First of all don't be misled by the 16 positive reviews---14 of them are phony. You can tell by clicking on the name of the reviewer. That leaves only 2 positive reviews and 10 very negative reviews by real people who have actually done business with Neerings Plumbing of Salt Lake City, Utah.
My experience is like many of the others. Our water heater pilot light wouldn't stay lit and so I called Neerings. I told the dispatcher we had a Whirlpool water heater 5 years old and asked if the service tech would have whatever part needed to fix it. I was assured he did.
The tech showed up, put an attachment on his shop vac, and vacuumed under the unit. Then he told me that if this didn't work that the pilot assembly would need to be replaced. Of course, he didn't have one, but he said I could order one from Whirlpool. He charged me $55 to run his vacuum for 2 minutes. But hey, Neerings boasts that they don't charge a cent for a service call.
Of course the pilot kept going out and my wife needed to wash and do laundry. I had to go out of town the next morning and so we decided she would call Neerings to install a new water heater we could depend on. The tech quoted her $1033 to install a 40 gallon water heater, and she reluctantly agreed knowing that it was a lot more than we had paid for the Whirlpool and to get it installed.
When I got home I saw the new Bradford White water heater and she told me the price. I figured it was ok since Bradford White makes some 40 gallon models in the $750 - 800 range. When I checked the price of the model Neerings installed, it was about $330 including sales tax which means we were charge $750 for a two hour installation of a $330 water heater.
I called Mike Dixon at Neerings twice and discussed my concerns that the salesman took advantage of my wife's lack of experience with appliances and that the prices they charged were not fair and reasonable considering the work done.
Of course Mike disagreed with all of my arguments and came across like somehow he expected his customers to subsidize his ""high overhead"" by paying these exorbitant prices. On one occasion he refused to furnish me with a receipt breaking down the cost of the water heater and the cost of the installation, like most other service companies do.
I feel that if the serviceman had been upfront with my wife and told her that she was getting a $300 water heater with a $700 installation charge, that there is no way she would have agreed to the installation. This ""inclusive"" price quote policy that the company strictly adheres to seems to be deceptive in that it disguises the actual cost of the labor to install.
I will never, ever use Neerings Plumbing again and will recommend that others stay away as well. I feel as if Mike Dixon et. al. reached into my pocket and stole the $500 extra the job cost beyond what a fair and reasonable price would have been.
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