I had a great experience with Roto Rooter recently. The wax ring on my toilet needed replacing and I didn't have the time to figure it out.
I called a local guy that I've used in the past. Strike one. It was after 6 pm and he wasn't answering. He didn't even have a machine to take a message. The Roto Rooter ad was calling to me, "24 hours". But, still, I waited until the next morning.
I called the local guy again. Strike two. Can't get to me for 2 days. Ouch. I was having loyalty pains, but I said, "I'm sorry, I'd like it taken care of before that, I'm calling someone else." "Ok" is all I heard from the other end of the line. Strike three.
"Hello, Roto Rooter, how may we help you?"
"OK, when would you like us to be there?"
"Anytime. We run 24 hours."
"I can have someone there in about 2.5 hours."
"Thank you very much."
Larry arrived. Was very polite, knowledgeable and clean. He was conversational and was finished in about 40 minutes or so. Not bad. I figured it would have taken me several hours to figure out. He provided the estimate and I said, "Get to work."
Some people may have balked at paying $164 to replace a $2 wax ring. I didn't. I wasn't paying for the wax ring. I was paying for the 2.5 hour arrival time. I was paying for someone who knew what they were doing. I was paying for the peace of mind of knowing the job was done right. I was paying for the friendly and clean service.
"That work has a 180 day guarantee on it." My local guy probably has a guarantee too, but he never bothered to tell me about it. Simple things can set apart a client experience.
Roto Rooter, Keep up the good work. You earned a customer that'll try you again. But, as you can see from above how quickly I ditched my local guy, it's easy to lose us too. Perhaps my experience was a fluke. Let's hope not.
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3 comments:
I had a great experience with Roto-Rooter too! I was remodeling my bathroom and got to a part I thought I could handle, I couldn't. Like most things I waited too long to really call anyone and get them out on a short notice. It was Sunday night I thought I better start looking around in hopes of getting someone out here sometime that week. I had used Roto-Rooter before and felt like it would be a good call them again. But this time I used their website. I was able to tell them when to come out and what I would like to have done. I know I was thinking "we'll see if this works".
Guess what, it did!
They called me around 7:45 am and said they had all my info and was wondering if it would be okay if their plumber was there in the next 15 minutes. I said "that would be great". Not only did he do the job but he noticed my interest in my "do it yourself" attitude and he explained a few things and gave me some tips. I'm able to fix some things that go on around the house but when I get in a plumbing jam, you know who I'm calling!
2.5 hours to replace a wax ring? I personally think that you were robbed. This is something that I have done myself, even with figuring it out, 1 hour. I hope that there was an additional problem b/c the time for replacing a wax ring was too long. Thanks for the tip about roto rooter, I won't call them when i'm in a jam.
Anon - Sorry for the confusion. The 2.5 hours was the time it took Roto-Rooter to arrive at my house from the time I first called them. That compared with 3 days for my local guy. The ring replacement, with full clean up, took less than 25 minutes and that included a free replacement of my water shut-off valve to the toilet.
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