Mr Rooter of San Fernando Valley

I am very happy and satisfied with FRANCISCO and KEITH and the team, workers. They did such a wonderful and clean job. They are highly recommended.

Jay at Mr. Rooter is your guy! He arrived within 30 minutes of our call, put on booties to protect our wood floors, and got straight to work. He figured out where the problem was immediately between the sink and the city line and fixed it in a flash — for less than 100 bucks — and less than they even quoted! He even unclogged my wife’s sink on the way out the door too! If there were 6 stars he would get that too. These guys are great.

Frank was very pleasant to deal with. This was a rental house and I couldn’t be there so he kept me informed all the way through as if I was on there by sending me pictures of every step he took. I was very pleased and my tenant said he was very clean and efficient. I will use Mr Rooter again for my rental property. Thank you Frank.

He was professional and very thorough

Mandel came out this morning and he was awesome! Very Very knowledge and very nice and extremely helpful! Would recommend this company highly! Thanks Mr Rooter!

The company is awesome !!! Abraham was very clear on the explanation about the issue the house has well done mr rooter great personal great plummers

Technician Erick R. was knowledgeable, professional, courteous, and friendly. Indeed, he knew what he was doing. Thank you, Eric!

Mandel Was very helpful and informative with his knowledge of plumbing and generally helpful with all questions I have. Thank you Mandel. Excellent service

oh, also they said my water heater didn’t have a leak. 2 plummers have not confirmed that it has a huge leak that nobody should miss. Totally inept. Please don’t use Mr. Rooter.

Carlos the Dispatcher is very friendly and intelligent. He explained to me that the common, vertical pipes are to be cleaned with a turbojet every two to three years (depending on how much rice and grease people eat) in a condominium because the vertical pipes have to be cleaned out from all of the sludge that the owners push from their horizontal pipes going from the kitchen sink to the vertical pipe. Once the sludge reaches the joint and makes its right angle turn into the main vertical common pipes, some of it stays there. The Home Owners’ Association is supposed to turbo jet the vertical pipes every year or so to clean out the sludge that is left there by the owners. Turbo jetting cleans the vertical pipes from the roof to the basement. The turbo jet costs between $ 700 and $ 1500 and up, depending on how many stories your condominium building has. I learned that if I want clean pipes and a lackluster H.O.A., I should expect to pay about $ 700 to keep my drain pipes clean. I was sad to find out about this unexpected yearly cost of ownership but I was glad to finally have the mystery solve as to why my drain pipes have never been open.
You see, I bought this condo 14 years ago and, while it is the duty of the H.O.A. to maintain the vertical pipes, they never have done so, making the vertical pipes almost completely closed with ancient sludge. Now that I understand the theory as explained to me by Carlos I will always turbojet my portion of the pipe that has to be kept clean in order to avoid getting the pipes clogged with sludge which turns to plaster after a few years.
Then, with clean pipes, I can go to the H.O.A. and make a demand on them to pay for the turbojet (which is their job) and if they do not take responsibility, I can go to small claims court to make the H.O.A. pay me for doing their job. I learned that it is important to make a demand on the H.O.A. for the money before going to small claims court.
One of my problems is that the building inspector did not demand sanitary traps which would direct the plumber’s snake downward. This was a mistake which was made when the building was built in 1978. Now I have to have a sanitary trap built into my system which will be a big help in preventing blockage problems in the future.

The customer service person (Kris) was awesome. Answered all my questions and scheduled me promptly. tech showed up, took care of the problem (running Toilet) .
Great company with good people.
Bob

I had Ken Jr. Out here and he was fast, honest and fair…
Definitely requesting him again for any of my other plumbing needs.
Will recommend him to family and friends !
Sincerely, Joseph

Roto– rootered my plugged kitchen sink quickly and efficiently.
Oscar and Ricardo were professional, clean and very polite!
We had an LA Times coupon and decided to give them a try.
We would use them again…

Mandel is a delight. Brilliant service all round.

Had them out for as clogged drain line which they couldn’t clear out. They wanted to to up sell their services for over $ 1,000 to correct the problem. Had another company come out and cleaned the drain within 20 minutes. BEWARE of their discount coupons as lead ins for their costlier services.

