Plumbing Reviews

My husband Sean has been a plumber since he was 19 and he can be under a house in a crawl space with water dripping on his neck and still feel guilty about a ringing phone. So he answers it. From the crawl space. With the customer able to hear every bit of what he thinks about the situation, which is not always fit for a kitchen speaker. He is not mean. He is wet, he is upside down, and he is trying to hold a fitting and a conversation at the same time, and the conversation loses. After Launchbarr, the reviews started saying things I had to read twice. A lady whose water heater let go on a Sunday wrote that the girl who answered was calm, told her how to shut the water off, and had Sean there by two. I know that girl's secret. Sean does too, which is the funny part, because he fought getting a Voice AI for a month on the grounds that nobody talks to his customers but him. These days he climbs out, dries off, and reads the notes like a man reading a report from a really good apprentice. Last week he told me, "Grace, if she ever learns to solder, I am retiring early and you can run the whole show with her."

I am a master plumber and I have heard every version of the same sentence, usually at 2 in the morning, standing in somebody's water: you are charging me what, just for coming out? I used to stand there in wet shoes doing math out loud and apologizing for my own prices, which is a terrible way to run a business and a worse way to be talked to in the middle of the night. Our website now has a page, in normal words, about what an emergency call involves and what happens first when we get there. I did not write it to be pretty. I wrote it because I was tired of the fight. A man whose sewer backed up during his daughter's graduation party told me he read that page twice while he waited, and when I got there he just said, "Do what you need to do, I get it now." That has happened more than once since. I still get the odd hard case, I am a plumber in Louisiana, that is the deal. But I walk in with a head start now, and I do not spend the first ten minutes defending the price of the truck rolling. Deanna spent too many years doing that.

I dispatch for Gus, who would forget his own birthday if the board did not remind him. Great plumber. Walking pile of good intentions. Jobs got done right, then nobody told the customer we were coming, so they were in the shower, or at work, or had given it to somebody else. Now the on my way and reminder messages go out on their own. A customer told Gus she picked us because, her words, "your office runs like a real office." This office is a desk, me, and a coffee maker that leaks. Gus tells people the messages are smarter than us before coffee. Then he goes and does beautiful work. Fair trade.

It is 117 in August and I was under a house a town over when the phone went off in my pocket, which is where news goes to die. Burst line, lady, water everywhere. The AI answered it, got her address and her shutoff handled, and I called her back with clean hands ten minutes later. She told her son we must have grown because our girl was so on top of it. Eddie has no girl, no office, a truck with a busted visor. She can answer my phone any time she wants.

I have been the night phone for this company for twenty one years. Burst line at 1 a.m., I am the one who answers it, half asleep. The voice Launchbarr put on our phones answers those calls now, calm as Sunday morning, and walks people through shutting their water off before I ever see the note. A lady two towns over told me she almost hung up and called the next name, then the girl talked her off the porch and into the shutoff valve. Dale sleeps with both eyes closed now. That is new.

Mark left a burst water heater call on voicemail at 9 p.m. because he was under our own house fixing our own leak. I laid there sure that job was gone by morning. It was not. The people texted the number, got answered back and forth like a person was awake, and were booked for 8 a.m. with the tank size already in the notes. Mark walked in knowing what he was hauling. I did not lose sleep. He did not lose the job.

I do not ask for reviews. I know I should, every class and every salesman says so, but standing in somebody's kitchen asking them to say nice things about me on the internet feels like begging, and I did not build this company to beg. So for years my happy customers told their neighbors and my angry ones told the whole internet, and you can guess which side of that showed up when somebody searched my name. After we signed with Launchbarr, the ask started going out on its own after every finished job. I never see it happen. I just started getting calls that began with, I read your reviews. A woman on a repipe across town told me she picked me because three different people mentioned I showed up when I said and left the house cleaner than I found it. I did not write a word of that. My customers did, because somebody finally asked them at the right moment instead of me working up the nerve at the wrong one. My office girl, who is also me on a good day, says the reviews are just my reputation finally written down. She is right. We always did the work. Now the work talks a little.

