Julia Honneffer
5 years ago
We no longer live in the Raleigh area and rely on quality service providers to handle repairs on the house we rent out in Raleigh. In November 2016 our tenant reported that the sewer was backing up. We had Pipetechs come out to camera the line. They charged us $725 but never provided any images or written report. We assumed they did perform the camera service and had the results in their files, and we planned to have them do a repair to the line at a later date (the technician suggested we'd get about 4 years before the roots would cause a blockage again anyway).
In June 2017, our tenant reported issues with his hot water. At that point, we were still on good terms with Pipetechs (we just hadn't scheduled the sewer repair yet and didn't know we should be concerned with having no record of the camera results) so we had them come out to repair the water heater. $537 and three visits later, they called and said they'd done everything they could think to do but couldn't fix it. Our tenant was at the end of his patience so we called someone else, but Pipetechs never refunded us for their unsuccessful repair.
In January 2018, our tenant reported the sewer was backing up AGAIN. Since Pipetechs supposedly had our camera results, we (reluctantly) called them again. We asked that they provide an updated estimate for the repair (which we assumed would be based on the camera findings we had paid for a year before) because paying hundreds of dollars every 13 months to jet it out was not acceptable. Instead, they jetted the line again. My husband called and asked why we didn't get a repair estimate since it didn't make sense to pay for jetting it again when it was going to be dug up anyway, and requested the original camera results. We eventually got an estimate that was to dig out and replace the ENTIRE LINE from the street to the house, taking out a mature tree, etc. etc., which had nothing to do with where the roots were actually penetrating our sewer line (right next to the city line according to the technician who had jetted the line before). We asked for the actual footage from the camera work and were told in February they'd either get it for us or redo the camera, but they never did either. My husband has continued to work with them to resolve the issue, but they don't return his calls or emails and instead today we received a past due bill for almost $500.
I figured it was time to share this information because I see other reviews on here from more recently that describe people having similar problems with Pipetechs. Maybe if I'd written my review when we first realized we weren't getting what we paid for I could have saved others from the hassle of trying to work with this company.
Edit: Only 8 months after the line was cleaned out, the sewer drain is backing up again. The response to this review was offering to provide some credit, but we tried many times to work with them before posting this review - if they actually wanted to provide some credit, they should have contacted us directly - they sure did that when they wanted our money. We've paid them over $1700 and have absolutely nothing to show for it.