The review from Heidi S. hit the nail on the head… Mr. Rooter LA did their best to totally rip me off.
OK, so where’s the evidence? …this is good:
A. We live is modern 3400 sq ft home, built in 2004… yep we «look rich» but the fact of the matter is my wife and I did all the design work ourselves and hired our own contractors to trick this place out… but. we «look rich!»
B. Had several plumbing issues as follows:
1. Needed the drains in two copper vessel sinks replaced because the ones that came with sink have grates and the surface tension on top of grate causes water not to drain. Bought two pop up replacements from home depot — $ 35 ea.
2. The shower drain in the master bath got blocked up …
3. Needed a recirculating pump installed at water heater in garage. Bought one at home depot for $ 100 and just needed it installed and plugged in.
4. Had a 1″ copper landscape supply line with a pin hole leak. Just needed a small 3 ft section replaced. this involves cutting the pipe in two places and replacing it with two couplers (at each cut end) and soldering each into place. $ 25.00 worth of copper parts.
C. It get’s interesting now:
I get a coupon from Mr. Rooter that says «$ 79.00, we’ll clean out any drain!» I figure they will be reasonable and call up for an appointment.
Next day 08/​15/​2014 Mr. Scott Linder comes out to bid the job… I show him and his assistant around… he nods that each of the above are very simple matters to repair /​fix. I ask him for an estimate prior to his departure and 20 minutes later he hands me this estimate for $ 2588.14.
I guess the 14 cents was needed to make the company’s quarterly revenue projections ?? hmmm. ya think?
Of course I thanked the man and told him I’d get back to him, walked into my home and collapsed from the comedy I just witnessed.
Want to see the estimate? Here ya go!
I figure there should be a sequel to this comedy so I call Scott up and asked him to provide more detail to «explain …to justify» the cost of each item.
Scott emails back… here is the email cut/​paste.
On Aug 18, 2014, at 1:28 PM, Scott Linder mailto: Scott. Linder@​rooterhero.​com wrote:
#1– $ 326.59Each x 2=$ 653.18 (to replace pop up drains)
#2– $ 79.00 (clean shower drain)
#3– Install to code $ 989.41 (Install recirculating pump)
#4– Install to code $ 866.55 (cut and replace 3ft of 1“copper pipe)
Total $ 2588.14
Total time I’m estimating myself and helper around 9 – 10 hour day.
Scott Linder
Rooter Hero Plumbing, Inc.
_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​
So:
# 1 the copper sinks I DIY… takes me 20 minutes per sink to replace the drains. here’s the process:
#2– I call Mr. Rooter up and have another technician come out to ONLY clean the drains… not my bank account. SUCCESS at a reasonable price!!! Takes the guy 15 minutes… Good job dude!
# 3– Recirculating pump… another totally WTF price!
So…I call Normco Plumbing on San Fernando Road… guy comes out the next day and installed the pump by simply uncoupling an existing supply line on top of water heater… total time is 30 minutes and $ 96.
I watch and realize I could have done it myself… but no big deal. happy to pay Normco for being quick and being honest. Here’s the receipt
# 4– Have new neighbor I am talking to who does copper artwork. I tell him about the whole thing and the 3 ft section needing to be replaced. He goes slack jawed at the $ 866.55 estimate Mr. Rooter was going to charge. He comes over the next day and gifts me with 20 minutes of his time and an extra piece of 1″ copper pipe he had.
My total cost is $ 175 between the recirculating pump and drain clean up. The copper pipe replacement should have cost $ 100.mainly for a plumber’s time.
So why have I spent all this time and effort to illuminate the financial travesty that Mr. Rooter LA wanted to bestow upon us? Consumers need to be aware of how they can be taken advantage of.
This type of business conduct and outright ripping off of property owners is something Mr. Rooter LA actually does and gets away with. That’s why Linder came up with his estimate… Figured I was stupid… would shrug my shoulders and say:
«I guess it seems ok? After all Mr. Linder says their work is «To Code’ «
What this means is Mr. Linder /​Mr. Rooter LA understand that most people are ignorant of what «To Code» means and won’t have the patience or take the time to comprehend anything about the actual nature of the work being done.
Mr. Linder/​Mr. Rooter LA business ethics go south when they intentionally defraud their customers through deceitful estimates, bad business practices and take advantage of trusting souls.

