. The other half was actually completing the repairs. As it turns out it was so late in the day that he was only able to complete the prep work on Saturday. He was able to cap the leaky pipe so I could turn back on the water and finally take a shower.

He scheduled his return for today and after a short delay arrived to finish the job.

Now $385.00 later my shower is working perfectly without a drip in sight. Of course I am sure that with Christmas just around the corner I could have found a more enjoyable use for my money. However, the plumbing fails to check the calendar when scheduling a breakdown leaving the homeowner with no choice but to fix problems at the least opportune moments.