Texas Heaters

Texas Heaters has brought poor management, unaccountability, and poor service to a disgraceful new low. Texas Heaters has no records of the final inspection for my water heater installation I requested with the City of Austin for April 10, 2009. I immediately rescheduled this inspection for July 3, 2009 after it was canceled at the last minute by Texas Heaters. Texas Heaters notified me the Monday before July 3, 2009 that July 3 is a city holiday (Independence Day). Texas Heaters failed looked at a list of scheduled city holiday closings at any point in the three months from when I scheduled the appointment to when the holiday actually occurred. The owner’s (K.R. Salyer) response to this was “we cannot control the city.” Texas Heaters has repeatedly refused to acknowledge they failed to look at the City of Austin’s list of scheduled holiday closings. Given this failure in due diligence, I asked Salyer to bring a printed checklist of what the city would look at when conducting the final inspection. Salyer refused to bring this requested checklist, claiming he “has the checklist in his head.” The building code had changed since the job was first done, requiring rework. Had I not requested Salyer to review the work that had been done to ensure it would pass final inspection, it would have definitely failed inspection. Texas Heaters failed to keep up with what jobs were outstanding that would be affected by requirement changes that occur from year to year. Now that I had little confidence in how Salyer was managing this project, I asked for a written statement that Texas Heaters would actually show up to finish the job Texas Heaters was paid to do; Salyer interrupted me every time I attempted to bring this up, quickly invoking the fact that the city will shut off my utilities if this open building permit expires. After my repeated attempts to get something in writing from Salyer to get some acknowledgement of accountability for the problems I was experiencing with Texas Heaters, Salyer threatened to walk off the job and let the open building permit expire. Now I had effectively paid Salyer thousands of dollars to bully me in addition to poorly manage this project. I failed to withhold a portion of the payment until the final inspection was complete; something I will most certainly do with any contractor I hire in the future. Anyone considering hiring Texas Heaters should take heed that when problems arise to the customer’s dissatisfaction, Texas Heaters will not hesitate to threaten to walk off the job and leave the customer without utilities. If Texas Heaters is as competent and trustworthy as Salyer claims, providing anything in writing should not be a problem. Threatening a customer with walking off the job and leaving them without water, electricity and gas is a sign of a poorly operated business that does not have any respect for its customers. Texas Heaters will quickly claim they “cannot control the city” when problems arise, but you can control who you hire. Hire a plumber who is accountable, keeps good records, provides customer with requested written information, and plans ahead. Cons: bullies customers and threatened to walk off the job more