His Own Plumber: A Second Opinion should not be limited to only Medicine

“Dad, come and look at this.”
The tone and voice boded no good. I quickly ran downstairs, for it was my son’s voice and it was laden with alarm.

When I reached the basement, I realized there was substantial amount of dampness in the basement.
“What happened?”
My son told me that at first they thought someone had spilt a glass of water and ignored it; however, over a couple of days, the basement was getting wetter and wetter.
This was no time to tell the children that they should have reported the problem earlier; this was action time. I immediately called my insurance. The young lady that was assigned as my claims representative asked me to call a plumber right away, because they wanted to eliminate the problem of water main break. I called Myplumber, figuring that with such a name, they would be on the side of the customer, right.

The plumber showed up quickly, and I thought my instinct was right. I love people to be on time; it shows professionalism. My anxiety went down. The plumbing doctors were here; the wounds will be diagnosed, and the correct solutions prescribed. The expert, he was confident as all get out, took a look in the mechanic’s room, which I had led him to, just in case it was from the air conditioning pipes or water pipes coming from upstairs, and immediately ruled the air conditioning out.

“No,” he said, “This is definitely from the water main. Sometimes, the builders—in this case Ryan Homes—tend to lay inferior pipes. Under pressure, the pipe gives way.” His solution; run a 30 foot pipe from the main, under the floor of the basement, through the garage and connect outside to the main water supply. The total time involved for doing all of this two days; materials and labor involved, seven thousand eight hundred and fifty dollars. O, by the way, the charge for coming to the house 79 dollars, which would be adjusted into the final bill.

I told the young expert to talk to his manager and see if he could get a better price, for even though the pipe he was suggesting was the best that was ever made, it was still a little excessive, and I did not thing my insurance would buy it. The expert said, he had already conferred with his manager and that was the bottom line price. Sorry, but the company could not do it for less.

With some trepidation, I call the claims representative; I must say a very helpful young lady, and ran the estimate by her. When she came to the house and took a look around, she agreed with me regarding the high dollar value of the estimate. She sent me a water mitigation company to clean the place and sanitize it. She also recommended a different plumber for a second opinion. Two days later an older man showed on my doorsteps. He went around checking a few things and then came back with his diagnosis. According to him, the air conditioning pipes were blocked and the water pipes from the upstairs bed room were slightly overflowing into the basement. Solution: snake the pipes, about thirty feet; time one hour; total bill one hundred and fifty dollars.

It is four days now and there is no sign of water. I am now waiting for the carpet to be carted away and replaced with new carpet. So the question here is: Did the plumber give me a crazy solution and excessive figure because he thought the insurance may have their own people? This way he got to keep seventy nine dollars for ten minutes!!!!!! Nice work, if you can get it. Should there be a law against such a thing???

Talk to me if you have been through something like this.