How We Dealt with Our First Bad Review

Did you know that we recently received our very first bad review?

In the video below, we show you how we dealt with this bad review.

Just to let you in on a little secret

We are not awesome all the time. We make mistakes or overlook things. Most plumbers in our company do make mistakes.

There’s a lot of plumbers that don’t make mistakes out there, but that’s not us. We’re always trying to continually get better and improve every day.

Also, there is a saying that you’ve probably heard of: there are two sides to every story. Well, there’s actually two sides to every review as well.

We’ve just copped a one-star review on Facebook from a job that we did semi-recently.

What Happened

We went out to a blockage job. On the first phone call, there wasn’t any mention about what sort of blockage it was, which is fine. When Josh went out there to have a look, the basin was really badly blocked. It wasn’t flowing much at all. So he’s gone out there with the jetter and he’s working it away until he hit something solid. It turned out to be little bits of concrete and rock that are coming out of the basin pipe.

Anyway, he thought something’s gone wrong here, so he shoved the camera up the drain, and there’s a massive clump of concrete. He’s knocked most of it away on this bend. During the build or renovation, it must have gone in there and blocked it up.

So he said to the customer, “Look, I’ve done as best I can. The best thing to do is probably to put a little bit of hydrochloric acid in there and it’ll break down that concrete block, and then hopefully it’ll flow down.”

There was talk of a shower being blocked as well. And we’ve got a video on the job that it was a little bit slow draining. But anyway, obviously Josh overlooked that.

The Review

Twelve days later, after the job, we copped this review. It’s from a bloke named Robert Attwood Taylor. And he says, “We paid $350 for and unresolved blocked pipe, the plumber told us to pour hydrochloric acid down the pipe, wait 48 hours and hope for the best. That was dangerous and didn’t work. We had to get another plumber in to fix the problem in 5 minutes, he just looked in a different pipe. Beautiful Plumbing has all the gear and no idea. Would not recommend at all.”

Now, that’s not a great review. Hard to read. We’ve called up Robert, and said, “What happened here? Which pipe did he pull out?”

So the plumber has come down there. He stuck his hand down the DG and pulled out a clump of roots that Robert said, and he pulled it out from the shower. We said we didn’t know that shower was blocked.” Robert said, “Oh yeah. We let them know.”

Okay. That’s cool. So he’s pulled it out. We asked, “What about the basin? Did he get the rock out?” And Robert said, “Oh, no, no, that must still be in there.” So we don’t know if it’s flowing, maybe the hydrochloric did work.

We Understand, Give Us a Chance

Now to tell you the truth, if it was our house and we’ve paid 350 dollars to get a plumber out to unblock a drain, and the shower might’ve been blocked, that’s something that I would expect the plumber to have a look at. We would expect them to see if there’s any roots in there and clear it out while they were there. Especially if they’ve got all the gear. So that’s fair enough. We’d be annoyed too.

But at that point, that’s when we’d put on our big boy pants and call the company and give them a chance to see if they could resolve it. And a company like ours, of course, we’re going to talk about it. We’re going to come to the party. If we’ve overlooked something, then sure, you’re going to be compensated for that. We’ll come to an arrangement. That’s what you do. Give us a chance. But Robert never gave us a chance. He skipped straight over to Facebook and gave us a one star review, which is fine.

Sorry and Thank You

Robert, thank you so much for giving us a review. We really appreciate it because now it puts a spotlight on what issue that we had on that day. That would go into a toolbox meeting for us to talk about this situation that we’ve had at your job. How we’ve overlooked the shower and how we should’ve pulled those roots out. And then all the other guys that work for us are going to hear about this situation. So hopefully this will never happen again to another customer. And so we won’t disappoint another customer, like we’ve let you guys down.

So anyway, thanks for review. We’re continually trying to get better every day and try and improve things. We’re all about customer service. Sorry that we make mistakes.

But if Beautiful Plumbing ever makes a mistake on your house or damages something, then give us a call and we’ll come to a resolution and make sure you’re happy.