Countryside Plumbing & Heating, Inc.

I accept your apology and also accept your offer for the discounted bill and the discounted bill will be sent before end of the month. Sincerely,[redacted][A default letter is provided here which indicates your acceptance of the business's response.  If you wish, you may update it before sending it.]
Revdex.com:
I have reviewed the response made by the business in reference to complaint ID [redacted], and find that this resolution is satisfactory to me. 
Regards,
 
[redacted]

I apologized for resending this, but something I did caused your system either sent it before I was finished, or just deleted what I partially wrote.Mr [redacted] did call us during the evening of January 19th at approx 8:00 pm requesting a repair due to a water leak/running in his home. The technician...

did tell him that he would be billed at our Overtime Rate, which is one & half times our regular daytime rate. Mr. [redacted] did not ask for the dollar amount that we charge. Our system is based on a "Flat Rate System" so it is a fixed rate for everyone and is not based on distance traveled or the actual number of minutes it takes to do the repair. If he in fact arrived within 10 minutes, that was very good time because since it was at 8:00 in the evening, the plumber was traveling from his home, not our business (his home is in Hudson, not [redacted]).[redacted] did not have an opportunity to call Mr. [redacted] back earlier because he wanted to have the technician in the room when they talked to verify what he actually did or did not say to Mr. [redacted] on the evening of the 19th of January. Yesterday, Mr. [redacted] did call and by chance, both he and his manager were in the building and available. At that time he did to talk (on speaker phone) to both the plumber that was at his home ([redacted]) and his [redacted] ([redacted]). [redacted] told him at that time that he did NOT say he was in the neighborhood or that he had other calls that night. I did varify this with his time card and he only had one call that night and it was from 8:00 to 9:00 pm for Mr. [redacted]. I apologize if there was obviously a misunderstanding about his work load, but I cannot deny the facts that he only documented one call that night, so the travel time was not shared with or billed to other clients. [redacted] left his home and returned to his home, in Hudson, without addressing any other issues except Mr. [redacted]'s. All of this is irrelevant because our pricing is not based on his distance traveled or the time he spent or didn't spend on this call.I do sincerely apologize to Mr. [redacted] if he says [redacted] was rude or unprofessional in any way over the phone yesterday. I was in the office all day yesterday and did not hear anyone raise their voice to anyone, but I also will not insult Mr. [redacted] to say he was or was not treated politely since he obviously took offense to my employee's attitude. I have addressesd this with [redacted] and he also apologizes for his poor attitude and customer skills. I sincerely appreciate every customer we have and totally agree that no one deserves to be treated poorly or without total respect.Expecting a bill because it only took him one minute to advise Mr. [redacted] on how to shut off his own water supply is totally unreasonable and there is no way we can offer 24-hour emergency service, a fully equipped service vehicle and an "on call" licensed plumber and charge any customer for any type of repair for less that $3.00. He can hardly start his truck for that, to say nothing of leaving his home and family late at night!Also, contrary to Mr. [redacted]'s report, he DID get an itemized invoice for our charges but since no materials were used, the only billable line item was for a "Level 2 Minor Repair" at $167. [redacted] also itemized the reason for the call as "Night Service Call. Water Running. Needs help shutting it off" and the outcome "Irrigation line to backflow broken. Found 1" Shutoff & Explained" to owner. The Sales Tax was also itemized at $9.19 for a total amount due of $176.19 (See copy attached).I will not accept Mr. [redacted]'s assumption that the most he will pay for our service is $37. I don't know his background or career, but I can't believe he would leave his home and family at 8:00 at night in January for the fee of $37 that he is offering us. However, in an attempt to resolve this unfortunate scenario and show our good faith that we are sincere when we apologize for the way he was treated yesterday over the phone, I will offer to revise these charges to straight time instead of overtime. which will bring it to a charge of $111.50 plus tax of $6.13, for a total of $117.63, contingent on if he pays us before the end of the month. If this is still unacceptable to him, I will have no choice but to pursue the original/full amount due through our legal system, and our computer system will begin charging a finance charge each month of 18% starting on February 28th.

Review: Counrtyside installed a freeze proof water hydrant in my barn a little over a year ago. In May it wouldn't shut off, then once it got turned off it started leaking at the base and shot almost a foot up out of the ground. We called Countryside to come out and fix it for us since they were the ones who installed it. They first called us and asked us to trouble shoot it ourselves via an online troubleshooting guide. We determined that none of the issues on the troubleshooting guide were the problem. Countryside then sent out a repair man ([redacted] or [redacted]??) when no one was home to work on the hydrant. He said that he worked on it and thought he fixed the problem, but didn't turn the water back on to see if it was indeed fixed (who doesn't check their work before leaving?). He called my husband and told him to turn back on the water and check if it worked. After turning back on the water nothing had been fixed, there was still a leak at the base of the hydrant. My husband called back the repair man, who proceeded to tell him that he had no idea how to work on the hydrants, that they just sold them but didn't repair them and he was at a loss as to what to do to fix it. He then said his plan was to bring out another guy or two and basically try to fix it by trial and error (all the while charging us to do so), so my husband said no thank you, as he wasn't going to pay them to experiment on how to fix it.

