Nussbaumer Plumbing

Horrendous service. I was assigned to Nussbaumer Plumbing through my home warranty service. They came out twice to repair my toilet that wouldn't drain. The first time the toilet finally drained without them actually doing anything, so they left without snaking it or doing anything else to repair the problem.
Three weeks later I had to call for exactly the same problem. The second time they told me they would have to pull the toilet and charge me $250 to do so. I told them I could pull it myself in five minutes (which I did). They were still sitting in my driveway when I told them the toilet was out, but they refused to do the work because they "didn't have time" and had already told the home warranty company they couldn't do the work.
I had to call my home warranty company a THIRD time to reschedule a THIRD visit to repair the clog.
Seriously, how many times will they come to my house to clear a clog? Not only is this frustrating for me, but they have to be wasting a ton of their own time and money by not making repairs when they come out...unless this is all a scam and they're just trying to jack up the price by charging ridiculous fees to do a task that takes literally five minutes.
Oh...and while I was on hold with the secretary at the office, I started pulling the toilet. When she came back on the line, I told her I'd be done pulling the toilet in two more minutes and she accused me of LYING because I'd told her it would take five minutes at the start of the call. Clearly, three minutes passed while I was on hold with her.
This was seriously some of the worst customer service I've ever had.

I didn't want to leave a negative review for a business because I believe every business should have the opportunity to resolve an issue when things don't go right with a customer, but based on the owner's responses and reactions when confronted with the problem and evidence, he has resolved to irresponsibly calling his customer a liar and someone just looking to randomly pick a fight to get a service for free, so I feel an obligation to put the truth out there for any other perspective customers of this business, so that you know what you're dealing with!
I had a problem with my laundry drain backing up, so I called Nussbaumer's because of the favorable reviews I saw on the internet. The appointment was scheduled after the weekend, and the first sign of trouble should have been when the tech wasn't here even close to the time that I was given in the original appointment. I was given an update when the technician was on the road, for the record, which is better than no communication.
The technician showed up with a helper and they asked to see where everything was and explain more about the problem. I showed them where the cleanout was in the laundry room, as well as the basement drain that was backing up on the floor. He visually looked at the drain and didn't look at it again. He decided the cleanout would be a better option because the drain had a thin layer of cement over the drain cover.
He pulled the snake machine out of the van and wheeled it in to the cleanout in the laundry room. He put the snake in the cleanout, but before he snaked it, he realized that his machine would be too large/strong/long for the piping of the cleanout and aborted mission. After that, he started thinking about Plan C. His idea was to run piping over from the laundry basin to the stack 10ft away, and connect them into the stack. (There are two separate drain systems in our house, one for "gray water" which is laundry and cleaning chemical drain water, which drains through a gravel drain field, and the other drain system is the septic, which drains into a septic tank that was just cleaned out 4 months ago with a passing flow test, so no problems there.
The technician called Todd on the phone to ask his "expert" advice, and Todd told him that the technician's plan C might be a good idea. The technician measured the distance for piping the laundry drain into the stack, and figured out a rough price with Todd over the phone, and told me it would be about $5,000-$6,000 to jackhammer the floor where the piping would go below the footer in the basement, and the wall would have to be taken out, and replaced. The technician also told me that it might be a good idea to get a drywall guy to do the new wall, otherwise I would be charged a "plumber's rate" which was much higher in the world of Nussbaumer, apparently.
I was a little shocked at the quote, wondering how I was going to come up with the money for this unplanned expense, that didn't seem in the least bit to make sense as a sensible resolution to the current problem, but I'm not a plumber, and rely on their expertise, so I accepted this fate, which is outlined in the uploaded image (if allowed, depending on settings for this platform review). In the bill, the technician outlined that he had "attempted to snake" the cleanout, my drain was "filled with concrete" , and "Todd will call the customer with an estimate (on the future work proposed)". None of this is true. The technician didn't even run the snake machine, there was no concrete in my drain, and Todd never got back to me with a quote on proposed work, despite me reaching out to him countless times.
I had another plumber come out to take a look at our problem, as the backup was getting worse and worse every time we did a load of laundry, and after inspecting the problem, he then looked at the bill and the notes by the technician and laughed out loud. Plumber #2 brought the same snake machine (size and everything!) as this Nussbaumer enterprise, and chipped the drain cover out, removed a bit of mud (couple handfuls) and coast was clear again after snaking it, all in less than 10 minutes time!
Nussbaumer charged me $200 for doing literally NO work, and plumber #2 charged me a fraction of that and actually fixed the problem!!
In the following weeks, I tried calling Todd again, and let his administrative assistant/phone answerers know that I was unhappy with the service provided, and that I would like to speak to the owner. He dodged my calls for 3 weeks without a return call. It was obvious to me that he had no intentions of making this right.
(The internet is great for righting wrongs. I hope a lot of people see this review and make it popular) So I took to the internet and social media when folks were looking for REASONABLE, HONEST, and RELIABLE plumbers, and this guy's name was mentioned, I told the TRUTH. And you know what I got for my honesty? More lies from him, attacking my character, telling me

On 4/2/19 A plumber from Nussbaumer was sent to evaluate my claim for a hot water tank failure for an HSA warranty that was sold through REMAX Realty. The plumber told me that in his opinion, the evidence of the water rust staining on the tank indicates the leak from the tank was long term and did not happen within the timeframe of the warranty. However, that was not accurate. I provided written statements from the home inspection and the HVAC professionals that were onsite on March 5th and March 6th as well as a photos of the hot water tank on 3-5-19 (working hot water tank) and 4-2-19 (failed hot water tank) The home inspector and HVAC professionals stated that during their work and site inspection there was no evidence of a leak (also been documented in photos taken by the home inspector). In addition, my realtor and I completed a walk through of the property on 3/29. No leaks or evidence of hot water tank failure were observed. I am a geochemist and informed the plumber that an observation of rust from water is a redox reaction that can manifest rapidly when water enters an O2 rich atmosphere such as water leaking from inside a hot water tank to the atmosphere, it is not evidence of a long term problem). The plumber then acknowledged he could not support his opinion. I was denied the claim on the unscientific opinion of a plumber, who correctly diagnosed that the hot water tank had failed but had no training or basis for his opinion that it must have been a long term leak. HSA home warranties http://www.onlinehsa.com/ are a scam and these relationships with plumbers are designed to provide work when they are not busy and to avoid paying legitimate claims.