The Fix-It Right Service Call™

Most people have no idea what's about to happen when a plumber walks in. How long it'll take. What it'll cost. Whether they'll be talked into something. If they've never used us before, they're standing there with a head full of questions they haven't asked yet.

So the first thing our plumber does isn't plumbing.

They confirm your name. They check the van's not blocking you in. They ask you to tell them more about what's been happening. They ask whether you'd like shoes on or off. Then they ask if they can take thirty seconds to explain how the visit will go.

They ask. It's your house.

Those thirty seconds are the whole point. Once you know what's coming, the questions stop being worries. You can see the person in front of you has done this before.

Years ago I took a call late on a Saturday afternoon in Edithvale. Their old hot water system had split, family with kids to get to bed. I put in the unit I'd have chosen for my own house, tested it, got paid, and left thinking I'd done a good job.

They rang the next morning. A pipe had let go overnight and flooded the bathroom through into the house. The carpet was ruined.

I went straight back. It was a flexi hose, rusted through, years old. It had nothing to do with the work I'd done and it was going to fail whether I'd been there or not. It just happened to go that night.

But I'd been in that house. I'd been standing next to it. And I hadn't looked.

So now we look at everything. Every job, every house, whether you called us about it or not. The thing that floods your house at two in the morning is almost never the thing you rang about.

Before they start looking, your plumber will say something like this:

"I'm going to check the rest of the plumbing to make sure everything's in good shape. I'm not expecting to find anything, but if I do, is that something you'd like to know about?"

Most people say yes. Some say no, and that's fine too.

Plenty of trades will ask what you're looking to spend before they'll give you a price. We don't do that. You can't answer it properly until you know what things cost, and asking first only tells us how much you'll wear.

The plumbing in a house is usually all linked, so we look at the whole system before we put a price on anything.

Then you get three options. The first is the fix that gets you out of trouble. The last takes care of everything we found. And there's one in between.

Then we pass it over to you. You know your house and what can wait.

All of them are proper fixes. And whatever you see before we start is what's on the invoice at the end.

Once you've chosen, we start. Not another appointment, not another plumber. The same person who looked at it and priced it does the work, straight away.

That matters more than it sounds. When the person quoting is the person doing the job, they can't hand you a number they wouldn't want to stand behind an hour later. And they're not watching the clock to get to the next one. There's no more important customer than the one we're standing in front of.

Every job runs to the same list, start to finish. Drop sheets down, water off, the work done properly, and the place left the way they found it.

My dad said if something's worth doing, it's worth doing right. He was talking about the house he was building for us to live in. That's the standard we ask our plumbers to work to in yours.

Before your plumber leaves, they'll walk you through what they've done. Not a summary from the driveway. They'll actually show you the work, and how to use anything new if there's something to learn.

It's the same list we went through at the start. This is where you get to check we did what we said we'd do, while the person who did it is still standing next to you.

Then we sort the paperwork and payment out on the spot, so there's nothing landing in your inbox next week for work you never saw.