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The Biggest Reasons Homeowners Feel Dissatisfied by Plumbers

Plumbing Repair

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I think there are a couple of primary reasons why people are dissatisfied or don’t feel like they got what they wanted from their plumbers. What I’m going to share is based upon my experience in the industry and feedback I’ve received from some of our clients. (Their feedback pertained to both us and other providers.) I don’t want to come across dramatic while addressing this subject, either. We’re not working on the human body and this isn’t brain surgery, so I don’t want to make it sound that way. However, plumbing is really important in ways we might not always consider.

If you have someone come to work on your home’s plumbing system, you shouldn’t minimize the value of hiring a professional. Part of that involves taking the time to make sure all the details are covered. Someone who works on electrical or water in your home could cause a huge amount of damage by causing a water leak or flood. Gas lines or gas water heaters involve carbon monoxide, which can be a silent killer. A sewage backup in your home could cause you to come into contact with disease-ridden waste. The bottom line is, we have to protect the safety and health of homeowners, which should never be underestimated.

A lot of times, though, I think the reason people become disappointed is because of the lack of adequate communication. A lot of homeowners fall short by just leaving the door open for a plumber to take care of a small issue in the home. Even though it might just be a dripping fixture, that kind of thinking can really set the stage for mistakes to happen. We always want to have someone at home if possible when we make a visit. That allows us to make sure we discuss the situation as effectively as possible. We can also ask questions about what’s going on, which is really crucial to resolving the problem correctly on the first visit. After all, nobody wants to have multiple visits from a plumber if it could have been taken care of properly the first time.

I’d recommend that you communicate clear expectations and also make sure the plumber has communicated exactly what results you should expect. As a company, we should explain when we’re on our way to someone’s home, what we found after investigating the situation, and how much everything is going to cost in a straightforward way so that you have no unanswered questions. Clear communication across the board is the most proactive way to prevent disappointment.

Sometimes people in the plumbing industry don’t value training and staying at the cutting edge of innovation. Items like tankless water heaters can be very difficult to diagnose if someone has never had any training with them. Homeowners also might not like paying big dollars for plumbing, and therefore might choose someone who charges less. (The trades are not inexpensive if you hire a qualified professional.) But I highly recommend against spending a couple of hundred dollars for someone who’s likely to do the job incorrectly. Not only will this lead to dissatisfaction, but it will end up costing twice as much in the long run when you throw your money into the wind.

If you have any questions or you want to work with the team at Wisler Plumbing & Air, contact us today or give us a call at 540-483-9382.

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The most important thing for us to do as a company is make sure the right person goes to the right call. Everyone loses when that doesn’t happen. If we send a technician who doesn’t have the relevant competency out to someone’s home, they will be frustrated because they struggled to complete the task. The client is going to be very frustrated, too, because their concern was not efficiently resolved. Time is very important to everyone, so if we have to go back to do something twice, it’s absolutely no fun for anybody involved. We’re very much keyed-in to trying to get the right tech on the right job so these things don’t end up happening.

It can be very challenging to pull this off sometimes, though, because we may not fully understand the issue that we’re sending someone out for. Sometimes we’re making educated guesses about what potentially could be going on, so we have to compensate when we’re assigning the job to a technician. We also have a lot of technicians who specialize in a certain area. For instance, our plumbing technicians don’t cross over to HVAC and vice-versa. Our maintenance technicians specialize in maintenance and are not service technicians.

We always look at the skill level of the technician and the skill level required for the actual task being requested and try to match them up. That way we can divvy out jobs and tasks to the individuals who are specialized in those areas. If they do a specific kind of task day in and day out, they’re going to be much better at it than someone who might run three HVAC calls, four plumbing calls, and a couple of water treatment calls every week. If a technician was constantly doing different tasks, they’d never find a groove. We think the best strategy is to have specialties within our techs so we can field the right person for the job.

We also look at the priority of the call. For instance, no-heat calls and no-water calls are very important and generally are given a higher priority over a dripping sink faucet. We also give priority to our Diamond Club family members as one of the benefits of the program. When one of our Diamond Club family members calls in for service or maintenance, we try to give them priority over someone who isn’t a Diamond Club family member.

We have a role in our company that is entirely dedicated to dispatching technicians. Kresta is our dispatcher here, and she has a couple of people who back her up while she’s away. (She’s been with us for about 7 or 8 years now.) She’s very capable of getting a handle of any situation and knowing how to match a technician’s skillset with the task. The dispatcher’s role is ultimately to get the right call to the right tech as the calls come in.