I then called the manufacturer myself, told them what issue I was having and he walked me through how to fix it myself at the cost of $0.77 for a new o-ring. Low and behold my husband and I fixed the issue ourselves in about 30 minutes. I then called [redacted] at Countryside to let them know that we called the manufacturer and fixed the problem ourselves and they would not need to come back out. He sounded pretty surprised that we fixed it ourselves and basically left it at that.

Then almost a month later we get in the mail a bill for $150 and under service it states "hydrant repair". Can you see how surprised I was that they billed me that much money when they knew that they did not repair the hydrant??? My issue is that they knew that they didn't know how to work on the hydrants and did not tell us that at the get go, instead, they wasted MY money by coming out and attempting to fix it while no one was home and then didn't even bother to check their work to see if the repair was complete. Then had the audacity to tell us they would have to come back out and spend a few hours trying to figure it out since they didn't work on those hydrants and didn't know how to fix them. It took me 5 minutes to call the manufacturer and trouble shoot the issue, how did they not think to do that??Desired Settlement: I mailed the check this morning since they billed my mother in law instead of us and I didn't want to ruin her credit or cause any problems for her since they billed her instead of us; but I want my money back. The way they handled this was beyond unprofessional and they should've told us they didn't know how to fix these hydrants before they came out, in that case we would have just called someone else. We called them first because they installed it, why wouldn't they know how to repair them????

Business

Response:

In response to Ms. [redacted]'s complaint, I would like to offer the following reply and solution.

Review: On January 19, 2015 I called Countryside Plumbing & Heating in [redacted], WI because my sprinkler pipe broke on the outside. I called up and the gentlemen and I talked about the cost. I said specifically, "How much will this cost"? And he replied time and a half, I then said, "If you get done within a half hour you will charge me accordingly. He concurred by saying absolutely. I then said, "I can wait until tomorrow (business hours) if I get charged time and a half, but then I said just tell me what's wrong and we can work on it during regular business hours. He arrived at my house in approximately ten minutes from the time we talked. Since he told me he was nearby the neighborhood anyways. He did come to my basement, and he pointed at the plastic hose and said I needed to turn it on so I would have water, and then turn off the copper one that leads to the outside sprinklers, so he had me doing this as he was giving me directions, I said to him, I don't mean to be rude, but I'm going to let you go, to help keep the cost down and work during regular business hours. He then chuckled and said, "I HAVE MORE CALLS ANYWAYS TO SERVICE TONIGHT. That all took under one minute to complete and off he went. I received my bill and almost fell over when he was only there for less than a minute. So my first point is: We had a conversation before he arrived and agreed he would charge me accordingly to his time spent at the house, and the rest would have been finished during regular business hours. My second point: I then called a guy by the name of [redacted], and he said he charged me that much because it takes a half an hour to travel from [redacted] to Somerset and I was the ONLY call for the night. That was the complete opposite story the gentleman that came and fixed the problem at the house, which was he had another call to go finish, so why should I be charged for him to drive back to [redacted], if he had another call and if [redacted] is only six miles from Somerset? I then asked [redacted] how he added up my bill and he was dishonest in saying that I was the only call of the night. Even if I was the only call of the night, [redacted] is only six miles from Somerset not thirty miles away. Also, he had another call after my visit, and I asked [redacted], "Why would you charge every customer for the same drive back to the office? I've called him numerous times to solve this issue and he keeps telling me he will get back to me, but he never does! I did call him today and he blew a gasket, he yelled at me from the top of his lungs! And I told him I don't appreciate him talking to me like that, and I said he needs to be more professional and he hung up the phone. I expect an apology of how he talked to me and treated me, It was very humiliating and unprofessional. So I believe, he's charging me from other customer's service calls, when mine took less than a minute and the gentleman that arrived at the house agreed that I would pay accordingly at time spent at my house. Now I could pay up to 15 minutes maximum, since I don't need to pay him to drive back to the office, when other calls were already scheduled. But I'm willing to pay him the ten minutes for him to get to my house and one minute to solve the problem temporarily and round it up to 15 minutes max. I have a good record and always pay my bills on time, but if this doesn't get resolved in a timely manner, he will ruin my good credit. And our bill stated that our water was running and it needed to be shut off, but on the contrary the water was already shut off and I needed the correct pipe turned on. P.S. I wish they could have itemized my bill.Desired Settlement: I would like an apology for how he talked to me and for his outrageous and unprofessional temper. And I had to literally beg him to call me back which he never did, to try to resolve this issue. And I'm only willing to pay for 15 minutes of service, since we agreed upon this before he arrived .

Business

Response:

I apologized for resending this, but something I did caused your system either sent it before I was finished, or just deleted what I partially wrote.