Sessa Plumbing...Diamond Club?
Ok so what the heck is up with having to pay a yearly fee to keep a plumbing company on “retainer”? Is Sessa THAT good??? I have never heard of this before and would like to know if anyone has signed up for it. I used them to assess my house yesterday and was charged…
Ok so what the heck is up with having to pay a yearly fee to keep a plumbing company on “retainer”? Is Sessa THAT good???
I have never heard of this before and would like to know if anyone has signed up for it.
I used them to assess my house yesterday and was charged $300. I am happy because he found very little wrong and can easily rough in my downstairs sink’s plumbing to convert it to a laundry area. The sales pitch by the techinician for this “club memebership” threw me off and we are not sure how to respond.
I too have used Richie on some occasions and every time he or his workman come by, something else goes wrong shortly after. He may know what he is talking about, but the fact that he always finds something else wrong on each visit is troubling. Why didn’t he notice it on his other visits?
Steve – My house was only 740. Just a Bay Ridge townhouse. I think the system is overkill for my place.
Denton – I might have joined if it was just a service contract, but he hooks up this excalibur sheild system, which costs $1500, or only $500 if you pre-pay a 3 yr Diamond Club membership. The system continuously monitors your gas, water, CO and sewer and turns off whenever it detects a leak automatically. I can see it malfunctioning in the middle of the winter, locking down my boiler, and me having to wait a few days for someone to come out to reset it!
Gideon – He came in and asked me what I wanted him to look at. So I started on the first floor (there is no basement) and asked him to asesss the sewer line, look into the boiler room piping, and check under the two kitchen sinks and check 3 bathrooms. It was very perfunctory and done by sight. He did find a few really stupid things that the previous owners did, such as wrap electrical tape around the main kitchen sink fittings to seal them. He didn’t do as much as I was expecting for $300 and spent alot of my time giving us the Diamond club pitch. I had told the receptionist that I wanted all the valves and turnoffs labeled and she said he would. But when I asked him he said that is done during the first maintenance visti once I join the club. I also thought he was going to do more to my sewer than just look at it, I was assuming it would be cleaned that day. He gave me a witten list of the things that needed repair and what I needed changed to make the sink
I have to say – I used them 3 times within a span of about a year
richie is VERY nice and soothing, while simultaneously causing you to worry about things that might not ever happen
my gut tells me he’s a bit of a slickster
and consquently each time I used him, about a month later – something would go wrong again within my plumbing system
I have used other guys since and knock on wood I haven’t had anthing happen
coincidence, maybe? – but I find it a bit strange
I cant say that we’ve signed up for their diamond club but we have used them for plumbing and their work has been excellent. We had some water issues in the basement and most folks just said they couldn’t find the problem. Sessa were able to solve. Not cheap but sometimes you pay for what you get. Maybe it’s worth just calling them out as required.
Premadas,
What did they do during the assessment?
Gideon
Basically, it’s just a ‘service contract’. Done in all kinds of businesses. You give him a small revenue stream every year, he comes and looks at your equipment every year. If you need emergency work done, theoretically you go to the head of the line and theoretically you get a better price than a ‘non-regular’ customer.
Smokychimp, I bet MasterPlumver likes them too as he offers them on his website 🙂
Hey John (MasterPlumber) what’s your opinion?
Sessa isn’t just a good plumbing company. Richie is one helluva good, natural marketing person too. You’ll start receiving their full color newsletter and discount coupons in the mail soon. And a card at the holidays. Where he finds the time, I dunno.
I had to look at their web site (www.plumberswhocare.com… yet another nice marketing touch) to find out what the Diamond Club is. The Excalibur hardware sounds pretty slick but unfortunately googling on that brings up a very broken web site, http://www.excaliburshield.com. An automatic shut-off on the gas main valve when the CO sensor fires seems like a very clever safety idea though.
If you blew $4 mil on a brownstone with all Grohe fixtures, I guess it’s peace of mind insurance.