We had a wooden cabinet mounted on our bathroom wall above our toilet that held all of our bathroom essentials, which recently fell on the toilet tank, resulting in a leak. We found a rubber washer on the floor and water leaking from one of the bolts on the bottom of the toilet tank. I put towels down to soak up the water and then set out to find a plumber.

I could probably fix it myself with the proper tools, and a few years ago I would have, but with my new knee now and the other knee getting worse, I thought it best to have a professional to it properly instead of me doing a crappy job and possibly hurting myself. I’ve never been much of a home handyman, that for sure, but even less som these days. If it were a computer or a gadget though, let me at it.

The first place I called (this was last night in the evening) answered promptly and said they’d send the info to their on-call tech and he’ll give me a call shortly. I was impressed they had an answering service. The tech called me back a little bit later and I explained our leak. He said that if he came tonight there would be an additional “after-hours” charge of $125, plus the $100/hr for the repair, or someone could come tomorrow and he could have the office call me in the morning to schedule it. I said it could wait until morning, so I waited for someone to call. In the morning someone called promptly and we scheduled them to come out later in the morning. Shortly afterward someone called me again and said their technician called in sick today, so now the soonest they could come out would be 3:30pm, and they would have to charge me the $125 after-hours fee in addition to the $100/hr for the repair. I told them “If I had known that, I would have just had it done last night for the same price”. So I reluctantly agreed, and it was scheduled. Shortly after that some called back and said, “Based on the details you provided about the toilet issue, you’ll need a new toilet, so which type do you want, round or oval?” Very frustrated, I said “Oval, but I’m going to need to discuss this with my wife before agreeing, so I’ll call you back shortly.” A new oval-shaped toilet would be $380.

Instead of calling Sandy, I called another local plumber. I explained what happened and the issue. They’re $125/hr, a little more than the other one, but they can come out between 1pm and 3pm and repair the toilet. That sounded fine, much better than the minimum $605 the first plumber was going to charge us for everything.

The second plumber arrived within their time window, performed the repairs well, and we’re good to go (literally). Just gotta be careful out there with everything these days. Some companies will try to talk you into things or services you don’t need. Just slow down and look at the details before agreeing to anything. Yelp and Google reviews can also help a lot–I used those when I chose these particular local plumbers.