Monday In The Garden of EdenWhere For Art Thou Repairman
You are standing at your kitchen stove preparing dinner when your ears are suddenly aware of the sound of water dripping somewhere in your basement. No. Not really dripping. More like hissing and spraying.
As any normal human curiosity would be piqued, yours takes you into the Neverland of homeownership. That wonderful hiatus in one's life where most of your hard-earned money goes into the vast pit in your home known as "Repair". Today's mini-deluge is no different.
Your water heater is huffing and puffing away in your basement and there is now a small but very steadily growing stream of water making its way across your basement floor. Good thing you have a repair service contract, right? Wrong!
Every month, your natural gas utility thrills to the prospect of charging you for a "Worry Free" contract---admittedly, a minimal amount to pay for the luxury of knowing you can have immediate attention when your water heater, covered presumably by said contract, grants you such a convenience. Think again.
So, you do the righteous thing. You call your Worry Free service repair and explain that your water heater is spewing forth the waters of life across your basement floor and is beginning to resemble the makings of Lake Huron.
"Not a problem", says he at the other end of Worry Free. "We'll have a man out there today." That last word in his utterance is the greater part of your angst. "When?", you ask meekly, not wishing to light a fire he will all too quickly extinguish, no doubt with the water exiting your water heater. "We'll have a man there before 5 o'clock today.", says he with delightful glee knowing that by 5 PM, your home may be floating down the street.
You now have two choices. You can pursue the issue whereupon you set a precedent for wanting what you've paid for or, you can run to the nearest hardware store and purchase a bucket, a wet-dry vac or, if you want to go the distance, a sump pump. Doesn't matter. You'll still have to wait till 5 PM.
As the sun begins to go down at 4 PM, with your back aching from bailing and mopping, your water heater ceases to leak. The leaking 75-gallon water heater is no longer a problem. Now, what you need is to replace the dratted beast. You flip through the yellow pages for what you hope is a reputable and reliable installer, dial the number of the ad that screams out at you: "Emergency replacements, no problem", give him the serial number, make and model of your appliance and you await yet another repairman.
Twenty minutes later, Worry Free's van pulls up at the same time as Emergency Water Heaters Inc's. Great. Just what you needed. The two men eye each other surreptitiously as they exit their vehicles, both headed for your door with greatest haste. Worry Free is in a hurry now?
Which will it be? The reliable and quite expeditious Emergency Water Heater's service or the long overdue Worry Free? Out of sheer vengence, you send Worry Free packing with the admonition that you will be cancelling your contract with them due to lack of timely service. The first time in ten years you need them is also the last time they'll hear from you.
Moral of the story: Keep competition among contractors and ditch the insurance contracts. One is your redemption, the other extortion.
I have almost solved this problem for myself these days. My third husband is a plumber... and the only hitch there is... he spends so much time running out to cover the other guy's tail... that he's almost never home, of course! You just can't win for losing in this life! ;)
Views: 331
Comments: 2
Bookmarks: 1
