Complaint Review: Roto-Rooter Plumbing & Drain - Tulsa Oklahoma

I am writing this on behalf of my mother who is a 76 year-old great grandmother and lives on a fixed income.  She has been fighting battles like this on her own for 40 years and she's getting tired.  She deserves a little peace of mind and I'm trying to help her have it.

Mom called Roto-Rooter in Tulsa to have a broken faucet replaced in her shower.  She has done business with them for years and even asks for the same plumber by name.  She periodically has her lines cleaned and planned to do so at the end of the summer but since she needed her faucet replaced, she decided to have her outside lines cleaned to save a additional service call in 3 months.

Rob arrived at her house on the afternoon of Wednesday, June 8, 2011.  He began outside and in a short while he told mom the cable was stuck in the line and he couldn't get it out.  He said he knew there was a rough spot but he thought he could get past it so instead of reversing the cable at the first sign of resistance, he forced the cable to go on.  Now it was stuck and he needed help so he called for 2 other plumbers to come and assist.

I arrived at mom's house around 4:20 that afternoon and there were 2 Roto-Rooter vans in her driveway.  I could tell she was upset as she told me what was going on and all she could think about was it was costing her $100 per hour.  She only wanted a broken faucet replaced and routine maintenance done to her pipes and now she was facing a huge repair bill.

During the 30 minutes I was there, 2 other vans arrived making a total of 4 Roto-Rooter vans at her house.  I thought they would surely fix it.  When I got home there was a message on my machine from mom saying the pipe had been broken and Rob told her he couldn't fix it for nothing.  He also said he shouldn't have forced it - if he hadn't this wouldn't have happened.  Mom was so upset she could hardly speak.  One of the other plumbers said he put a camera into the pipe and it was just a snarled mess of cable in there.  They left with it still wadded up inside the pipe after cutting it off and leaving it laying in her yard.

I told her I would call them and even though she told me no, I did the very next morning.  I spoke to Doug the Operations Supervisor and told him the story.  This guy seriously needs to take a Dale Carnegie course or at the very least a few lessons in good customer service.  Not only was he not sympathetic to my mother's plight, his tone was indignant when he said they couldn't possibly be responsible for every pipe that breaks during the course of servicing.  I told him the pipe broke due to his plumber's negligence and he got even more defensive and said pipes break all the time and they can't replace them without charging to do so.

I told Doug I would not threaten legal action but I was going to contact our local TV stations and post it on the Web.  I'm sure other people would be interested in this story of how a "reputable" company is taking advantage of a great-grandmother on a fixed income.  He changed his tone ever so slightly and said he needed to talk to Rob before continuing the conversation so I gave him my number and he said he would call me back.

A few minutes later when the phone rang, it wasn't Doug's voice on the other end.  It was Rob and the first thing he said after identifying himself was, "I heard you said I was negligent."  Instead of the Operations Supervisor handling the complaint, he turned it over to the person I was complaining about.

If I thought talking to Doug was unpleasant, Rob was worse. I told him the truth as I saw it and now instead of him saying forcing the cable into the pipe was the cause, he gave me a story about how the pipe was already broken because as soon as he opened the end of the snake, it got stuck.  He went on to tell me that he didn't have x-ray vision because if he did, he wouldn't have to work for a living.  How was he supposed to know it was broken? I told him that the bottom line was he was called out to replace a faucet and do a routine cleaning of her lines and now her pipe is broken with a waded up cable in it.  I repeated what I told Doug about telling the world this story and he threatened me with a libel suit.

I thought I would be able make a call and have some kind of resolution for my mom but that didn't happen.  Before I was able to call and tell her what I had done, she called Roto-Rooter and talked to a supervisor (she didn't get his name).  He was not belligerent to her but he did say the void was already there and Rob did not break the pipe.  She also spoke to Rob and said about 90% of that conversation was about my call with him.  He told her that since I threatened them with taking this to the media, there was no Roto-Rooter plumber allowed to ever set foot on her property again. The end of the cable fell into the void and that's what caused it to get stuck.

She still has a broken faucet and now she's got a broken sewer line.  If Rob was not responsible then why did he repeat things like, "I shouldn't have forced it" or "I wish I hadn't done it".  He was her regular plumber who had cleaned that line many times before.  He knew there was what he called a rough spot in it.  If he thought there was going to be a problem, he should have stopped and explained it to her - she may have told him not to continue if she knew there could be a huge repair bill she wouldn't be able to pay. There was nothing wrong with her line when he started! He took the responsibility by deciding to force the cable and due to his actions, her pipe is broken.  She does have insurance but it doesn't cover this and the stress from it all has consumed her.