Nick is my brother and my partner, and he will tell you himself he would rather repack a faucet in a flooded basement than make small talk on a listing page. I run the front of this shop. For ten years our Google page had a picture of a building we moved out of in 2016 and a phone number that rang a fax line we did not own anymore. Launchbarr cleaned the whole thing up, right address, our real truck, drain work and water heaters and repipes all listed plain. A landlord across the county with four duplexes told me he found us on the map, saw we were four minutes from his worst property, and called before he called his handyman. That one call turned into a standing account. Nick grunted when I told him. From Nick, that is a parade.

I quoted a whole house repipe for a man in the next county in March, and he said he needed to talk to his wife. It usually means I never hear from him again, and for two weeks I did not. In the old days that quote died in the folder on my desk, because calling a man back to ask if he decided feels like begging and I am too proud for it. The follow ups went out without me having to swallow that pride. He answered the third one, said the other bid came in lower but the man never called back once, and asked when we could start. We repiped his house the next week. He told me at the kitchen table, you were the only one who acted like you wanted the job. Curtis always wanted the job. He just never wanted to chase it.

I am the son, which means Dad hands me every job with a screen involved. The reminders and the on my way texts fixed his pet peeve, rolling up to a water heater install and finding nobody home. Now the customer gets reminded, gets a text when the truck leaves the shop, and is standing in the driveway when we pull in. An older man two towns over told Dad last month, your boy runs a tight ship, because the text said 9 and we knocked at 9:04. That boy is a computer. Dad did not correct him. He just said thank you and drained the tank.

I miss calls. I am under houses, I am in crawl spaces with my phone in the truck, and a burst pipe does not care where my phone is. I used to climb out, see the missed call, ring back, and get the sentence every plumber knows by heart. Never mind, we got somebody. Now the second my phone misses one, that caller gets a text from my number asking what is going on. By the time I am out from under the house, half of them have already told the text what burst and where, and I am calling back with answers instead of apologies. A woman across town told me she stayed with us because the text came so fast she figured we must run a big shop. Howard is the shop. The text is just faster out of the crawl space than me.

I run the phones at our shop and I can tell a good website from a bad one by my afternoon. The old one made my phone ring with people asking if we do drains, if we come to their town, if we are even open. The new one has our real work on it, the sewer replacement across town with the trench open, Pete in the picture, our name on the truck. Now callers open with the job, not the questions. One man said, I saw the picture of that big dig, that is what I need. I booked him before Pete finished his coffee.

I am not a bank. I have to say that first because for years I acted like one. I would finish a water heater, shake a hand, leave an invoice on the counter, and then spend the next month being a collections department in a plumbing shirt. Chasing money I already earned was the part of this business I hated most, and it was eating the part I love, which is the work itself. The payment link changed the shape of that. The invoice goes to the customer's phone before my truck leaves the street, they tap it, and the deposit on the next job lands before we roll. A property manager across town who used to take forty days to pay told me his office prefers it, one tap and it is in their system with a receipt. He paid a heater swap the same afternoon we finished it. I stood in his parking lot staring at my phone like it had done a magic trick. I still do the same work with the same hands. I just quit financing it for free. My accountant asked what changed. I told her the bill finally travels as fast as the truck.

Tanya owns this company. She is a master plumber and she runs the crews. What she does not have is a second brain for the phone side, and neither do I. Calls came to the office line, texts came to her cell, Facebook messages sat in an app she opened on Sundays, and every Monday started with us digging through four places. Everything lands in one place now, the call from the lady one town over with the sewer smell, the text thread with the landlord two towns away. Tanya walks in and starts assigning instead of excavating. She said, it is all in one pile now instead of five.

January in Minnesota is not a marketing season, it is a weather event. When it gets to twenty below, pipes freeze in houses whose owners did fine all December, and the calls do not spread out politely. They land on the same Tuesday. Launchbarr sent freeze warning reminders to our past customers before the cold snap this year, the close your cabinets, let a faucet drip, know where your shutoff is kind of note, with our name on it. We still got emergencies, you always do, but we also got calls from people whose pipes did not burst because they did the drip thing, booking the softener work they had been putting off. One man across the county told me, your note saved my basement, so the least I can do is give you the bathroom too. I will take gratitude as a sales plan.