If you have any questions, reach out to us today by giving us a call at 540-483-9382. You can also request an appointment online if you’d like to get a technician out to your home for plumbing or HVAC maintenance or repair.

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There are 3 types of services available in HVAC, plumbing, and even water treatment: maintenance, repair, and replacement. Maintenance describes a proactive effort to prevent downtime and maximize the usefulness of a system. Repair is when something in a system has broken and you’re having to react to the situation. It could be when you don’t have any heating or cooling, or when your drain gets stopped up. (This is what we would call a demand situation.) Last is replacement, which sometimes becomes necessary during repair or maintenance. This is when one or more existing components of a system must be changed out for a new component.

Repairs are generally urgent in manner. If you lose the heating in your house when it’s cold outside, you’ll want the situation resolved as soon as possible. We have to do a good job with managing these kinds of urgent demands and get to the client’s house. There can be a lot of pressure and anxiety that comes with a repair, so we try to do our best to prioritize it over something less urgent. Any repair (which involves reacting to a situation) will have a service charge associated with it. We have a $79 service charge for non-Diamond Club family and a $49 service charge for our Diamond Club family.

What that service charge covers is our ability to bring a well-stocked truck to the home with a qualified technician. The technician diagnoses the situation, figures out what’s going on, and then presents the homeowner with a list of options. Before we do any work that would cost more than that initial service charge, we make sure the homeowner is given options in writing about what’s available for them to move forward and repair their system. If it cannot be repaired, the options would include a potential strategy to replace whatever component is affected.

In general, an HVAC repair is potentially going to range between $300 and $600. Of course, there are repairs that are higher or lower than that range, but that’s a good average amount to get an understanding. It really depends on the system’s age and the type of parts it uses. A high-efficiency system has parts that can be very expensive if they’re not under warranty, so it really depends on the specific situation.

If you’re having cooling or heating issues in your home that need immediate attention, Wisler Plumbing & Air prioritizes those kinds of situations so they can be resolved as soon as possible. Diamond Club family gets a reduced service charge, too. To learn more, contact us online or give us a call at 540-483-9382.

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Sometimes companies can be fearful of talking about a topic like satisfaction guarantees for a couple of reasons. One is because if someone is not satisfied, we have to take ownership of our mistake, and that doesn’t always feel very good. Another reason is because we can be fearful of people taking advantage of a company’s guarantee.

Our satisfaction guarantee is there to remove the risk of people doing business with us. If we offer a 100% satisfaction guarantee, there’s zero risk in choosing us. We’re a team of humans, so we’re imperfect and we do mess up sometimes. As we’ve always learned, the main thing isn’t the adversity itself—it’s how you respond to it that really matters. We’ll do what we need to in order to resolve any concerns.

In my experience, I’ve found that people don’t want to take advantage of you. It turns out that clients are truly concerned that we’ve done something wrong and we need to take ownership of it. For example, we deal with excavation and sometimes rainstorms will cause mud to run somewhere it’s not supposed to be. We try to answer those concerns and get them resolved promptly, but it can be very difficult when working with Mother Nature. Because the client’s satisfaction is very important to us, we try do do whatever we can to resolve the situation.

Not too long ago, we had a job where we were busting up the concrete in a home. We have a process to keep the dust level down, but unfortunately, we dropped the ball in that area and there was a dust issue in the home. We fielded the customer’s concern, addressed the issue, and got the area cleaned up. We did what we needed to do in order to leave the customer satisfied.

I’m working on a situation right now because we subcontracted a pipe lining company from eastern Virginia to line a sewer 12 years ago. We applied the appropriate warranty to the lining, which was 50 years. Unfortunately, the subcontractor isn’t standing behind the work they did. So we are standing behind it. The bottom line is, when I look at the quote that was given to the customer, it clearly and simply states the work done and the warranty we provided. It’s costing us a great deal of money now, but I was personally in that client’s home and I said we would do the right thing to resolve her concern.

The customer agreed to work with us because they had confidence that the problem would be resolved and wouldn’t come up again in the future. Even 12 years later we’re still making sure our commitment is being honored. Sometimes an issue isn’t really resolved and we have to do extra work at our own expense. We must make the choice to do the right thing, even though it might not always be very fun.

If you have any questions, contact us today or give us a call at 540-483-9382.

