Roto-Rooter Plumbing & Water Cleanup — Attraction in Philadelphia

I never write negative reviews, as I usually chalk up less than ideal service to overworked staff who are trying to do their best to provide a service, however, the notable lack of service that I received from Roto-Rooter pierces that threshold.

On a Saturday, when it was about 45 degrees outside, I discovered a gas leak in my home. PGW after inspecting the gas leak rightfully shut off our gas and instructed us that we needed to have the leak repaired before it is turned back on again. My fiancé and I quickly began to call any contractor that we can find to come out as soon as possible. Roto-Rooter picked up quickly and scheduled a time between 8am 11am to come out the following Monday to repair the gas leak.

Besides an electric unit that heats one room in our home, we had no heat in our house with temperatures hovering around 55 degrees Fahrenheit. You can imagine we were eager to have someone come out and finally fix our problem. We received a call that Monday from Roto-Rooter at 8:19am to inform us that a plumber is on route to our home and is 30 to 45 minutes away from his arrival. We didn't talk to anyone from Roto-Rooter again until a plumber called at 9:47am.

During our phone conversation, the plumber notified us that there is no parking in front of our home - a common thing when you live in Philadelphia, a city. The plumber informed us that we needed to reserve parking for him to perform the needed work despite no one from dispatch informing us that we needed to reserve parking. We've had numerous plumbing and contract work done on our home that did not require us to reserve parking. After this exchange, the plumber mentioned that he would have to call his dispatcher and discuss his options. We never heard from the plumber or anyone from Roto-Rooter again.

This review isn't to win back the service we need - we are having someone else fix our issue tomorrow. This review is merely to inform others, that, if you are in a cold house with no heat, and you want someone to pretend like they're going to try to perform a basic service for you, but instead they just strangely ghost you, then you should DEFINITELY go with Roto-Rooter. If you want to pay someone to perform a simple task for you, just go...

This is an update of my review below.

Frank Supervisor for Rota Rooter reached out after my low review. Come to find out I was charged an extra fee that wasn’t supposed to be there which Frank was happy to discount off if I cleared up the misunderstanding.

So I am changing my review to a 5 star as the price is now reasonable for the brand name and like I said they get the job done without any issues with a warranty on their service. Would recommend.

Review from before:

Roto Rooter gets the job done but ridiculously expensive. That is why I am rating a two star.

My technician Bernard # 8784 was great. Very professional, courteous and timely. I don't blame him at all as he doesn't set the prices.

So yesterday I noticed my ceiling was leaking in my office. This is directly below my kitchen -- I saw that my garbage disposal was leaking which it clearly needed replaced.

I got two services done #3405 replace garbage disposal and #3001 "repair leaking PVC S -trap".

This came out to $965 in LABOR! The garbage disposal was $145.90 which was fine.

Thats over $1100 for services that were worth MAYBE $500.

I had an inclination to say good-bye I'll look elsewhere but I am a busy professional and need to use my sink but you know that sinking feeling in your stomach when you know you're being ripped off?

I felt that the entire time.

I wouldn't recommend solely based on their prices. Now if you are in a bind and need someone ASAP, sure go ahead but just be aware of the...

The technician was prompt, courteous, and thorough. Sadly, the outcome is far worse than I had expected, and although my pipes are currently flowing, they're is about 20ft of completely eroded pipe. If I pick RR to repair this before next Wednesday, they will credit me the cost of the initial visit. More to come once I make some decisions.

Additional detail: Not only have they taken me on my word that I have cash coming from a 401k loan to cover the work, but they came out yesterday to clear it again and have stated they will do the same today if necessary. Today is Thanksgiving. So one thing I absolutely, most certainly am thankful for is Roto Rooter of Philadelphia.

More thoughts:

There is the long known truth when doing business or scoping out work. It goes as such: cheap, fast, and good. Pick any 2.

So you can get something done cheap and fast but it won't be good. Or you can get something done cheap and good but it won't be fast. I am putting my money on RR doing this project fast (tomrrow) and good (no more grey/black water in my crawlspace or utility room) cause the job ain't cheap :)

Final update: It has been about a week since the work that was done and we are 100% clog free! Thanks again RR. 100%...