Finding A Plumbing Company Near Me

On today’s show. How do you find a plumber in Houston?

Yeah,

I’m John Eccles. Richard Saad. Question of the day, right? Absolutely. We’re all going to the Internet to find goods and services. Get things done at the house by things I need for the house, right? Sure. I’m googling plumbers near me, plumbers in Houston. I need a plumber. Yeah. How do I find a plumber? But really what you should be asking is you should be looking or asking, how do I find a good plumbing company? That’s right. There is a big difference between a plumber and a plumbing company. So what do we do, John? How do we find somebody I need help. I need it now. I don’t ever use a plumber or less or it should be a plumbing company, right? I don’t ever use them. I don’t find them. So you know, most people, well after they go to Google and they put that search in plumber near me, plumbers in Houston, whatever the search is that they’re looking for, don’t like gives you a list and it normally shows you some adequate folks. First thing is that you want to make sure that the, uh, I’m with you. It should be a plumbing company, not a plumber. There’s a big distinct difference in that there’s guys out there that know plumbing, but they might not be qualified as the state would say as a plumbing company and the big worry is there. If you get a one man, one van guy, you know, solo guy and he comes in, does your plumbing one, are you sure that he has the insurance to back it up? Right. That’s a big deal. Is he insured? So if he damaged some in your home, he’s going to have, you know, the adequate coverage for that too. Man. It’s a smaller company like that. You’re just so weary that if they do any sort of work that requires warranty work and something doesn’t go right, park gets worn out. It’s a manufacturer defect, whatever it is, are they going to be around to suffice and take care of that warranty? Let me tell you something a little bit more. Sure. Scary

actually, and this happens if you don’t have the proper licensing. John and I are both master plumbers, but that doesn’t mean we can come to work at your house. We cannot, we have to have a company behind us to be able to do work at your house. Technically we can. We cannot. We have a plumbing company boy. Yeah. Okay. I see how you’re thinking. We have a plumbing company. Yes. If we were so low, we were so low plumbing. Right. We can’t just go do work at your house. Now in saying what you’re saying, if you’ve got an individual that has insurance, right, that doesn’t mean that his insurance is gonna cover the damage that he creates by any stretch of the means. It also means if you’ve got to pick it up with your insurance, they might not pay either. Because if you’re not hiring a plumbing company and you’re hiring a guy with a plumbing license, but it still makes him a handyman. Yeah. Because he doesn’t have all the required, uh, legal authority to hold himself out as a plumbing company. Your insurance can still deny the claim. Yeah. There’s a whole host of issues that can happen to you. You have no idea what we’ve seen through the years that the cat can actually happen. Absolutely. So when you’re googling plumbers near me, right? Yup. You’ve got a list of tons of different companies that are coming up. They’re coming up on the first page, second page. It just keeps going.

You got some options, right? You got some options. The funny thing is I don’t think that you have a lot of them. I know that there’s not, I know that there’s a lot on the page. There really is. But I think when it comes down to the adequate options that you really have, it comes down to a handful. And the reason why I say that is, is if you take out the, the, the one offs and you, and you look at the plumbing companies, you know, things that you’re really going to look for. You know what we tell all our customers and I’m sure that everybody does this. I do this when I shop for a lot of things. You know, you look at reviews. So you want a company that has, uh, several reviews, right? Not Five. You want someone that has enough reviews that you deem is worthy of calling them. Okay. They’ve obviously service some people, they’d been in some homes. Now you can get a good almost report card of how that company is. You know, obviously a lot of people use Google. Google is very popular. Google reviews, you know, so not only you looking for good reviews, you’re looking for a number of views. Someone that has one five star review to me is not as good as someone that’s a 4.8 with 500 reviews.

Yeah. Or even a 4.5 yeah. Or Yeah. Yeah. I mean, anything over a four two is good. You know, you’re not going to make everybody happy all the time. Right. But that is not possible. But what you want is enough people reviewing a company, right. Specifically the plumbing company, so you can make a good decision.

Yeah. So that report card looks solid. You know, the other great thing about Google is they have Google verified companies. Now, I don’t know if anybody knows what that is or not, but let me educate you real fast. These are company that had been vetted by Google that Google says, yes, this is a good company. They have great with standing with their customer base, go, oh go go. Google actually gives them a, the customer, some sort of a insurance if they go through that avenue. Yeah. Which is a pretty neat thing. So if you get a chance, you need to look that up. Google verified companies and there’s like a little thing that you can click on it. It tells you the whole rigamarole battle. Hey, guess what? We’re a Google certified. We are Google Santa verified. Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. And it wasn’t easy. It wasn’t easy. It’s not easy.

It’s tough to hurdles and hoops and make, you got to jump through for that. So beyond reviews now, so now you got a good couple of good reviews companies, right? Everybody’s looking good. What’s the next thing you want man? Me, I, I like companies that I know that have been around a while, right? So I want companies that have been established, um, they’d been around and not going anywhere. They’re embedded. Uh, they’re owned here. Right. That’s another thing. I know that there’s a couple of companies that have out of state ownership or, or the license holders out of state, but he has a whole, uh, uh, licensed here, but he’s not even here, you know, for us, you know, we would think of that. It’s important that the ownership is within earshot to be able to make decisions for their customers. You know, we’re very fortunate, not only does ours live in the state of Texas, he lives here in Houston.