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There are definitely more benefits to a tankless water heater than any potential disadvantages, so I’ll get the two cons out of the way. First and foremost, if your residence doesn’t have either natural gas or LP gas, and electricity is all that’s available, you can take tankless water heaters off of the table (unless you’ve already decided to add gas to your home). This can definitely be a frustration point when choosing a new water heater. Tankless water heaters that use natural gas or LP gas are the only effective option. Unless it’s a secondary getaway cabin that doesn’t get much use, we do not recommend electric tankless water heaters.

The other con is the sheer upfront cost of a tankless water heater. Of course, you’ll get a lot of benefits by investing in a tankless water heater, but it’s going to be one of the most expensive options. You’d have to factor in what you’re actually getting for what you’re spending upfront in order to justify the cost. With those two potential cons out of the way, let’s get into all the benefits you’ll experience by deciding to get a tankless system.

The small size of the system is one of the first benefits that comes to mind. A tankless water heater hangs on the wall, which frees up the space where a larger tank system would be. This is especially useful in an apartment or smaller residence where space is at a premium. (Some tank water heaters can be unusually large in size, too.) In the right situation, like in a closet, it can really make a big difference.

Next, the lifespan of a tankless water heater is nearly twice that of a tank water heater. Yes, it’s much more of an upfront cost, but it starts to pose a very attractive cost of ownership over its lifespan. Going from a 50 gallon electric water heater to a gas tankless water heater can actually save 70% on your electric bill. If running your tankless water heater would cost about $180 a year, an electric tank water heater would have definitely exceeded $600 a year (or more, based on age). It’s a big overall cost savings when you combine the total cost of ownership and overall efficiency.

One of the coolest benefits of a tankless water heater pertains to something we’ve all experienced at least once. Think back to the last time the hot water ran out and you had to take a cold shower. A tankless water heater provides endless hot water as long as you provide some kind of fuel and power. You can fill up a large soaking tub in one go, take a long shower, or let several family members take consecutive showers without running out of hot water. Those things might not have been practical with a tank water heater. It’s really great when you don’t have to wonder if you’re going to have to take another cold shower.

If you have any questions about tankless water heaters, or you’re trying to decide which is best for your home, contact us today or give us a call at 540-483-9382.

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Most of us probably don’t think about routine maintenance very often. We wouldn’t want to either, because maintenance can be a pain. It costs money and it takes time out of our schedule. But I think we’d all agree that if we didn’t change our car’s oil, we’d have to buy a new one much sooner. Maintenance isn’t very fun, but it’s even less fun to buy an expensive replacement earlier than we’d have to otherwise. So do people really need to maintain their plumbing systems and heating and air systems? It’s absolutely in everyone’s best interest, just like maintaining the yard, painting the walls, or changing a car’s oil.

Sometimes it’s harder to see the benefits of HVAC or plumbing maintenance because it’s not tangible or immediately visible to our eyes. The quality of the air we breathe inside our homes is invisible but incredibly important. All the air in our home travels through the HVAC system’s heat exchanger or condenser. If the system isn’t maintained, the air is going to pick up contaminants, dust particles, and allergens and get dispersed throughout the home. There are very real health benefits to maintaining your water source, too, primarily because our drinking water often comes from the plumbing system. How well it’s maintained (especially the water heater or well) will determine the level of contaminants in your water.

Maintenance also allows systems to reach their full potential. Just like you’ll get more mileage out of a car if you perform regular oil changes, your HVAC and plumbing systems will last much longer with regular maintenance. You can do some of the maintenance yourself, like changing the air filter or connecting a hose to the bottom of the water heater to flush it out. But other maintenance requires a professional, like cleaning the internal parts of the HVAC system or changing the anode rod in the water heater’s tank. Anything you do in terms of maintenance will increase the potential lifespan of that particular system.

One of the things that nobody ever likes is overpayment. Whenever a heating & air system or water heater isn’t maintained, I can almost guarantee that it’s causing you overpayment when it comes to the electric or gas bill. In this sense, HVAC and plumbing maintenance has a return on investment because the increased efficiency will reduce your utility payments every month. Yes, it might be a little costly to have that maintenance done upfront, but it’ll definitely pay you back dividends.

Wisler Plumbing & Air doesn’t change the oil in people’s cars, sadly. But the good news is that we have an awesome program called the Diamond Club. Included in the club is plumbing maintenance, water heater flushing, and water heater inspection once per year. It also includes two yearly heating & air visits: one for the hot season and one for the cool season. During these visits, we check the system to make sure it’s working properly. (Cleaning, part replacement, or component maintenance isn’t included.) For one reasonable price, we get all of this done as part of the Diamond Club program. If you have questions, just contact us today or give us a call at 540-483-9382.

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