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   February 10, 2014

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   Memphis Istaboa said:

   
   

   Jim,
   Sorry you had difficulties with these guys. They did me a good job but things can change.
   I’ll forward this on to Marine Plumbing Company.
   Hopefully there will be some kind of resolution.
   Thanks for letting yourself be heard.

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   February 10, 2014

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   Jim Burdell said:

   
   

   If you want to get your boat’s toilets fixed do not call Marine Plumbing Company unless you enjoy throwing money down the toilet.

   I called Robert at Marine Plumbing Company to fix my marine toilets. They are very busy and we waited 10 days after the call for a technician to arrive. Robert and I discussed rates and he mentioned a $93/hr labor rate. Doing some quick math, figured at worst we pay for 8 hours for an all day job and 3-400 for parts for a bill around 1500. When the technician arrived he diagnosed the problem (good), found an additional problem or two and set about repairing things. During the course of his repair we asked several times how much we were spending — we didn’t get an answer — “Robert handles these things…” and “…these rebuilt pumps are a lot cheaper than if I was putting in new ones…” Still, no number or price was included in this discussion. When he left after 5.5 hours aboard our boat, we had two working toilets (good) and now idea how much this service was going to cost.

   We received the bill about 5 days later – 1874.03 for parts and 894 for labor charged as 8 hours of technician labor (I signed for 5.5 hours aboard our boat) and 2 additional hours to rebuild the pumps they took off my boat — even though they weren’t going to rebuild them since they “…are not reusable…” Five days after the technician left the boat, one of our toilets was acting up again. So assuming that Robert would be true to his word – “…We stand behind our work if the problem you are experiencing is related…” we called him and told him that one of the toilets was acting up. He said he would get one of his technicians to take a look. So a week after the initial repair (and a $2880.47 bill) technician #2 arrived at our boat.

   He measured things and found our toilets were not producing sufficient vacuum (good – since they were producing the correct amount of vacuum when technician #1 left) — technician #2 then checked our vacuum switches and told us they had been tampered with. We hadn’t tampered with the switches — nor did our local dock helper who had come aboard during weekly pump out on Monday and reset a couple of valves that are 5 feet away from the vacuum switches. So technician #2 replaced the vacuum switches, checked the vacuum and pronounced our toilets operational again.

   A few days later, we noticed that our forward toilet was running constantly – turns out the bowl seal wasn’t doing its job — one of the many things our first bill included. So back on the phone to Robert…

   While waiting to talk to a technician, I received a bill for a service call — for $577.81 — mentioning that our switches had been tampered with — my assumption is that by mentioning the “tampering” this absolves Marine Plumbing Company from having to stand behind their work.

   Bottom line – $3400 dollars later I have a bunch of new parts, toilets that don’t work, and having been twice burned will not call Marine Plumbing Company again

   I have complete documentation of email exchanges and both bills.

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   February 29, 2012

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   Jacob said:

   
   

   Glad to see its working out Bob. Love the new blog!