Mr Sod here, right? He’s the owner. So he, it’s, it’s great to have that personal connection with the community and no one that, that’s big to me. You know, Nick’s Plumbing & Air Conditioning has been around since 1979. That’s a good track record. And I always liked the statement, John tells people he shops at Kroger. Last thing I want to do is get flogged at Kroger. That’s right. That’s right. Richard Daddy. I tell them when I, when I brought me to Nixon, this is one of the greatest things in the world, and I’ll tell the story really fast is w you know, when I was searching for a plumber near me, right? I um, I came in, I tell everybody they’d been in business since 1979 the owner lives here in the community services, the community. He will be shopping at the same Kroger that you are and he is not going to want to get ran over by a customer over a bad dispute.

So we have that connection with our, our, our city, which is awesome. You know, some of the other things that you want to look for that also kind of very, and I’ve seen this happen is the head of the company will be licensed, but no one else will. Right. That’s not good. That’s not good. That’s also illegal. Yeah. You know, and that’s another reason insurance companies will deny your claim. You know, they’ll make us show our license and they’ll make the guy working at your house show his license. That’s all right. So we all get dinged the same. That’s right. But if we put somebody out at your house, they didn’t have one from that standpoint, insurance can deny the claim. That’s right. You know, in the state of Texas has all varying degrees of licenses. There’s four or five that you can hold to do four or five different things.

Um, you know, depending on what they’re doing at your, you know, it starts from drain cleaning that goes up to, you know, stuff that people that can work in a residential home versus people that can work in a commercial establishment or a multifamily kind of apartment style place all the way up to master plumbers. And then responsible master plumbers are the guys that, you know, are supposed to own companies, run companies, they have all the lawful paperwork in order and stuff like that. So is it not only important to understand that you’re working with someone that has an RMP or responsible master plumber license, but you also want to make sure that they have guys in the field that are experienced, trained and licensed by the state to do the work for you? And do it correctly. That’s the whole point of that is protect you, the homeowner on, you know, so when you’re searching that plumber near me and you get 25, the 40 people per page, I gotta be honest with you, there’s probably, you know, two or three of those, maybe four, five at the most that I would say we’re adequate.

You know, that would probably be more than that kind of thing. But yeah. But you know, the guys that have all that stuff in the thing, the problem is, is that our market and our industry is saturated with people that don’t qualify for that. And it’s hard for you the customer to tell that difference. I was talking to a customer the other day, um, about some pricing and they want to get some other pricing, which was fine. You know, like we always say, what do we do? We want to share our knowledge with our customers. And I was telling them some of this, they said, man, I never thought about that. I need to ask x, Y, Z. I said, yeah, you do because all it is is your protection. Absolutely. That’s all that is. And so whenever you’re searching, and this goes for anything, I would think, you know, anything that you searched for on the Internet these days, you want to vet and make sure that when you’re talking about you’re letting someone in your home, right?

Which is a valuable asset for every one of us spending your hard earned money. Yep. And I mean, it can be a smaller pair of 100 bucks. It can be a giant project of tens of thousands of dollars. If I’m doing that, I’m going to need to know that I’m crossing my check marks of list. Okay. They got good reviews. They’re verified for me there. You know, I prefer to go local as long as they have a good established, uh, background. Um, I want to make sure that they’re here. They’re not going to go anywhere. They’re going to be able to take care of my warranty work and that comes up. All those things are huge. They’re insured. If they, if they do make a mess, various, you know, there is another way they can also, you guys can go to the Texas State Board of Plumbing Examiners and you can look me up, you can look John Up, you can look up the company that you’re wanting to use, making sure that the insurance has put up with the state, right? Because we have to put insurance up at the state level. You can make sure that our license is current. That’s another issue. People that have licenses, if they go out of uh, being current, you hire them, they’re doing illegal plumbing work. Something goes wrong. Your insurance can deny you as well. Their insurance hadn’t gonna pay, so it’s left on you. Again, there’s a whole host of things to think about around that. Absolutely. You know, when we first started doing this show, we, we always said that we were doing this to give you all knowledge, and this is probably one of the most important shows that I could say in, in education that we can give our customers is this one right here.

You go to the Internet, you search plumbers near me, holist comes up, vet, make sure you’re asking the questions and you’re crossing off your checklist before even having them come out. It’s very important. And don’t ever forget the lowest price could cost you the most. Oh, I like, I’ve never heard that’s really honor that. No, that’s awesome though. The lowest price can cost you the most. Absolutely. Yeah. You know, and I think we all make mistakes as humans. You know, I have definitely hired people to help me at my house, um, that, that hasn’t turned out very well. But they’re non licensed professions. Yeah. You know, let’s just take for an example, a tile guy, right? Yeah. And the outcome has not been what I wanted. The work is not of the quality that I want. Um, they’d happens. I’ve even made mistakes. That’s right.

But in plumbing, you can try to avoid those mistakes by doing the things that we told you to do. Try. Right. You know, and if you’re not sure, the great thing is we’re a phone call away whether you use us or not, you just want some information. Obviously we’d love to have you as a customer if you’re not one. If you are one, we want you to return, but if you just have questions, call us. We’re always at the office. We’re here for you. We’ll answer any questions and guide you the best that we can to the best of our ability, and we will always give you a second opinion. Absolutely. We do a bunch of those. Yeah. Well, thank you guys. We’ll see you next week. Thank y’all so much.