How to Choose a Plumber

Ok – here we go. We went through a few different plumbers – I’m pretty cheap, so like a rookie the first plumber I chose to for our kitchen reno was chosen because he had the lowest price. In the immortal words of Homer Simpson “D’oh!”. I’ve learned that the cheapest quote can sometimes be the most expensive in terms of stress AND money.

So here’s what I’ve learned about how to choose a plumber:

  1. Be as specific as possible when requesting a quote.Get 2 or 3 of them and don’t necessarily go with the cheapest. Feel free to ask the most expensive company why they are more expensive than the other quotes, if any company wants to see a competitive quote I will share it. Another plumber will see through any BS and should be able to educate you on why the quotes are different and what you should specify with the lower quote. In my experience, a really low quote should actually be a red flag.
  2. Pricing provided over the phone is not always a good thing. For simple jobs like a faucet install, getting a quote over phone or email probably isn’t a problem. For more complex jobs a plumber will need to have a look at what the job really entails to be able to provide an accurate quote.
  3. Tell every plumber that you are getting multiple quotes and will compare – and that price is just one of several factors to be considered.We found that this one tactic typically made every quote come in a little more competitive, sounds silly but it works.
  4. Get references from real people. Online reviews (both good and bad) are notoriously unreliable. Get some real local people to vouch for the plumber you choose.
  5. Pay attention to the guarantee. Not all guarantees are created equally – get it in writing.

If you follow these five steps you will be way ahead of the game , and these steps hold true for any and all trades. We had to kiss a few frogs before we found our Prince(s) . This is a good example of asking a plumber about another company’s quote – they shouldn’t take offense, they should walk you through both their quote and the competitors. In my case there didn’t appear to be any difference that was readily apparent on the quote itself so the plumber doing the estimate for Langley Plumbing Co. gave me a list of questions that I should be asking any plumber quoting a job of this kind (I never would have thought about 90% of them). When I followed his advice it became painfully obvious that what was being quoted was apples vs oranges – I went with the company that gave me a sense of trust in the end. These are the guys we went with, Langley plumbers. If you’re in Surrey look them  up  – they get our stamp of approval.

Oh, one more thing. DO NOT pay for the entire job up front. Agree to pay for materials but don’t pay until the job is done – I can’t stress this enough. If the tradesperson is reputable they shouldn’t have a problem with this. It’s ok to pay as work is completed, but we have had several instances where jobs took forever to complete and we had no leverage as we paid in advance – yet another rookie mistake. Maybe that’s what I should have called this blog – Rookie Reno’s , kind of has a nice ring to it.