From The Mailbag Plumbing | Properties / Real Estate

added 11/10/06 Houdini Lock & Safe - I needed some work done and I got their name from the phonebook. The guy who came out was nice (they were nice on the phone too) and it didn't take him long to change the locks. I highly recommend them!

added 3/1/06 Is it just me or are the salespeople at the Radio Shack in the Cheltenham Mall rude? They have one young girl that works there and she just doesn't seem to know what she is doing! They couldn't (or wouldn't?) help me at all. I ended up having to go to the one at Chelten & Green! They were a lot more helpful there!

Can you recommend a place/night for swing/jitterbug dancing (for beginners)? I've surfed the web and came up with a bunch of them. However, I'm looking for a personal recommendation

Plumbing

• I live in Cheltenham and our house recently had a plumbing emergency. The toilet in the bathroom stopped up and when flushed water came up from the drain in the bathtub. A plumber was needed and FAST! Here's what happened (or should I say what hasn't happened! Here is a listing of the plumbers that I called (or tried to anyway):
  • Rotor Rooter - Even though their ads say 24 Hours / 7 Days, I called them and they couldn't come out unless we already had an account with them. Plus they would not allow the work to be billable. Payment had to be COD.

  • Donnelly's - got their answering service. Have to call them back on Monday.

  • O'Donnell - haven't contacted yet

  • Carney Plumbing, Heating & Cooling

  • Mr. Rooter

  • Resolve Rooter

  • Lewis Plumbing & Heating/Guy M. Cooper Inc.

  • Budget Plumbing & Heating

  Unfortunately this happened on a weekend (Sunday afternoon) and we got snow the next day. Has anyone had an emergency situation like this? (I'm sure that other residents have.) Did it get worse? Who would you reccommend? Who wouldn't you reccommend?

• an excerpt from the "Complaint of the Day" Website

  From: xxx@msn.com
  RE: Rotor Rooter - poor experience

  "Rotor Rooter came right out to our house when we said the washing machine was sending soap suds coursing through our laundry room wall and out into the garage. The man who showed up looked professional enough, though he spoke broken English. He said he could fix the problem right up and proceeded to get his little ladder and ascend onto the roof. After a few minutes of strange noises and much banging he said he had cleared the problem and everything should work good now. I washed a load of clothes and there appeared to be no problem. I got too secure in my thinking. The next time I washed clothes my child came to me and asked me why I was washing the garage floor. Aghast, I peered that way and sure enough, all the water had drained out, and my laundry room wall was covered with cute little scrubbing bubbles. Frustrated at this I decided to run a hose through the wall and to the outside, just in case it happened again. Well, as we all know, a watched pot never boils, and nothing came out of the hose.

  But..ahhhhh..there was a reason...now the main sewer was backed up, right into my shower, where piles of feces smelled like well...you know! I called Rotor Rooter and asked them what they were going to do about the piles of shi* in my shower and they said maybe they could come out and fix the problem. Sure enough, the next day, the same little man with the broken English showed up at my door looking like the sewer warrior he claimed to be. He said first he had to find the trap, did I know where the trap was? (your the plumber, duh!). I said I didn't know and called the local water and sewer provider to find out (I'm paying him by the hour remember). By the time they said it ran in front of the house, he had already told me that he thought the trap was under the house, and this could get expensive (you've already wasted this much time, what the he**). So I pried the trap door to the crawl space open and down he descended to the depths. When he returned he looked a little haggard and was coughing fiercely.

  I offered the poor thing a drink of water because I felt sorry for him. He pronounced that, yes, the trap was under the house, and that if he cleaned it out from there he would have to go and get another man to help, which would increase the cost further (hmmm..is rich written on my forehead or something?) I asked him if there was any other way to do it and he said he could go down a toilet, so I said ok, to use the one off the master bedroom, as I had just paid a plumber a hefty sum to reinstall the one in the other bathroom and would rather not disturb his handiwork. He removed the toilet and started a machine that ran some thingamajig down the sewer. After 15 minutes he said he wasn't getting anywhere and was going to have to take the other toilet off. I said, ok, if he had to and he removed my plumbers handiwork(tears). After 20 minutes of loud(and I mean loud noises) I heard a frightening sound that sounded like tile breaking. I had just had a large shower retiled in the master bedroom and my first thought was..OMG..he broke my tile. Cautiously peering into the masterbathroom, I found porcelain all over the floor. The idiot had rammed the whatjamacallit through into the other toilet and broken it.

  What a nightmare. But it wasn't over. I, without letting on to the ignorant runt, called Rotor Rooter on the phone and demanded a supervisor come right over. They said they would call the scum at my house on his phone. He was out having a cigarette and all I could hear was some muffled garbage (Next time I call Miracle-Ear). Well, after another 15 minutes his supervisor arrives and no yelling is heard (much to my chagrin). By this time it has been 3 hours and my confused spouse has come home for lunch and tried to smooth things over (since I was about to blow gasket). Laurel and Hardy went on lunch break and agreed to come back in one hour with a new toilet. They arrived, on time as promised and installed an economy toilet that fit Barbie just nicely. It was so low to the ground I got back strain just trying to get down there to sit. The first toilet they removed now sat back in its place, with 5 spacers jutting out at all angles and wax ring smeared all over the floor. The other toilet rocked like a boy band and you had to wear a seat belt to keep from getting bucked off. They went up on the roof (popular place) and ram the thingamajig down again and again. Finally they told us that we had roots in our main pipe and should really get everything replaced out the street.

  You can be sure I won't call them when I need someone to do that! To top it off, a month later they sent us a bill for the first visit, in addition to threatening us if we didn't pay immediately. If you ever need a sewer unclogged, do yourself a favor..and don't call Rotor Rooter!