Erick R. was great and super knowledgable: arrived on time, easy and quick fix of our clogged sink and gave us great advice how to maintain the pipes and prevent the leakage. Great job!

Keep searching for a plumber because you won’t want to use Mr. Rooter unless you are careless with your money and time. We had a clog in our main pipe and called Mr. Rooter. They came out and told us it would cost $ 1330 to temporarily unclog it because of tree roots interfering with the water flow. First of all, WTF! $ 1330. We negotiated a bit but apparently not enough. Secondly, once we were suckered into it, I felt we didn’t get our money’s worth. Why? Because we got 3 independent quotes to replace the main pipe and they all said what a horrible job Mr. Rooter did and one plumbing service finished the job thereafter. Oh, if I could turn back time…

After a negative experience with Mr Rooter
the company did the honorable
thing and refunded my payment, That’s
says a lot for their business

I live in a condo and one night, I found the water in my kitchen sink rising while I was sitting at my dining table. CRAP. Grab bucket, dump excess water into bathtub fast before it overflows all over my kitchen!
I have no idea how to select a plumber (yes, I tried Unilocal,but it didn’t go so well… sorry, one of the highly rated plumbers in DTLA was quite snippety and I know from a friend’s experience that he has explicitly bought stars in the form of discounts). Having no real leads, I turned to the good ol’ fashioned Yellow Pages and started dialing numbers. After a few tries I reached Mr. Rooter, and so I scheduled my appointment for the next morning at 8 – 10 am. I called back an hour later to change to 9 – 11 am without any problem.
The downer is that it was pushing about 12 pm by the time my plumber came the next day, though I understand that prior plumbing jobs may cause one to run past expected time. However, their customer service was at least kind in answering my calls when I called for an updated ETA.
The plumber they finally sent me, Chris, was a pleasure, and if Mr. Rooter is expensive, then at least the plumber they sent me was honest and looking out for my best interests. He gave me a quote to unclog my sink, $ 395. He said he’d do the job if I wanted him to, but gave me the heads up that the clog is in the common walls and that I should check with the building maintenance staff to see if they would do it first since maintenance of the common pipes are really the responsibility of the building, not the unit owner. And so I brought him with me to the maintenance staff to state the facts, and long story short, as a result of his honesty and professional judgment, he saved me the money of having to pay for plumbing that my building originally didn’t want to take ownership for.
I do feel bad in this case that honesty was not rewarded in kind with my business, but hopefully he is rewarded in kind with good karma, and that someone else has some reassurance that Mr. Rooter does have some honest, professional workers.
That said, I will say what I’ve learned about Mr. Rooter from this experience:
— Dang, $ 395 is a high quote. But I see that it depends on your particular circumstance too, because… (see next point)
— They may be better as emergency plumbers because they’re apparently available ²⁴⁄₇ and don’t charge extra for overtime… in effect, the costs are all-​around higher to take this into account. So it won’t be more expensive to get them on Sunday night at 11 pm, but it also won’t be any less expensive to wait until a weekday morning versus right whenever you need them.
— No charge to come out and give a quote. Probably also why cost of service is also higher… sorry folks that I added onto your costs.
— Call with some kind of coupon or discount in hand if you happen to have one. Apparently everyone else does, according to their call center. No, they don’t have discounts for new customers that I am aware of.
— Take their appointment times with a grain of salt… you’ll probably have to wait, but if you call them, they’ll be kind enough to provide you with as best of an ETA as they can. I optimistically thought it would only take a couple hours out of my workday, but I should have planned to take the whole day off of work (or at a minimum half + lunch) for this.
— I don’t know, everyone else has such poor reviews. I wasn’t happy with the wait time but in the end I was left with a favorable impression. Maybe my situation wasn’t all that complicated.
At least I know a little more about how to pick a plumber next time.