I chose to use Steve’s Plumbing because it is a family owned business and I wanted to support that. In the end, Steve ended up taking advantage of my family and made me regret trying to support his family business.
The first time that I used Steve’s Plumbing, the owner, Steve, himself came out to tend to my home’s plumbing needs. He spent quite a bit of time checking out the entire home’s plumbing. I had called due to a leaking kitchen faucet. The faucet ended up needing to be replaced. I chose to purchase a Grohe brand “Ladylux” faucet that Steve had in his truck. The faucet is very nice and I am happy with it. However, have since found out that I paid much more than I should have . Steve charged me $1,034.00 for the Grohe Ladylux. Costco sells it for $399 ($299 on sale). I understand charging a bit more for the convenience of having the part readily available, but not $635.00 more than its regular price.
A few months later, I called on Steve’s Plumbing again. My husband ended up dealing with Steve’s plumbing on this occasion because I was out of town. They didn’t show up and then told my husband that they had no record of an appointment. Eventually, after speaking with Steve’s wife (who I had made the appointment with) they recalled that I had made an appointment. So, they showed up several hours late wasting my husband’s day. One would think that they would discount or waive the service call fee, but that didn’t happen, which is not a huge deal, but is somewhat annoying.
One of Steve’s employees came out to fix our toilet (he was a very pleasant individual). He quickly determined that the water supply connector needed to be replaced. We were charged $57.00 for the part. When I got home and found out how much we had been charged for the part and thought that it sounded excessive. After checking three different online stores, I found that the same part that was installed by Steve’s sells for $3.99 elsewhere. I was very unhappy with the 1,400% markup and asked that my husband inquire with Steve about it. My husband called and politely told Steve that we were unhappy with the markup and asked him if he believed it was a fair price to charge. Steve was enraged and began yelling at my husband. He said that we were paying for his company’s expertise (Isn’t that was the service call fee is for?). We weren’t looking for a refund. If Steve did feel it was a fair price to charge then we were not going to use Steve’s Plumbing again. My husband told him that we wouldn’t call upon his business in the future if he felt it was okay to charge $66.00 for a $3.99 part. Steve told us that he didn’t want to do work in our home ever again and that he would give us a full refund. He also said that the warranties for all of the work that he had previously done in our home would no longer be valid. We reported him to the Better Business Bureau and he then decided that he would reinstate the warranties for the previous work.
We will never call on Steve’s Plumbing for any of our future plumbing needs and hope that this review spares another family from what we went through.
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