Arne is my partner. He has a rule he will say out loud in front of customers: we do not close when people need us most. For thirty years that rule meant Arne's phone, Arne's Christmas, Arne's anniversary dinner getting up from the table. This year the calls got answered and sorted over the holidays without him holding the phone. Real emergencies got to the on call man with the story already written down. Arne ate his whole dinner this year, start to finish, at the table. His wife looked at me across the ham and said, whatever that costs, keep paying it. I intend to.

My jobs used to live in three places: a notebook in the truck, sticky notes on the dash, and my head. I dropped balls I never even saw fall. A callback I promised on a Tuesday would surface in my brain the next Monday, in the shower, too late to be anything but an apology. Everything is on one board now. Every lead, every job, what stage it is in, who owes who a call. I look at it with my coffee and the day is just laid out. My lead tech said last week, boss, you have not asked me what happened to that big main line job in a month. He is right. I know what happened to it. It is on the board, finished, paid, reviewed. My head has room in it again.

I am the lead tech at our shop, not the owner, so I never booked my own day. I just showed up and got handed whatever the office had. Half the time I was driving to a house where nobody knew I was coming. Now people pick their time on the website and I watch my day fill in the night before, drain calls in the morning when I like them, a heater in the afternoon. A snowbird down here for the season booked a garbage disposal from her couch in Ohio before she flew down. She told me at the door, I scheduled you like a pizza.

I have never answered a bad review in my life. Because I read a one star review at 10 p.m. and anything I type at 10 p.m. is going to sound like a man arguing in his own kitchen, and that helps nobody. The replies go out now without me typing them, and the one fellow who was mad about a Saturday call got a calm answer saying we were sorry and to call me direct. He did. We fixed his problem and he changed it to four stars on his own. My daughter read the reply thread and said, Dad, you sound so reasonable online.

Frank does beautiful pipe work and terrible small talk online, so for years our Facebook just sat there. His cousin liked it. Now the messages get answered, questions asked like a person is awake, and jobs land on the board booked. A landlord messaged at 11 at night about a tenant's drain and woke up to an appointment. He told Frank, your girl is sharp.

I joined my dad's company to run the ads because I am the only one in the family who does not flinch at a spreadsheet. Dad's rule was simple: if the phone rings, it worked, and if it did not, it did not. That is a hard way to spend money. The ads Launchbarr runs for us stick to the towns we actually cover, and I can see which ones bring the water heater calls and which ones bring the drain calls, We killed a drain ad that sounded good and only brought price shoppers from two counties away, and put the money on the heater side. Dad asked me last month how I knew. I played him a call. He listened to the whole thing, nodded once, and went back to his pho. From Dad, that is a board meeting.

My customers tell on themselves. The thank you message that goes out after we leave, with a little check in a few days later, started bringing me names. A man whose line we cleared in the next town over sent his brother in law, then his pastor. Two jobs, no ad, just a note that asked at the right time.

I have run this office for nine years, and the owner is a good plumber and a good man who cannot say no and cannot keep a list. Half my job used to be detective work. Who did we promise a call back? Which estimate is still open? Did anybody ever check if that big repipe job got its invoice? I kept it in a spiral notebook and in my head, and when I took a vacation the whole place held its breath. Now the system keeps the list. It tells me each morning who needs a follow up and when, which estimate went quiet, which customer is waiting on a part. I took a full week off in August for the first time in nine years. The owner called me once, on my last day, to ask where the good pens were. A customer told me on the phone last week that our office has gotten so organized it is scary. I told her, it is not scary, it is a list that does not live in my head anymore. She does not know the half of it, and she does not need to.

Ed is my cousin and my partner. I am the one who pushes. When I said we needed real estimates, sent fast, before the customer called the second company, Ed said people around here respect a man who calls back when he says he will. Ed is not wrong. Ed is just slow about it, and slow loses water heater jobs, because a cold shower makes philosophers of nobody. Now when Ed looks at a heater, the price goes to the customer's phone while he is still wiping his hands. Options, plain words, tap to approve. A man across town told me he picked us because our quote was in his hand before the other company returned his first call. He said, you boys act like you want the work. We do. We just used to act like it a day late.