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| - After reading all of the great reviews on Yelp, I really, really wanted to just love #1 Plumbing and make them my go to vendor for all of my plumbing and a/c needs. Like everyone else, I've experienced problems with the hard sell and being taken advantage of.
Unfortunately, I am not able to do that. I've even used them twice in the last month to fully test them out. At the end of the day, they are no better than the other companies out there. Maybe just a little nicer about it.
My first call with them was to get a new hot water heater. I have a 50 gal gas hot water heater that's been on the fritz for the last year where I have to constantly re-light the pilot to hot water and I was getting tired of it.
I priced it out at Lowes to be $925.24 all in. It breaks down to $430.24 with tax for a 6 year 50 gal gas water heater; $99 installation; $118 additional install charge to get it up to code; $104 for parts; $54 for the permit here in Henderson, and $140 to re-pipe the circulation pump that's on the heater.
I then called Number One and the office people passed my number onto Carmine who called me right back. I told him exactly what I wanted including the re-piping to make sure that I got an apples to apples quote. He quoted me $950 which was close enough to Lowes to give the business to Number One and I felt with them, based upon the Yelp reviews, that there weren't going to be any surprises.
When he got to the house, I realized that the circulation pump was on my other water heater. When I asked him what it would cost now that it doesn't have to be re-piped, Carmine, says that it's the same price since they don't charge "extra" for it. But he did give me the Yelp discount which made it $855 which is still about $70 more expensive than Lowes but since he was there already I went ahead with it.
When I mentioned to Carmine at the end of the install about how Lowes was going to be cheaper, he started going off on Lowes complaining about how they use Mexican labor and that their water heaters are manufactured overseas. He boasted about using a Michigan made water heater, Bradford White. But, If you look up the ratings of Bradford White on Amazon, they are pretty horrendous - all in the 1-2 star range lasting about 6 years.
Today, I had Number One out to my house again, this time for an A/C problem. One of my units was blowing hot air. Donovan, the technician came and he was on time arriving at 8am. He did a few tests and determined that the fan motor was going out and I concurred having replaced 4 fan motors in the last 3 years as I own two houses with 7 A/C units here in Henderson and fan motors do fail quite frequently in this desert heat.
I was quoted a rate of $513.02 but since I was a repeat customer I could get a 10% discount and pay "only" $461.70. And I couldn't combine that discount with the Yelp discount. I went ahead and did it just out of convenience as I'm having a bunch of guests coming later this week and didn't want the hassle of dealing with other companies. Out of all of the fan motors that I've replaced in the last 3 years, this was definitely the most expensive having paid anywhere from $250-350 previously.
While Donovan was installing the fan motor, he left the new part box out, so I decided to look up and see how much the hard cost was. It was an AO Smith 1/4hp, 1.4A, 1075 RPM motor, manufacturer part number FSE1026SV1. It was being sold for $87.75!!!! And that price is retail, not wholesale.
Donovan left my house at 843a after he completed the paperwork and I paid him. Even if you were to throw on $30 for shipping and using the retail pricing, Number One made a $344 gross profit for about 45 minutes of work!! and that was with the "discount"!!
Don't let Number One's niceness fool you. You're definitely paying for it.
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